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Published: June 12th 2008
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KRUGER NATIONAL PARK: DON’T FENCE ME IN,
OR ON SECOND THOUGHT…
and
DINNER WITH ANDRE
Kudu poitje.
That’s not Czechoslovakian. It’s what Andre cooked up for us on the night we arrived at his bush camp just west of Kruger National Park. Pronounced,
koo-doo poyt-key, it’s made in a three legged cast iron pot that weighs more that the cook. Kudu is an antelope. Poitje is an Afrikaans word for stew.
Andre’s place, Amanzimlotzi Riverside Bush Camp, is surrounded by private game reserves that are wrapped in electrified fence. In these places high rollers pay as much as four thousand dollars a night to be pampered and then go shoot something, although not always. Some movie stars come just to look. We paid about thirty dollars, and a couple of bucks for the poitje. At Andre’s place the critters wander around without fear of being plugged. Andre just reminds you to always close the door behind you. We saw leopard tracks in the morning, heard hyenas right next to our hut at night, and in the early AM a few rifle shots. The high rollers keep the trophy heads and Andre gets the carcass. Hence the
kudu poitje. I am happy to report that we didn’t shoot any antelope, we just ate them. In this respect I realize that it would be the height of hypocrisy to go on about the fences, but I have to say that I found them to be a terrible eyesore. There are miles and miles of wire and ceramic insulators, and it’s like driving through a prison development where all the institutions are given happy names. It was a relief for the eyes to roll into Kruger and just look at the sweep of the blonde landscape, free of voltage.
One arrives at Andre’s camp by driving through the Blyde River Canyon, a remarkable feat of erosion and natural sculpture. A piece of art can really shine when you have millions of years to work on it. The canyon carves through mountains that drop off precipitously and flatten into the rangeland (lowveld) of Kruger to the east.
Andre, a big bespectacled quirky character, is a wealth of information and a self-described master storyteller. While we sat around the table in our rondaval (thatched hut) polishing off the poitje and drinking wine, he laid out a plan of attack
for Kruger.
“Kruger is a funny place,” he said in his Afrikaans twang, “you might drive all day and not see a thing, or you might see the most amazing wonders.”
He eats his poitje systematically. First he tackles all the vegetables, then corals the remaining kudu onto one side of his plate. He splashes his homemade sweet chile sauce over the antelope and then begins.
“A few kilometers past the Orpen Gate there a little turn-off,” he says, scraping the plate enthusiastically, “There is a pride of about six or seven lions living in there around the stream bed.”
“Delicious cheese,” he reports matter-of-factly as he takes a chunk of the goat cheddar we have laid out with crackers. “At Satara Camp stop and check the wildlife sightings board. Ask people where they have just driven and see if anything has been spotted on the road south where you’re going.” He takes a sip of red wine.
Soon he has driven us all the way through Kruger National Park, into Swaziland, and virtually escorted us to our rondaval at the Inkosana Lodge in the Champagne Valley at the foot of the Drakensberg Mountains.
This is our proposed route.
In the morning we cross through the Orpen Gate in the west side of Kruger National Park where we enter an expanse of land that is as stunning as it is seemingly desolate. This is not high season for the park, so the roads are all but empty. The land stretches out forever, a sandy-golden color with a regular scattering of small green trees. Admittedly, I first scoffed at the idea of searching for big game while driving on a paved road in the comfort of our little Nissan. It seemed ludicrous.
“Oh, look honey, an elephant. Can you roll down the window so I can get a better shot? No, back up a little, there’s a leopard in that tree. Turn off the radio, I think I hear a lion.”
Pleeeze.
Then, about an hour into our drive, we arrive at a water hole. Perhaps we have seen four or five cars up to this point, but as we round a gentle curve we see about a dozen vehicles pulled off on the left shoulder. The speed limit in Kruger is 50kph (30mph), so it’s easy to slow and stop.
