Day 6 (Monday Sept. 11th).
Kruger park
5 am
Morning Drive for 13 of us, with 4 lucky ones able to join a morning bush walk
with two gun-toting guides (Curtis, Jenny, Antonin, and James won the
lottery).
Bush Walk! (James)
4:45 am
It's dark, but I'm awake. The excitement of yesterday is upon me again. A
giraffe family, an elephant, hundreds of antelope--and now, the promise of a
guided walk in the park. I had slept restlessly, my conscious mind unwilling
to give up my desire to the unconscious for more than a brief period.
4:55am
Joe comes in and turns on the light. I had set an alarm for 5, but it seems I
won't need it. After getting dressed and brushing my teeth, I'm ready to go I
had packed in my excited state last night, knowing the morning would be
rushed.
5:30 am
I walk towards the trucks waiting outside the office, and present myself to the
drivers. They instruct me to board a truck which has room for only 8 people;
I'm happy because it's a nice small group.
The drive to the start of the path is chilly, but pleasant. Several of the
riders have hidden themselves under the blankets the drivers provided, but I
prefer to feel the brisk wind as it whips through the open truck. It wakes me
up better than a warm shower or big breakfast ever could. Along the way we
sight three white rhinoceros, a herd of zebra, and few giraffes.
6:15 am
We arrive at the trailhead where we will begin our hike. As we assure that we
have water and film in our bags, the two guides each pull out a .45 caliber
rifle, and I begin to realize just how serious of a walk this will be. They
give us very specific instructions. “If we see an animal, do whatever we tell
you. Usually we'll tell you to get behind a tree or climb up on a rock, but
follow whatever instructions we give you.”
~6:25 am
We begin our hike, silently following the two guides into the bush. We follow
a trail for a short distance and then break away from it, following what I
assume are game trails. I continuously scan the horizon, looking for whatever
animals might be in the area. At the same time, I look at the various animal
droppings along the path. Some of them resemble those I'm used to deer, elk,
and even some that look sort of like those of large dogs. Others, however,
are huge and unlike anything in my experience.
About twenty minutes into our walk, our guide holds up his hand telling us to
stop. As we look into the distance we see a herd of impala grazing, apparently
unaware of our presence. We approach them, attempting to be as quite as
possible, but when we get within 100 m they bound away very different from our
experience in the car, when they sometimes refused to get off the road. We
follow them from a distance for the next 15 minutes, but never get any closer
than our first encounter. They spook very easily, and look incredible as they
bound away, taking flight for a short period and then landing gently, creating
arcs like dolphins jumping from the water.
Eventually we stop following the impala and continue walking the game trails.
As we come across a huge pile of dung, our guide explains to us that a white
rhinoceros placed it there and uses it to mark its territory. We follow
various rhinoceros droppings as they continue to get fresher. As I look around
there appears to be a large, dark grey rock in the background. I think
momentarily that it might be an animal, but convince myself no animal could be
that large. We continue on and pass a very fresh pile of rhinoceros dung on
our right we must be getting close. Our guide starts pointing and, sure enough,
that huge grey rock is a rhinoceros. We position ourselves upwind of the
rhinoceros and very quietly approach. Before long we realize there is not one,
but two rhinoceros here. As we get closer our guides take the guns off their
shoulders and have them at ready, and shepherd us behind a tree. One of the
rhinoceros begins moving away while the other one continues eating happily
away. Continuing to approach, we take pictures at every stop. Even those of
us without zoom lenses can get wonderful pictures now. Eventually the closer
rhinoceros stops eating and looks up right at us. We all stop. We hold a
standoff for a couple of minutes until one of the guides decides to make a
quick movement and frighten off the rhinoceros. They both turn around and
barrel into the brush. I would later learn from a friend's focal point
that we were 7 m away.
The rest of the morning is much less eventful. We continue on to a rock
outcrop where we stop and have a light breakfast. As we eat, a pack of banded
mongoose run around the rocks we sit on. The highlight of the return hike is
seeing some lion droppings along the trail. We have another chilly drive back
to Pretoriuskop, and reenter the park on our own.
