South Africa - A World in One Country

South Africa – A World in One Country

Day Four – 25 Sept 2013 – Safari Day!

Weather – Hot.

Wake up call is another knock on the door at 4:40 am. We have to get there early as the animals hide in the heat of the day. The key at Kruger is to find the Big Five – elephant, lion, leopard, buffalo and rhino. I climb into the back of the game vehicle and opted for the middle seat in the back. Seriously, folks, it was the last seat people wanted, and the best seat in the house. I could see to the left and right equally and only had to lean over one person to take a photo. Didn’t take long for the three of us to figure out a system and the game vehicle always gave us plenty of time to get pictures, so no worries about which seat you get.

We make the short drive to the gate and stop for a bathroom break (because despite the high number of bushes on the side of the road, there’s no stopping for pee breaks…which could quickly become a great photo op for the rest of us).

As we get ready to leave, the driver asks if there is anything else we needed and the same woman who loves to complain (and I should add, she readily admits that she loves to complain…LOL) says we can’t see out the front. It’s a canvas flap with a plastic window of sorts that is impossible to see through. She asks if he can clean it. He says it won’t make a difference so she asks if he can remove it.

He looked at his watch and shook his head, muttering something about it only being 6 am. I imagine he was thinking he might want to let her take a pee break behind a bush at some point.

He sighed and said he can roll it up but that it isn’t easy and if he puts it up, it’s not coming back down. She didn’t have a problem with that. The rest of us didn’t get much of a say. There were wool blankets if anyone got cold, so no one bothered to object and he rolled up the window. The moment we started to move, I knew she regretted it instantly. It was just after dawn and it was probably about 17 degrees. Start driving to the park at 50 kph through the morning mist and it gets pretty chilly. She was wrapped up in her wool blanket within minutes.

It didn’t bother me except when I got insects in my mouth. LOL

Kruger Park has more than 4500 km of paved and dirt roads. We were scheduled to spend about 9 hours in the park and might drive 350 km, so that gives you an idea as to how massive the place is. The driver tells us that if we see anything to just call out and say left or right.

As it turned out, the left side was the side to be on. Actually, on this whole tour, sit on the left side. LOL

Within minutes we came across a pair of rhinos just sitting on the side of the road. No telephoto necessary here. If they had been any closer, we would have been patting them on the horns.

We saw guinea fowl…

…impala…

…monkeys…

…kudu…

…water buffalo…

…zebra…

…giraffe…

…elephants…

…and hippos.

There are so many different types of antelope that the driver says he won’t stop for them as we can see them a lot in the heat of the afternoon.

Here’s a video of what it’s like to drive along spotting animals:

And here are some zebras just hanging out off the side of the road:

At 8 am, we stopped at one of the stations to eat our bagged breakfast. There’s a full gift shop and small store there and a restaurant.

We stayed for a short time and took off again looking for the last two of the Big Five – the lion and leopard. They’re also the most elusive. Before long, you’ll realize that what you’re looking for is a bunch of cars and safari vehicles pulled off to the side of the road. Then you know there is something to see.

And with our truck, what there is to see is usually on the left. The three men sitting on the right are beginning to feel like there’s an animal conspiracy going on. They get really excited to see a bunch of cars on the right side of the road at one point but just as we pull up, a giraffe crosses to the left hand side.

A lot of times another car or safari vehicle would pull up to ours and talk to the driver to tell him where they saw an animal and all the safari vehicles are in contact via radio. At one point, a man tells us there’s a lion up ahead and we zoom up to a bridge that has a line of cars to the left hand side of the bridge. Our driver pulls over and sure enough there are three lions snoozing in the shade of the dry river bank.

While we’re taking a hundred photos of these sleeping kittens, the driver says there’s a male lion on the other side. We turn around and about 400 m away is a lion walking through the trees. I managed a shot before it laid down and disappeared from sight.

Four of the Big Five down. One to go.

Now we just have to get off the bridge. It didn’t take long to find ourselves in the biggest traffic jam in eastern South Africa.

We took a bathroom break at a smaller station around 10:30. As I was standing in front of the truck (with a fence between us) I though I saw someone going through our truck then I heard our driver scream out something.

Then a baboon jumped out of the vehicle and up on top of the station roof. We don’t know if it left us a present or not.

