Federica tells us more about a cheetah with a secret  in the wonderful Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe.

“One of the highlights of a ZB16 - Zimbabwe and Botswana Game Trail tour is to spend 2 nights at Hwange National Park. Hwange is the biggest national park of Zimbabwe, it is also a park that is not fenced off, so you can easily find any type of animal in your camp at any time.

On our second day in Hwange we do a full day game drive in the park. We started at 06h30 in the morning, spotting all sorts of antelopes, baboons, giraffes, and we even got lucky with the lions, one beautiful male sleeping under a tree and one breeding pair that were lazing around on top a termite mount.  After a really lovely morning in the park, we stopped at a picnic site to have lunch. We also had a few elephants coming closer to the picnic site; it was really amazing how close they got.

After lunch, we continued with our game drive and as we were making our way out we saw some giraffes next to the road staring at something.  When we stopped next to them they didn’t even bother to look at us. Normally giraffes will look at vehicles all the time and they would never take their eyes off. But these giraffes were really staring at something greater than us. So we’ve decided to drive a little bit further to see if we could spot something and after just  a few meters we saw a cheetah laying in the grass, it was so well camouflage that we took a while to spot it. This beautiful animal was just lying there, looking around, not even paying attention to the giraffes.  After a few minutes the cheetah stood up and started walking on the road, and in a matter of seconds three little cheetah cubs appeared from the bush! They realized that their mom was going hunting because they didn’t even followed her. They were so cute and fluffy and a little bit scared of our vehicle, so they quickly run back into the grass and hide under a small bush.

It was an amazing sighting, seeing cheetahs in Hwange is a little bit difficult as their numbers in the park are quite low. Sadly cheetahs are vulnerable cats and their young ones don’t always reach adulthood. But this mother was doing an excellent job because those cubs were around 5 months old and they looked in good conditions.

We wished them luck before we left. Hopefully they will reach adulthood and make their numbers higher.