Safari in South Africa

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.
When the sun comes up, you better start running.”

-African proverb

I used to wonder why people would go on game-watching safaris. After all, most people have seen those animals before in zoos. Well, now I understand. There is nothing to compare with tracking them and observing them in their own environment.

One thing I find extraordinary about game-watching safaris is their safety. You’d think that that hungry lion would as soon eat a human as a gazelle, but the fact is they leave the humans alone—at least in game preserves and at least as long as the humans don’t do anything stupid. In a game preserve (which was where we did our safari—the Madikwe Game Preserve), no hunting is allowed, so the animals are not conditioned to perceive humans as a threat.

Here’s how the safari works, at least where I was: People stay on the game preserve in lodges, and each lodge takes its guests out twice a day—in the early morning and later afternoon—for a game drive in an open-air truck which seats anywhere from 4 to 10 people. The seats are tiered so that all get a good view. Each truck is accompanied by a Ranger, who drives the truck, spots the wildlife, explains it all to everyone, and is responsible for everyone’s safety. There is also a tracker, who at least in the trucks run by our lodge, Madikwe Hills, sits in a jump seat at the front of the truck’s hood. We were very fortunate that we never had more than 6 passengers in our truck (so no one was stuck in the dreaded middle seats), and that we had a terrific Ranger (Frans) and Tracker (Max).

Every morning, we were awakened at 4:30 am (yes, that’s right, I willingly got up at 4:30) in order to be ready to start the drive at 5:00. This has two reasons: one, that’s when it is easiest to find some animals and, two, you get to see some spectacular African sunrises over the bush.

I will spare you the laundry list of animals we saw, and just give the high points. Suffice it to say, we saw all the “Big 5” (elephants, giraffes, rhinos, cape buffalo, and leopards) except the leopards (though our tracker and ranger certainly tried to find them for us), as well as a number of other animals, many of which I’d never heard of or seen before. It was entrancing.

One of the most fascinating experiences was on our first morning drive, when we came upon a pride of lions. There was a male lion asleep in the bush, and a female and two cubs walking around nearby—they’d been on one side of the road and crossed right in front of us. While the cubs played, the male roused himself and went about his business (have you ever seen a lion urinate? You don’t want to be near that stream). Pretty soon, we could hear another lion roaring in the distance, then this lion roaring back. This went on for several minutes, with the female and cubs occasionally adding in some noises. I have never heard anything like it. Frans explained that this was a friendly exchange—the lion in the distance is the brother of the lion we were watching, and when the two of them get together, they do something akin to hugging each other.

Once we moved along, we saw what the lions had been doing on the other side of the road—there were the remains of a wildebeest lying there (I’d never have recognized it as such, but Frans assured us that was what it was). We knew that those remains would not go to waste, because before we came upon the lions, we’d seen a jackal doing his thing—gnawing on the bones of an animal’s remains from some other predator’s breakfast. That’s what jackals do—pick the bones of others’ leavings.

After the lions, we came upon a herd of wildebeest, quietly going about their grazing. Frans referred to them as “the spare parts animal”—they have the head of a goat, the horns of a buffalo, and the body of a zebra. Unfortunately, the wildebeest set off in the direction of the lions, though we did not stick around to see the inevitable results of that particular meeting, particularly as we’d just seen one such result.

We also came upon a herd of elephants, which included a baby elephant running around and poking at the others in an apparent attempt to get them to play. It was adorable, but our ranger was very wary—apparently elephants are the animals most likely to attack humans, when they feel that their young are threatened. So he was always on high alert when baby elephants are in a herd.

We were to see quite a few elephants in our time there. In addition to the herd discussed above, we encountered groups and individuals in the road, on the side of the road, up hills, in bush, and pretty much everywhere. And yet, some people at our lodge never saw more than a single elephant, but did see a number of animals we did not.

The best elephant sighting was at a watering hole, where we encountered a herd of at least 20 that we could see. They were eating, playing in the water, etc., and making quite a noise of it. They were on three sides of us, and were something to observe. In particular, a fight between two males to establish dominance was fascinating—it wasn’t a blood fight, but instead a kind of play fighting, but with a very definite goal—which bull was the alpha elephant.

We’d encountered this herd after what was probably the best “treat” of all—the wild dogs. We know people who have been to this park several times and never seen them, yet we got to watch a pack of 23 for quite a while. This is a disappearing species—there are fewer than 3,000 of them left in the world. The dogs travel in a pack, with an alpha male and female, and can take down and eat another animal in a matter of minutes. The pack included 7 pups just two weeks out of the den, who were having a grand old time playing with a piece of cardboard while the adults sauntered by either ignoring us or giving us no more than sidelong glances. They then laid in the road, waiting for the youngsters to catch up.

One of the rules of the park is that no more than two trucks can be at a given sighting at a time. We were not really aware of this rule until this point, since it was rare to see the trucks bunching up, and there would be different trucks scoping out different animals at any given time. But the dogs attracted all the lodges, so the trucks were lined up at intervals along the route the dogs were following, with no more than two in any one place. These dogs move quickly, and could be miles away within an hour, so everyone was out looking while they could.

While the dogs were cute, there was no doubt of their deadliness. Not long after this encounter, they took down a wildebeest in a matter of minutes, devouring the animal alive. Believe me, no one was sticking an arm or leg out of the truck in their presence.

But really, the only time I felt at all threatened was when we encountered some cape buffalo. The herd was spread across both sides of the road, and many of them were watching us carefully with what seemed an evil eye. Eventually, all but one lost interest in us, but that one kept a careful eye out. We later learned that this particular herd used to be in an area where hunting was allowed, and recently had been moved into the preserve. So they did view humans as a threat, which is probably why we had the sense that they were a threat to us.

I will warn my friends and family now: I am so enthralled with the safari experience that I will be boring you silly with it for some time to come. And, if you are thinking about a safari, I highly recommend Madikwe Hills Lodge—the personnel are great, the food was really almost too good, and the overall experience was beyond all expectations.

There is so much I’m leaving out here—the astonishing beauty of the bush, the way the foliage totally transformed after rain, the eerie beauty of a thunderstorm coming in over the veld, the spectacular sunrises and sunsets, and the starry, starry nights. To all my friends who have lived in or come from Africa, I now understand the wistfulness in your voices when you speak of this wonderful continent. I know I will be back—how can I stay away, now that I’ve seen it?