Day 5 (Sunday Sept. 10th).
Badplaas, Barberton to Kruger Park
We had an early breakfast, which did not deter a few of the students from
enjoying a morning swim in the large, outdoor hot pool. From Badplaas we took
the tar road to Barberton, stopping to collect several samples of the old
granite plutons along the way. In particular, the Kaap Valley pluton (dated at
3.2 billion years) records the oldest evidence for geomagnetic field reversals
yet found. The terrain is spectacular the granitic valleys erode into
reasonably flat, farmed planes, while the deformed volcanics and sediments of
the greenstone belts form mountainous areas with high relief surrounding them.
We then went towards the Kruger National Park, for some pure, unapologetic
ecotourism, entering at the Malelane Gate in the SW corner of park. Kruger is
a drive-through park, where it is forbidden to get out of the vehicles at any
time (except inside the fenced-in areas around the major camps). Months
earlier, we had reserved four safari huts at the Pretoriuskop camp, and
camping
places at the Satare camp for the following night. After checking in at the
main park gate (and assuring the guards that we were not carrying weapons or
explosives of any sort), each car chose different (secret) routes to take to
Pretoriuskop. (JLK)
Mike Gurnis's car (occupied by Mike, Laura, Jeanette, and Kristen) was on its
way to Pretoriuskop, our camp for the first night, when they noticed a Honda
stopped on the narrow dirt road. Wondering what might be out there they, too,
stopped. Looking out the left windows of their Venture, they saw an elephant
about 10 m in front of them trying to cross the road. As the Honda attempted
to continue on the road, the elephant became upset. It flared its ears and
waved its trunk. It made a mock charge at the Honda, forcing that car to
reverse quickly. With an elephant and a Honda approaching them at high speed,
Mike turned white with fear. Laura shifted into reverse and retreated in a
panic. With their hearts beating rapidly, the four occupants of the car watched
as the elephant finished crossing the road and disappeared into the bushes on
their right. Still excited and scared, they followed the Honda in driving away,
hoping to avoid a repeat performance. They spent the evening recounting their
experience with relief and a bit of agitation. Mike, especially, was shaken up
and went to bed early. They will all remember the sight of an angry elephant
for a long time.
This is Tim now, writing for Liz, Edwin, Antonin, and Magali and our car's
trek through Kruger. We were pretty uncertain about what to expect in Kruger as we
entered it was a horribly hot day, and we thought it might be awfully hard to
spot animals at all. Boy were we wrong! We turned off the main road onto a
dirt road to snake through the southwest part of the park during the three
hours we had to get from the gate to our camp, and ran smack into about 30
impala and three warthogs. The warthogs have a very strange habit of kneeling
down on the front knees to forage on the ground I guess pigs do this too (?),
but it was pretty amazing to watch them with binoculars (Mike Scott donated
VERY GOOD binoculars for the trip two years ago, so we each have been going
around with the bino's around our necks). We decided we really ought to move
on, if this was any sort of representative sample of what we were going to
find. We started up again, rounded the bend, and ran into 40 more impala.
Impala are short, cute, bambi-ish antelope with very low self-esteem. They
have a constant expression on their face that says, I am so scared that I might
just jump into the air and then run straight into you trying to get away from
you. I guess I might look like that, too, if I were a walking lion crouton.
When they do decide to run any which way, they run a couple steps and then
bounce straight up into the air in a truly fascinating way. We stoically
realized we had to keep moving in order to survive the sweltering heat. (Our
air conditioning was only effective on low and medium-fan that day, and we
were down to three Gatorades for the five of us. We had run out of candy bars back
in Barberton.) Around the next bend, we drove down into a swale and paused to
look around since there might be water nearby, and sure enough three elephants
came swaggering down from the thornveld about 100m in the distance. They dug
around in the sand, since the river was dry, and found water! Then a fourth
elephant entered the riverbed from the other side and confronted the group of
three. We couldn't tell what the relationship between the lone elephant and
the three was perhaps they were all family. We speculate that the fourth
elephant was a male, since elephant family groups are matriarchal, whereas
males are kicked out to roam alone once they reach sexual maturity (~11 years
old in an up-to 60-year lifespan). The males have a hard go of things, since
females are in heat for only four days at a time and typically go three or four
years between calving (they can carry a calf for an indeterminate long period
of time, waiting for good nutrition to increase appropriate hormone levels to
give successful birth). Most of the time, then, the lone males wander around
eating trees in order to fuel their hulking frames the literature we brought
along claims that a single elephant needs to consume 70-90 liters of fluid
each day to keep cool, and during the dry season (now), they actually eat tree bark
as a substantial part of their diet. We saw many elephant-ravaged trees.
After the elephants we drove through a very large, recently-burned area (the
rangers later said they thought this particular burn area was a Revenge burn,
started by the friends of poachers to the west of the park in retaliation for
catching a poaching party the previous week!). Zebras and an occasional impala
were the large game here, but we saw many birds which Edwin and Antonin were
very excited about. Some of the birds are just fantastically colored
turquoise and pink, iridescent feathers that shine one way when they're sitting
on a branch and then in a completely different way when they flash their
undersides when taking flight! Magali caught a glimpse of something moving in
a single tree, and it turned out to be a group of vervet monkeys eating small,
potato-ish sausage fruits in the trees. They were really amazing to watch
with the binoculars, but we realized that we had only covered about half of the
100 or so kilometers from the gate to the camp and we had used up 3 of our 4
hours! Reluctantly we moved on, and caught sight of some tsetsebe (Swahili for
ugly looking rare mammal that looks like a wildebeest but has a different
name), which the park rangers were interested in finding out the location for
once we reached the park. Finally, the aerosols in the air from all the burns
in the area created an absolutely gorgeous sunset that Antonin said filtered
the IR and UV radiation so we could look at the sun directly through
binoculars. It was rare but very incredible! There were unfortunately no
sunspots we could find.
Joe's car: We sped past our first animal, a kudu, soon after entering the
park, and were too surprised at seeing anything so soon to react. Our drive
took us through much burned area and we hardly believed how easily we saw
impala, birds, and other small wildlife. After dozens of the more diminutive
animals we wondered where the larger creatures might be hiding. Finally,
outside the burned area, we happened upon a cluster of stopped vehicles and, as
we drew closer, realized a giraffe towered above the bushes. Two more appeared
soon after, one of them an adolescent. Encouraged, we drove on. Peering into
the charred forest, we glimpsed zebras feeding on newly emerged grasses. It
seemed the zebras actually blended in better with the blackened trunks and
branches than they would in tall grasses. But as the day ended we found
disappointment. That one great creature we most wanted to see, the elephant,
had eluded us (Kristine and JLK).
Despite all the vans taking different routes, we all arrived at the camp within
about 10 minutes of each other. Only Joe's van failed to spot the large
pachyderms, but dinner was spent exchanging wild stories of the various
animals that were seen.
Written by Tim Raub, Kristine, JLK and others
Return to South Africa Itinerary Page
Back to Day 5 Pictures