For a few hours, however, we had experienced the reality of the bush. We had
felt the grass beneath our feet and the trees scratch our legs as we walked
by. We had smelled the animal droppings and seen where they ate. We had stood
face to face with a 2500 kg, horned animal, uncertain whether it would run
away or charge. We had reentered the food chain. (James)
(Tim Raub). Today we drove from Pretoriuskop to Satara and the highlights
were the crocodiles and hippos in the Sabie River. The crocodiles were really very
impressive very scary looking. Hard to imagine they were small fry back in
the Cretaceous. We stopped for lunch in the grassy area of the park but did
not see any cats. There were many giraffes and a single vervet monkey was very
bold and curious about Antonin's papaya. Liz fended him off with my knife, and
he showed us his sexual skin which was extremely colorful (blue with red at the
end). We took many pictures. Got to Satara just as night was falling, what a day!
Hello, my name is Laura Croal- I'm the 'token' geomicrobiologist on the trip,
and I'll talk about the morning drive the whole group took at Pretoriuskop
camp. After having to wake up painfully early to get ready for our adventure,
we climbed aboard the tour van by 5:30 and commenced the first of our two
guided tours in Kruger. Two members of our group were assigned the job of
holding the spotlights and the rest of us were instructed to keep our eyes
peeled for any signs of animal life. After only a few minutes were spotted
our first animal, the white rhino, which is one of the animals in the park
designated as the big five. We were told that the white rhino is a sociable
animal, which likes to be with other rhinos as opposed to the black rhino, a
much more solitary animal that only seeks other members of its kind during the
mating season. The next animal we encountered, the cheetah, was a real treat
since it is one of the more rare animals to be seen in the park. The guide
informed us that the cheetah can go from 0 to 70 km/hr in a mere 2 seconds!
Apparently this is faster than any car! Continuing along we next ran into a
pack of zebra, impala, and wildebeest together. We were told that it wasn't
unusual to find the wildebeest and zebra together since they eat complementing
parts of the grass, with the zebras eating the bottom of the grass and the
wildebeest eating the top. Moving on our next sighting was of 3 giraffes!
The giraffes we saw were female, we were told, since they had pompoms, or little
tufts of hair on the knobs sticking out of their heads. Males don't have the
pompoms, because they are rubbed off during fights. Another interesting tidbit
that we learned about giraffes is that they have no larynx, since their long
necks cannot support one, and so can make no noise. After the giraffes the
next pack of animals we found were kudoo. We were told that the young males
that we saw, when they reached maturity would have three twists in their horns
and that kudoos can jump an amazing 3 meters in the air from a standstill! Our
next two sightings were of another white rhino and a giraffe, respectively.
Continuing on past a watering we were lucky enough to see a few hippos playing
in the water. Hippos are another representative of the big five and can run
up to 40 km/h. We learned that they eat mostly grass, and spend most of their
time in the water to prevent sunburn. We may have also spotted a crocodile,
but the jury is out on that one. The last sighting of the drive was a pack of
zebra of the side of the road. All in all it was a very successful drive and
all the animal sightings we made, especially the cheetah, more than made up for
the fact that it was FREEZING COLD for the entire three hour drive!! Once we
got back to camp we had a nice breakfast of fruit, cereal, eggs and ham and got
ready to split up into our individual vans for our self-guided day drives.
So, we also all wanted to talk about all the exciting animals that we saw in
our car during the day. In the red car, with Mike, Laura, Jeanette, and
Kristen, we got really lucky. We saw all the normal stuff- zebra, impala,
giraffe, kudu, wildebeest, and hippos. Most were fairly close to the road,
otherwise we might have missed them. The really exciting encounters though,
were the big cats. Our first run-in with them was a headless impala hanging in
a tree. Apparently a leopard caught it, dragged it up a tree, and hung it over
a branch, after somehow disposing of its head. By the time we arrived however,
the leopard had disappeared into the short grass below the tree. The next
leopard encounter was a little bit more special- it involved an actual leopard
sitting in a tree. We sat in our car watching it hang out on the branch for
about half an hour, hoping that we could see it move, jump off the branch, or
even hunt something. Unfortunately, it moved when we weren't looking, as we
were trying to show the animal to Joe's car. They missed it, because the radio
chatter scared it away. Fairly soon after the leopard, we encountered another
of the Big Five animals, a pride of 9 lions. There were sitting there, hanging
out under a tree. They didn't do much, but they were still pretty impressive.
That was our last exciting encounter of the day, mainly because we were
speeding back to camp so fast, we probably missed a whole lot of animals.
However, we thought the day was well worth it, and we were all very satisfied
with what we saw.
