Kruger National Park

Refreshments al fresco

Apres Refreshments al fresco

It is our last day in Africa. Tomorrow we will be delivered to Livingstone Airport, we will fly to Johannesburg, wait-wait-wait, then reverse our steps and end up back in Dallas via Dakar, Senegal and then Atlanta.

We find ourselves enjoying a beautiful suite back at the Royal Livingstone, but I’ll get to why that miracle occurred in due time. The point now is that I plan to catch up on the blog which has taken a back seat to the many wonders that we have seen. Not to mention that access to the internet has been practically zero.

I posted some pictures from our time in Kruger National Park where we stayed at the Tinga Private Game Lodge but told you nothing of that amazing experience. Kruger is in South Africa and was our first contact with the animals. By the time we arrived at Tinga, which is about 30 minutes into the park, we had already seen a lioness resting by the side of the road, a family of warthogs, lots of graceful and delicate impala (they are known as McDonald’s for lions we were sad to hear), a small herd of zebra and several kudu (the second largest type of antelope). Seeing a lion 30 seconds after entering the park set the tone for the rest of our stay: we knew we were going to hit the jackpot.

We were greeted at Tinga by Gerhardt, the general manager, who introduced us to Gordon and William, two of the ranger/guides, and then showed us to our cottages. Tinga is a beautiful, rustic, thatched-roof game lodge with 14 cottages for guests, each with its own viewing deck and small pool overlooking the Sabie River. The cottages have a living room area with couch and easy chairs for watching TV, a canopied bed, and bathroom with outdoor as well as indoor shower. Of course there was no time to avail ourselves of all those amenities. We settled in, went back to the lodge and had a lovely lunch of warthog (kind of like pork roast) and chakka lakka (a delicious pepper and bean mixture which I must get a recipe for). After lunch we did have a couple of hours to relax before our first game run. William, who would be our guide for the next two days, told us to meet for “tea” at four and then we would leave promptly at 4:30.

William is a big strapping happy good-lookin’ 37-year-old white guy who, until four years ago, was a civil engineer in Johannesburg. He shed the city life and became a ranger which he calls a life style not a job. He is engaged to Angie, another ranger, who was burned out on bush life until meeting William, and now the two are an enthusiastic team. Angie is a writer as well as a ranger and they have plans for a book about their life among the animals.

Four thirty on the dot we got into our range vehicle and met the other member of our team, Manuel, a black African who would be our “spotter.” Quiet and shy but always smiling, Manuel said little but his eyes darted back and forth over the landscape and we came to believe that he had eyes in back of his head as well as in the front.

We saw the Big Five on our first run! In case you are not impressed, this almost never happens, we later learned. The following day Angie said that we were the talk of the camp and that all the employees were saying that the Texans had brought luck to Tinga.

Your assignment was to know which animals are included in the Big Five. In case you didn’t complete your homework, the Big Five are the Lion, the Leopard, the Elephant, the Cape Buffalo and the Rhinoceros--the most sought after and dangerous of the world's big game, and not what I would have guessed. Legend has it that "The Great One put the animals here for us to use wisely and respect, even as we hunted them, but he knew that without fear we might lose our respect for these creatures. So he put the five here to help us remember. The lion and leopard taught us fear of the night, that only the daytime was ours. The buffalo, the elephant and the rhino taught us to fear their strength, that we might respect the strength of nature." (the quote is from our "promotional" materials).

William drove and kept up a running commentary while Manuel scanned everything within his field of vision. The impala seem to be everywhere—there are 160,000 of them in Kruger. The birthing season had just taken place so delicate little babies on spindly legs were running behind their mums while the dominant male—the only adult male in a group of females and young’uns—keeps tabs on his harem. We were surrounded by the most beautiful birds and William could name every species. It turns out that birds are his favorite (incongruous we thought, given his macho appearance) and he told us many interesting facts about the various types. His personal favorite is called the bataleur and is a hawk-like bird of prey with a powerful beak and huge wing span that lurks in leafless trees waiting for an unsuspecting hare or mouse to present itself for his dining pleasure. Another bird, called the red billed oxpicker, sits atop the impala and eats the parasites off of it, an example of a symbiotic relationship where two different species mutually benefit one another. He also pointed out the lilac breasted roller, a stunning little bird of 24 different colors, which in addition to being beautiful, has a talent which allows it to "roll" over and over during flight --perhaps out of sheer happiness with life.

The first of the Big Five that we saw was a herd of buffalo on a far hillside. I’ll grant you that we couldn’t see them very well nor could we take decent pictures, but it counts as a sighting just the same. Later in the trip we had ample opportunity to see the murderous beast up close and personal, but at that point we were thrilled just to know that they were there. We saw a herd of white rhino the same way—far away on a hill, but again for the first sighting we were properly excited.

The lions were resting just off the road and we parked and watched for some minutes while they slept—a beautiful male with full mane, and three females. We were thrilled beyond measure when one of them turned over and lifted her head.

At every turn we saw the various antelope—kudu, impala, dyker, and a species I hadn’t ever heard of called Lechwe—along with warthogs with faces only a mother could love, a leopard tortoise, zebras, banded mongoose, countless exotic birds, and then…as we rounded a curve in the road there were two elephants on the grass in full view—our first elephant sighting. We sat in the open vehicle and watched them and took pictures for the longest time and the most amazing thing was that they didn’t mind or move away. We stared and took pictures and they stared back or ate grass. We had this experience over and over where you can drive right up to the animals—at a respectful distance of course depending on the animal—and they go about their business without the least fear and also without ever giving us so much as the time of day. William told us that the animals mostly see the vehicle as a single entity, not as a car with six people in it, so as long as we don’t jump up and down or leap out of the vehicle, they will not bother us.

By now we were pretty excited at seeing four of the Big Five and William pulled into a clearing and told us we could stretch our legs. While we did that, Manuel was setting up the bar! Yes, we were able to enjoy an adult beverage of our choice right there in the bush! Very fun. It was almost completely dark when we got back on the road, so I put my camera back into its case and into my bag.

It was then that Manuel spotted it. He trained his spotlight right on the most beautiful leopard not more than ten feet away from us walking along the side of the road, eying us warily, but not running back into the underbrush. I was frantically trying to get my camera back out but it was so dark I couldn’t see to set it and the result was I got NO pictures of the leopard, the only one we would see on this trip. We watched it for several minutes as clear as could be in the bright spotlight before it eventually wandered out of sight.

And that’s our story of the Big Five.