We returned to the first station at noon for lunch and leave again at 1:30 pm and it’s obvious most of the animals are asleep in the shade. We see more giraffes and zebras and hippos in the water. And panhandling monkeys.

There is a huge water tank for the elephants and our driver said that the government is removing them as they prefer to leave nature to its own devices. The park is under siege from the elephants as animal rights activists have opposed culls and as a result, there are far too many elephants in the park. Tens of thousands too many. They’ve resorted to dropping contraceptives to keep the elephants from reproducing and they’ve tried to coax them to return to Mozambique and Zimbabwe but apparently the animals remember being hunted there and refuse to move on. They know a good thing when they see it.

On our way out of the park, the driver points to a tree that has been stripped of its bark by elephants. This will kill the tree and this is happening all over the park. Pretty soon it will come down to the trees or the elephants.

We leave the park and hit the short section of highway en route to the hotel. Guess who whined about the open window in front? And it’s like 35 degrees out. It just happens to be really windy too. I put my two arms up in front of me and announced that “I’m Superman!” LOL

We got back to the hotel and those of us going on the optional Elephant Interaction have an hour to get ready. (Though the same woman complained that since she wasn’t going on the elephant interaction, it wasn’t fair that they had to leave the park for us….which they weren’t. The safari ended at 3 regardless). I went back to my room to plug in my batteries and got to meet our new driver and our new bus. It’s a 48 seater with cushy seats, cup holders, washroom and a fridge with a coffee maker.

Swanky!

Almost too swanky. LOL

It’s a two minute drive to the Elephant Whispers park where it’s $99 to listen to the talk, feed and touch the elephants and go for a ride. I realized after that I didn’t need to pay that much as I wasn’t going to ride them because I have bad hips and find it too hard to straddle such a wide animal.

We went down to the interaction area where six riders are sitting on the elephants.

The keeper gives us a talk on the animals, the problems with them in the park and the work they do there to rehabilitate elephants including a large male named Tambo who had gone rogue from a place that used to keep them chained.

They took him in before they had a chance to euthanize him and were able to rehabilitate him within a matter of weeks. He said they treat the animals like we treat dogs and husbands. A word and reward is all that is needed for obedience.

Heh.

He said the elephants can understand dozens of commands. Tambo can understand more than a hundred.

How many can your dog understand?

How about your husband? 😀

He gave us a demonstration of trunk up and down, turn to the right and left, raise leg etc – after which they were all rewarded with a treat he called elephant chocolates. Though he did warn the kids there not to snack on them when it came time to feed the elephants – otherwise they would be on the side of the highway on a blanket sometime tomorrow.

Here’s a video of part of the demonstration:

After the demonstration, he had a couple of the elephants come up to a flat area and lie down as this video shows:

Then we could touch them and feel the leathery skin with prickly hairs.

They showed us the ears and tail which has long spines on it to help swat the flies. When they fall out, they are gone forever, which is a problem as some people take them to make souvenirs for tourists. We’re asked not to purchase anything made with the spines if we see them.

We all had a chance to feed one of the elephants. We just had to stand there, say trunk and then grab hold of the end of the trunk, drop the pellets inside and the elephant put them in his own mouth. Then we had to pat the trunk.

Like patting a dog. Or your husb….oh, never mind.

The handler also showed how to give them a drink of water.

We also got a good look at their teeth.

Without the context, I could tell people this was an elephant that charged us and ate complaining women.

Heh.

They also had a couple of photo ops and the keepers were pretty good photographers. At one point, we could stand in front of Tambo’s front legs while his trunk was up and as long as we touched the legs, the elephant knew we were there. So, when he was told to lower his trunk, he knew not to let the tusks go all the way back…into our heads. Every time that happened, the person standing there got the same fright I did…cause you are not sure if he’s going to stop coming down or not.

Very interesting experience and well worth it. The others took a 20 minute ride on the elephants while I sat with the keeper. (My service-related injuries had been getting worse throughout 2013 and kept me from riding but I’d later tie the worsening to my memory foam bed. Once I stopped using it, my back went back to normal.)

The keeper was from the UK, but has lived in South Africa for some 30 years. Really nice guy.

We had a short ride back to the hotel and dinner was not included, so I got a pizza from the spot next door and went back to my room to relax for the evening. I was out like a light by 9 pm, dreaming of the leopard we never did see.