Africa’s wild animals are after all a popular tourist attraction. Almost 
I thought that sheep, goats and cows are about as wild as it gets here in Africa these days (apart from the few animals I saw in the national park Fazao-Malfakassa and the hippos of Banfora), but then we went to the national park Pendjari in Benin and there they really still exist, some of the types of animals that Africa has become so well-known for. And their numbers are increasing (which is unfortunately rather untypical for Africa).
Right the first animal we encountered was an elephant; well actually a group of four elephants. Than later we saw even more elephants – all in all we saw them four times – then we saw various different types of antelopes, two types of monkeys, some sort of 
wild pig, hippos, lots of different types of birds, even two turtles and three buffalos (which I was particularly happy to see, as we had spent the entire evening of the first day and most of the morning of the second day searching for the lions and thus hardly any time spent on finding the buffalos).
As far as we are aware the lions were rather close by (and as we found out on departing the
park one of the guards had seen a cheetah near the place where we spent the night on the evening that we were there), but we couldn’t find them. A few fresh prints of a female lion and a distant roar were all we got. A journalist and a French student, who were working on a documentary, told us that they saw lions in heat not too far from the hotel just the day earlier. However, even following the journalist and his crew we couldn’t find them again. The grass was just too high (that’s why they say it’s better to go at the end of the dry season…). Pity! – Or in Nico’s words: At least like this we have still got something new to look forward to on our next visit…
I thought that sheep, goats and cows are about as wild as it gets here in Africa these days (apart from the few animals I saw in the national park Fazao-Malfakassa and the hippos of Banfora), but then we went to the national park Pendjari in Benin and there they really still exist, some of the types of animals that Africa has become so well-known for. And their numbers are increasing (which is unfortunately rather untypical for Africa).
Right the first animal we encountered was an elephant; well actually a group of four elephants. Than later we saw even more elephants – all in all we saw them four times – then we saw various different types of antelopes, two types of monkeys, some sort of 
wild pig, hippos, lots of different types of birds, even two turtles and three buffalos (which I was particularly happy to see, as we had spent the entire evening of the first day and most of the morning of the second day searching for the lions and thus hardly any time spent on finding the buffalos).As far as we are aware the lions were rather close by (and as we found out on departing the
park one of the guards had seen a cheetah near the place where we spent the night on the evening that we were there), but we couldn’t find them. A few fresh prints of a female lion and a distant roar were all we got. A journalist and a French student, who were working on a documentary, told us that they saw lions in heat not too far from the hotel just the day earlier. However, even following the journalist and his crew we couldn’t find them again. The grass was just too high (that’s why they say it’s better to go at the end of the dry season…). Pity! – Or in Nico’s words: At least like this we have still got something new to look forward to on our next visit…
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