Arriving at Kwantu

I spent one night at the i-to-i volunteer house in Fish Hoek before we took a 12-hour bus from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth the following morning. We got into Port Elizabeth around dusk and had a truck waiting to transport us to the Kwantu Private Game Reserve in Sidbury, about an hour northeast of Port Elizabeth. As it was late, we pretty much got straight to bed that night to be ready for an early 7am start on Wednesday morning. But here are some details on the game itself as a background:


Kwantu is small (for a game reserve) but very beautiful. It has a 3600 acre wilderness that hosts the Big 5 (elephant, leopard, lion, rhino, & cape buffalo) in addition to all sorts of other plains game like springbok, blue & black wildebeast, red hartebeast, eland, kudu, impala, etc. In addition to the reserve, there is a predator sanctuary that is home to 22 additional lions and 5 bengal tigers that are not kept in the wild. Apparently, that amount of predators would devour all of the plains game before too long if they were all released into the wild. Furthermore, some of the animals are rescues that were born in captivity and can not survive in the wild. Bengal tigers aren't even native to Africa, actually, but Kwantu participates in a breeding program for eventual relocation back to India and Southeast Asia. The reservation is home to the first bengal tiger born in South Africa, Jasmnie, and since her birth several years ago she has yielded 5 additional cubs. Three of these are now adolescents that are in the predator sanctuary, and 2 are relative new-borns that, along with 2 lion cubs, are in the "Cubs Crib" in a different part of the camp.




We get up around 6:45-7 to be ready for the morning work shift from 7:30 to 9. Breakfast is at 9:30 and then the late-morning shift is from 10-12:30. Lunch is at 1, and then the afternoon shift goes from 2-4:30. From there, we have dinner at 6 and then have the evening to ourselves. There's not awhole lot to do, so we might watch a movie, read, or just sit around the campfire. There's about 25 other volunteers here, which is apparently the largest group they've ever had, so there's plenty of people to talk to.