Big cat diary
Being on an Africa Exclusive family safari can be just like being part of Big Cat Diary. You’ll have your own expert private guide with amazing eyesight, a private four wheel drive vehicle and miles and miles of savannah, rivers and forests to explore. And at the end of an exciting day among the lions, leopards and cheetah you come back to a camp like Chitabe, deep in the bush yet with every comfort.
An open vehicle is the best way to be on safari looking for the cats. Your guide will be alert for signs like alarm calls from baboons who may have sensed a stalking leopard, or vultures circling high over a kill, where a pride of lions may still be feeding, watched by pack hungry hyenas. Amazingly, big cats ignore your vehicle, even if you are quite close, and even if they are silently creeping up on an unsuspecting herd of gazelle.
Each of the big cats looks completely different with different habits. Leopards are the most graceful especially if you can spot one relaxing on the lower branches of a big old tree, with his long spotted tail curling down. Yet he can also be immensely powerful, strong enough to haul a grown antelope up a tree to stop lions and hyenas from stealing it. Leopards like to stay alone, but lions love to live in prides of 8 to 12, and sometimes in the afternoon you’ll see a whole pride lying in the shade, rolling on their backs looking completely harmless! A lion’s roar can carry for several miles and if one roars near you, it is awesome experiences that will make your whole chest vibrate!
Cheetahs are the smallest of the Big Cats and are often bullied by other cats and hyenas. Cheetahs have to live by their wits and their speed and can run at 70 miles per hour. Females look after their young very carefully and one of the most wonderful sights on safari is to see a mother cheetah with her tiny cubs.
If you want to see the Big Cats let us design a perfect family safari for you. Botswana, Kenya and South Africa are some of the best countries for cats, and camps like Lebala in Botswana, Cottars in the Masai Mara and Londolozi in the Kruger can be really exciting when the cats are on the move.