ELEPHANT HIDE
Kruger National ParkThe first thing we notice are the elephants. Ten of them are knee deep in the dark water, their trunks dangling and swinging loosely. They are dark and massive with the low sun behind them. Then, like a person stepping from bright daylight into a dark room, our eyes begin to adjust and we see the images in the deep corners of the landscape. A huge buffalo rises from the mud off to our left and lumbers off. He glistens black like an enormous piece of wet coal. Antelope - kudu, impala, eland - wander in from the periphery to drink. What’s that breaking the water just in front of all the elephants? A rock? Was it there before? A hippo! “Holy shit it’s a hippo!” Over the ridge a few zebras come closer. We hear the bubbly slurp of the elephants. They sound like kids sucking and blowing with their drinking straws. There is a stand of trees on a rise just above the water hole. Between the trees and the water the ground slopes down, dusty and bare. A lone male impala comes down to the water’s edge. He bends his elegant neck and drinks. Then within the
WORKING THE TRUNK
Young bull in Kruger copse of trees, within their shadows, I see movement. At first it’s just a mere suggestion, then it steps into open space, clear and unmistakable - a lion. Get outa’ here, a lion? “Roll down the window, it’s a lion!” There, I’ve said it. She slinks from right to left through the shadows. The antelope drinks. The lion gets lower, begins to creep from the shadows and close the distance. “Lookloolook!! Oh, fuck me, fuck me, are we about to see a lion take down an impala?” My mouth tends to go foul when I get excited. I am powerless over this. The lion lunges, and the impala parries like a skilled fencer, snapping up to an alert position and charging off while making snorting alarm sounds. The lion stops. Apparently it’s too much effort. The impala is no slowpoke. In the trees we see more movement. Two, three, four more big cats are in there waltzing and stretching. In the distance, behind the trees, a dust cloud rises. More lions chasing more antelope? The glistening buffalo moves slowly now from left to right into our clear field of vision, away from four of his partners who have also emerged
shining from the mud. The lions stir. Oh, come on, not the buffalo. Are you guys crazy? This is not a one-on-one contest and the lions know it. They seem to move as one now, emerging from the trees as they begin to take positions surrounding the big black beast. “Fuckfuckfuckfuck!!” They don’t get too far with their flanking strategy before the buffalo feels the danger and swings his big head in a sweeping gesture and trots away. It’s almost like this group of lions is testing the potential prey, seeing which one might be stupid or lazy enough to drop their guard, thus letting the lions cull out defective strands of DNA. Their effort is almost lackadaisical, casual, like they just ate a huge meal and are unenthusiastically wandering around the dessert trolley. The elephants, who have been slurping through all of this (apparently what we are watching is not very exciting to them) begin to wander away and eventually disappear into the bush, leaving behind a dark boulevard of footprints. One lone young bull remains (adolescents can be like this), as well as the hippo island, which hasn’t moved a centimeter. The elephant seems to be enjoying the
sounds he is making in the water. He sucks and blows, shooting water back out into the pond. He curls and uncurls his trunk, seemingly enthralled with his ability to make hieroglyphics with a proboscis. The lions settle in and recline in the shade. This bull might be self absorbed and clueless, but they know their limits. More large eland and kudu appear over the ridge well to our left and come to the water to drink. Methinks the word is out about the pride of lions in the trees. So after about 30-45 minutes of this profanity producing, wild kingdom excitement, we drive on. We don’t roll up the windows.
After a short motor on an empty road we suddenly come upon two giraffes foraging the tops of trees right next to the road. We can hear their teeth grinding the leaves, their breath, the crack of the branch as they snatch it from the tree. We watch their flanks shiver away the flies. The skin pattern is a wild mosaic of the subtlest earth tones. It resembles the pattern of a dry, cracked lakebed. They step along as if in slow motion, taking no notice of us.
IMPALA POSING
Male impala at Kruger Somehow, these huge vegetarians don’t produce the same excitement within me. The wonder I feel is more poetic, less profane.
Farther along, and almost as close to the road’s edge as the giraffes, is a young bull elephant munching away at a small, impossibly thorned tree. We are close enough to really observe his trunk at work, delicately twisting and wrapping itself around the small branches, pulling them away and then forming a beautiful wrinkled arc as he gently places the branches into his mouth.
The road is stained with elephant dung, mounds large enough to act as speed bumps. There are enormous piss stains, splatters that look as if ten-gallon water balloons have been dropped from second story widows. The subsequent runoff is as wide as a small creek. It’s impossible not to notice, but I wonder about my fascination.