(Joe's van) Today, we split off again and renewed our quest for old
oiliphant. We saw numerous antelope, baboons, monkeys, a hippo, and birds of
all shapes, sizes, and colors. But still no elephants. Our frustration was
palpable as we realized one of the more common elements of our drive, the
waterboc, had a population only one tenth the size of the elephant's. Joe even
began singing a Japanese nursery song about elephants to lure out the giant
creatures. The time grew near when we had to be to the camp to begin a
scheduled night drive. We had nearly given up when our cell phone rang. It
was Curtis. His car was watching an elephant browse through the bushes about 5
km from the campground. At that moment, we were 8 km from the campground. Not
wanting to miss this last opportunity we sped down the road, passing cars and
dismissing the possibility of wildlife between us and the awaited beast. Our
eyes were peeled, and the white of Curtis' car soon appeared before us. And
there, across the road we saw at last the grey, wrinkled behind of the animal
we searched out so diligently. (Kristine Nielson)
Kruger night drive
(Kristine again) We rushed headlong into the camp, hoping the half-hour or less
we'd left ourselves to check in and get to the tour would be sufficient, and
then found the tour started an hour later than we thought. We took advantage
of this extra time to stretch our cramping legs, talk to others in different
cars and hear their experiences. After a little exercise we even found the
energy to set up our tents-a much more pleasant experience in daylight
hours.
Our group took up most of the rather large, multi-passenger 4WD canvas-topped
safari van. Our driver gave off the aura of an independent man, accustomed to
danger and toughened by experience. He was quite different from our guide on
the earlier drive who seemed, in contrast, almost green and idealistically
friendly. This man told us he expected to find elephants and lions, and hoped
to find the rest of the big five as well. True to
his word we saw elephants not far outside the park, and quite a group of them
too. There were almost a dozen ranging from one very small calf to several
amazingly large females. Several times the size of most cars, it was easy to
imagine what one of them would if something, or someone, got in the way.
Indeed, we had to think about this point a little more than we wanted to when
the elephants decided to cross the road-right in front of us.
After the elephants passed we continued on, but only for a very short
distance. Way off in the distance, behind a cluster of burned trees someone
spotted a patch of tawny fur and a swishing tail. Lounging in the thicket was
a pride of lions! It was incredible how close they were to the elephants to
begin with, and the elephants were moving in the direction of the lions. When
we expressed our surprise at the proximity of the species, our guide explained
that really, the lions won't mess with the elephants and the elephants won't do
anything to the lions unless they get in the way, so it isn't as amazing as it
first seems.
We continued on our way to a bridge, where we stopped as a group for a short
break from driving. The guide explained we were safe as long as we were on the
bridge, though wandering off would be foolish. He told us he sometimes hears
lions hiding under the bridge, and once a man walked perhaps 20 feet into the
bushes and was killed by a leopard.
As the drive continued we were fortunate to see many nocturnal creatures in
addition to some of the same animals we'd seen in daylight. There were hares,
several types of antelopes, and a few different small cats, including one very
elegant cat, called a genet, sitting in the crook of a tree. She was very
striking with her black and gray stripes and her huge, glowing eyes in a narrow
head. We turned around a big loop where we saw a couple of zebras, but little
else. Tim finally spotted another set of glowing eyes in a tree and called
out, "Look, another genet!" It took only a few seconds to realize it was
actually the same genet-we'd returned to the beginning of our loop-and only a
fraction of a second beyond that for people to start teasing Tim. But Tim had
a good reply: "Hey, we're reproducing our results!" We turned back, and on the
road toward camp encountered a hyena. With his mangy coat and slouching
stride as he walked beside us on the road it wasn't hard to see why Disney
chose his kind for a villain.
In about the same place we saw the hyena, Joe started his countdown to the
lions. Joe marked the positions we'd seen many of the animals along the way,
including our pride of lions. The anticipation was palpable as he counted
down, 300 meters, 200 meters, 100, 50. But when we returned to the exact
spots, the lions were no longer there. Undaunted, our guide drove us to
another spot he knew where a lioness and her cubs liked to hang out. Again, we
didn't see anything. Saddened, but tired and anxious to go to bed, we returned
to camp. Not too far outside the camp, just where the light was too much to
see far into the darkness, we heard feline noises off in the bushes. And for
much of the night loud, disturbingly violent noises from the big cats drifted
into camp. Though we didn't see any cats close up on our night drive, they
certainly accompanied us in our dreams.
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