ADDO ELEPHANT NATIONAL PARK TO MOUNTAIN ZEBRA NATIONAL PARK (NEAR CRADDOCK), SOUTH AFRICA-- Saturday and Sunday morning, March 8 and 9, 2014

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Addo Elephant National Park to Mountain Zebra National Park (222km or 138 miles), Saturday, March 8^th. Completely overcast today.

Before leaving Addo, we stopped at the gift shop to buy T-shirts and to look around at the various items for sale. We then hit the road going out the Park Gate and turning right toward the community of Paterson. Just outside the gate, was a troop of vervet monkeys, a herd of impalas, and several spur-fowl with red feet and beaks. We continued driving along the Park fence line for several miles.

Fencing for these animal parks and reserves, in this part of the world, is FENCING in all caps. They must withstand a bull elephant leaning on them and keep antelope from jumping over and out and hopefully deter poachers, so they are about 6-8 feet tall with strong round wooden posts set about every 5 feet. Heavy wire mesh is strung between the posts and the whole thing is topped with barbed wire and is electrified. If you looked closely at the picture of the two male lions on one side of the fence and the female on the other in the last blog entry, you coud see the fencing between them. This is a double fence; one on each side of the boundary line. You can imagine the amount of fencing needed to enclose these humongous National Parks. This fencing also goes around reception areas, residences, cabins, and camping areas within the park to keep elephants and lions/cheetah/hyenas, etc. out. The fence gates are also closed and locked by a certain time. Along with the fencing, there are guards at each of the gates and patrols constantly watching for poachers.

Now heading due north toward the town of Cradock on the N-10, we crossed over a number of passes with very steep grades. Seeing lots of trucks going this way most likely from and toward Port Elizabeth. Construction, construction, construction–-forcing us to stop and wait for cars coming the other way before we can proceed. Most of the “flag” people are young women. Several we talked to said that they worked a 12-hour shift, 7 days a week, every other week. In many construction areas, the road that they have completed/constructed, but not opened, often had branches or tree limbs placed along it every so often to keep cars off, we guess. Along this stretch of road, they had softball size rocks neatly placed across the width of the pavement in row after row 2 to 3 feet apart. The amount of hand labor this entails is mind boggling for us.

Needing a break from the rigors of this construction, we stopped at a farm stall at the very end. This was a place called “Daggaboer” and we joined several of our group here eating a snacks or lunches. Valerie ordered a sausage roll and I ordered a piece of cheese pie, not quite cheesecake as we know it, but still good. Valerie’s sausage roll was about a foot long of meat wrapped in a flaky crust. It was served with homemade peach chutney. We left there with two more frozen rolls and a bottle of their chutney. Wished along the way we bought more as we just popped them in the microwave and one was enough for both of us for lunch.

After about 197 km of driving, we began to follow the brown signs to Mountain Zebra National Park. By the way, if you are British or South African; zebra is pronounced with a short “e” sound and not as we American’s do with a long “e”, saying zee---bra to their zeb ra.

There is now over 700 Cape mountain zebra in this Park, which was originally established in 1937 to save this species from extinction. It started with a small founder herd of only 6 zebra on 4,230 acres of land. By purchasing 9 adjacent farms, over the years, the park has grown to 70,207 acres. Cheetah were reintroduced in 2007, becoming the first large predators in the Park.

There is only one gate into the park and it comes off of R-61. We entered the gate and then registered and were given a map of the self-drive roads. We decided that since we were several miles from the campground and it was still early that we would drive a couple of loops before settling down for the night. Right as we entered the park lands we spotted Black Wildebeest and herds of antelope.

We started on the Ubejane Loop that went by a large pond. Along this way, we saw our first European Roller that sat on a branch and was happy to pose for us. We saw/watched a number of birds along the shore of the pond and then turned onto the Link road. This road went straight up onto a grassy plateau and there we saw several different kinds of antelope: Blesbok, Red-hartebeest, Grey Rhebok, and herds of the Cape Mountain zebra. This zebra is different from the Burchell’s zebra, which has narrower stripes. We also saw ostrich, blue Cranes, and the pale Chanting Goshawk among other song type birds.