There are more impala than one can count. We see zebras and kudus and elands and other antelope that we cannot identify. And the birds…the birds! I am no birder but it’s hard to be nonchalant about an 18-inch high Southern Ground Hornbill. It looks like a big black turkey wearing a Groucho Marx mask, with
TRUNK YOGA
Young bull practicing new asana a red cauliflower attached to its neck. I’m sorry but it does.
Time has flown and we have to get to Berg-en-dal Rest Camp, at the southern edge of Kruger, before 5:30. That’s when they close the gates. The camp itself is apparently fenced in to keep out things like…
“Holy shit, what’s that off in the field to our left? It’s like glowing red and has huge horns coming out of its nose. It’s huge. Is that a fucking rhino? It’s a fucking rhino!” There I go again. Sorry. But the sun is setting, showering the whole landscape in a blood red wash, and there’s a rhino out there that looks like a creature that even Steven Spielberg couldn’t make up. Can you blame me? We stop to watch for a while but then we move because we don’t want to be left out here in the dark with things like rhinos knocking on our windows at night. I think that’s wise. We’d rather be behind the gate, thank you.
Just before we reach Berg-en-dal we fall in behind a procession of cars that is just creeping along. It’s about 5:20 PM. They are like children who don’t want to come home for supper in the summertime, all wanting to milk out the last few moments of Kruger’s wonder before they must pass through those gates. About three or four kilometers from this point of entry we are stopped by a herd of about two hundred water buffalo crossing the road. It’s like a sub-equatorial version of Wagon Train. By now the sun has set and it’s dusky grey outside. They all look so black and mysterious in this light, their broad horns spreading out from such wide heads. It’s an amazing display of raw power.
The bungalow that we reserved upon entering the park this morning is on the perimeter. This means it is very close to the fence (yes, electrified) that wraps around this little town and keeps the spotted, horned, striped, and armored things out there away from the barbecues and the bottles of Shiraz. That sounds sensible to me. By the time we check in, get our key, and receive directions to our little bungalow, it is quite dark. To my liking, the park is not gung-ho with regard to outdoor lighting, so it’s a bit of a Braille exercise to find the entrance to our place. As we make our way in between our neighbor’s bungalow and ours, we hear thrashing and snorting a few meters away. Then we see a bluish light. Our neighbors, a nice German couple, are at the fence line whispering excitedly in our direction.
“Rhinos, rhinos,” they say breathlessly, as they point their little key-light through the eight foot high fence. And there they are, three huge rhinoceros, grazing and pulling up impressive clumps of dried grass a mere ten feet from where we stand. There is a sudden quarrel among them, a loud sudden movement and snorting that makes us all jump back. The beasts are awash in this strange blue light that the Germans are shining on them. But then the couple turns off the little flashlight and the rhinos walk off into the darkness, as if to say, “If we cannot have the spotlight we will have no light at all.” Such theatrics.
After we settle into our dwelling, we pop the cork on a bottle of Pinotage and fall into the chairs on our little patio. We look out into the darkness, into the wilderness beyond the fence and count our sightings. We tick off four out of the Big Five. Somehow we’ve missed the leopard.
Perhaps she’s out there right now, just a few meters away, looking in at us. If we had a flashlight her orange eyes would no doubt light up in the darkness. We hear noises off in the distance, and as I pour my second glass of Pinotage I suddenly grow fonder of the fence.
But I’m already looking forward to the opening of the gate in the morning. Perhaps the leopard is waiting for us. If not, there’s always Swaziland.
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Kendall
non-member comment
Delicious writing!
"Their effort is almost lackadaisical, casual, like they just ate a huge meal and are unenthusiastically wandering around the dessert trolley." "begin to wander away and eventually disappear into the bush, leaving behind a dark boulevard of footprints" "There are enormous piss stains, splatters that look as if ten-gallon water balloons have been dropped from second story widows. The subsequent runoff is as wide as a small creek. It’s impossible not to notice, but I wonder about my fascination." I am so there with you, shouting "fuckfuckfuck" at the carnivores and dazzled by the beauty of the herbivores and terrified and delighted and full of wonder. Vivid, memorable writing.