After lunch at the Peppermill and purchases at the Mohair Mill, we went to Plettenburg Bay to get another SD card for the camera, because if you haven't guessed by now, we took a lot of pictures. While there, Grandma decided to buy the boys an ice cream treat because she felt guilty that we, yet again, ordered dessert at the Peppermill and ate it quickly while the boys were away playing.
The Wild Cat sanctuary was interesting and, uh, I'll go with quiet. There is a picture that will explain. The above Caracal would just not sit still for a picture. Most cats were behind fences for our protection.
We wondered what we had gotten ourselves into when we had to walk out on this long
fenced walk way.
At the end of the walk way was a beautiful leopard. We learned that some of the differences between a leopard and a cheetah are the spots - leopards have rosettes and cheetahs have spots. Leopards have retractable claws, cheetahs do not. Nobody can enter the cage of the leopard, we went into the cheetah cage.
I think he pretty much knows he can do whatever he darn well pleases.
And there were a few non-cats too, who benefited from the sanctuary.
We were able to go into the cages of these wild cats, which seemed just like harmless house cats, until one of the yawned:
We were also able to go into the cage of Serval cats.
I don't think I would like to be chased by a cat with hind legs like that!
This picture describes well our experience in the cat sanctuary: D.J. is yawning, I'm trying to look interested and Grandma is trying to pry information out of our guide who is not willing to part with it. It's a good thing the cats were interesting to look at because our guide was a yawner, as D.J. demonstrates.
This is a Lord of the Rings perspective trick, but just looking at the picture, you would think that D.J. is pretty happy about losing the function of his jugular in a few seconds.
James hung close to me, until we came to the cheetah cage and then we had to part ways. On entering the sanctuary lobby, we had to make sure James was a certain height, like with a roller coaster ride. He was just over the line, so we thought he was fine. But as we approached the cheetah cage, the cheetah eyed James and came right over to us, so the guide wouldn't let James in the cage. I didn't try to beg for exceptions. Grandma and Spencer sacrificed their cheetah time to stay with James. Apparently taller people are not a threat to cheetahs (unless we turn our back to them), and shorter people are seen as prey.
There was a brother and a sister in the cage.
We were really this close to the cheetah! Well, maybe five feet away. Thankfully, it was offering a satisfying purr because it was not hungry.
The non-retractable claws that we were very close to.
And he won the staring contest.
And as a treat for our completely the exciting tour we got to see Grandpa pelican. .
. . and some meerkats. The guide didn't think my question of whether or not these were actual cats because their name is meerKAT, was a good enough question to be answered and he smirked and walked away. Dumb Americans. So Google, who is not so uppity with question asking, told me that meerkats are in the monkey family, not the cat family. Thank you Google. They are also carnivores.
Turtles are also not in the cat family. Just in case you were wondering. I didn't even have to look that one up on Google and I certainly didn't ask the guide.
After the Cat sanctuary, the boys wants to go to a maze that we passed a few times going to and from Plettenburg Bay. We reached the mazed just as they were putting away the cash register, but they were kind enough to bring out the register again for us. The average time for completing the maze was 45 minutes. The boys finished in 28 minutes. They had to solve four colored block puzzles to get though the maze. They may have been helped by the maze workers, so they could get out of there by closing time, but I prefer to think my boys are above average. No pictures were taken because we were not allowed into the high-walled maze. They emerged alive and unhurt, so all was well.
For dinner we ate at Enrico's, which was an Italian place on the coast with very large chairs. Well, not all chairs were large.
This is the boy who orders either hamburgers or chicken nuggets and fries, and if either are not up to his expectation, he won't even eat those. Imagine my delight and trepidation, when he decided to order a bacon and banana pizza! Wha?!?!? He actually ate more than the bite pictured here! We all tried it and it was quite good. Everything is better with bacon on it! Spencer also departed from two weeks of hamburgers to have ravioli.
That night the boys learned the Wheeler game of Nertz. Grandma made sure to buy cards at the Maze store in order to teach the boys. It's a fast-paced solitaire game played with up to. . . as many people as your ear drums and pride can handle. The tradition rides on.
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