We turned north on the Rooiplaat Loop that then crossed into the Kranskop Loop, which would take us into camp. As we were creeping along this very rocky section with very high grass, I had Valerie stop and help me decide if I was seeing a cat head or a rock laying in the grass. We both studied the image carefully for some time and never saw movement, but Valerie took many shots from different positions hoping they would show something when she downloaded the photo onto the computer and enlarged it.

Going straight down off the plateau with heart-stopping sharp curves we entered the campground and found a grassy place in the shade to park and hook up. We were warned to keep all windows and vents closed because the monkeys and baboons liked to get into the units after food.

Just before dusk, we walked up to the reception area/restaurant where we sat on chairs placed on the grass for us to watch a cultural song/chanting and dance show. If the tribe doing the dancing was mentioned, I don’t remember—it seemed to be as small group that was an extended family or a dance troupe. There were quite a number of songs that we would have liked to have had an introduction to, or translation of, as they seemed to be very emotional in tone. At one point they brought about half the group up to dance with them. As you can see from the photo I shot of Valerie, some were better than others—not mentioning any names. For a video sample of their performance, see: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10203375951460842&set=vb.1273183320&type=2&theater

When the show was over, we went into the restaurant where a buffet of lamb, venison (I think kudu tonight), and salads were served for dinner. After the dinner we used our flashlights to walk back to our campsites with the group and headed for bed.



Mountain Zebra National Park--Sunday morning, March 9^th.

The first thing we did this morning was to go to the reception area and speak with the Ranger on duty. We had spoken with her the night before and she said she would be happy to look at our photos we took of the rock/cat and help confirm what we thought we were seeing. Valerie opened up her computer to a picture of the possible cat and the ranger immediately exclaimed that the picture was of one of their Cheetahs and that she had 3 cubs by her side. It was the cubs at her side that had also blurred/confused our outline/impression/identification of rocks or cat.

Leaving reception, oh so excited, we got on our way out this morning. We decided to take it slow driving back toward the entrance gate and then turning off to drive one of the legs on the Ubejane Loop we missed doing the day before. This is an area that had some large trees and we saw a number of birds along this route.

As we were going along, we were leap frogging a white sedan–we would stop and they would go around and then they would stop, and we would go around them. One time Valerie responded to their question of “what are you looking at?” by answering “birds.” They replied that they were also. So, we showed them some photos we had taken for them to ID the birds, which they happily did. It was nice to interact with some more South African birders!!

We turned up the loop for 3.9 km and then turned back by the pond and toward the exit gate. In a flatish, cleared area we saw a bunch of ground squirrels sitting up really cute like they do all over-–we have pics of them in Alaska in Denali (where the rangers referred to them as grizzly snacks) and Roosevelt National Parks in North Dakota where they happily co-exist with the Buffalo. Anyway, I digress ‘cause I don’t want to write about this–-we were both looking at the squirrels when I trained my binoculars on a rather large round shape very close by and immediately exclaimed that there was a snake curled up there and then further exclaimed as I watched, that it was a cobra. As the cobra uncurled and started toward the ground squirrels, I watched in horror as they seemed to run at it. I couldn’t understand the behavior. Valerie was snapping away and I was looking away when the snake disappeared and all was very quiet.

While this was all happening, a car coming the other way could not get by us as we had taken up most of the roadside, so we pointed to the ground to show what we were looking at. As we finally slid by (since the show was over) we realized that the man driving was a park ranger. We asked about the behavior of the squirrels and he said they were most likely trying to protect their young and that was why they were running at the snake. That the snake was a Cape Cobra and that he slithered down the squirrel den after their young–-sob! I had a hard time blocking out that image that night.

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