The Elusive Rhinoceros and a Baobab Tree

Thursday, August 10

There is so much to say. I am back in Capetown after a week in and around Kruger Park.

To begin with, the animals. When you read about the great game parks of South Africa, you constantly see references to the big five -- lion, elephant, buffalo, leopard and rhinoceros. They are not the big five because they are the largest -- notice the absence of hippo, or for being scare -- cheetah would be near the top. Rather, they were the five that were traditionally the hardest and most dangerous to hunt. Most tours lure you with the promise of seeing all five. I can certainly declare my trip a success having seen four of the five, an will just have to come back one day for that elusive rhinoceros.

My experience began with a day trip in Kruger Park with Nora. The park is larger and you cannot drive over 30 miles an hour. You also can't get out of your car (for obvious reasons) except at designated locations. We tried to arrange a reservation for one night for Nora, Erhardt, Rudy and I, but it wasn't possible, so we decided I should take advantage of a cancellation an spend one night in the park by myself, going on a night drive. Of course I was not alone, but in a tent community...) Nora left me at 4:30 and the night drive started at five. We headed out in an open truck, first to catch the sunset just after 6, and then to continue around the park on roads that had no other traffic -- all tourist cars must either leave the park, or be in the fenced in tent zones by 6:00 when the nocturnal animals get active, so these park rides are the only option. I enjoyed our guide, Robert, who had grown up in the northern Transvaal and seemed to know a lot -- found a chameleon on the side of the road, for example. As it got darker and we were offered spotlights to shine into the bush as we drove along, I came to have a dim view of the night riding option. What self-respecting lion or leopard would let themselves be caught by the headlights and side beams of a noisy truck. Just when I was ready to give up entirely on the project we spotted a leopard (pun intended) crossing the road, he then moved through the grass towards the our direction and ended up sitting himself down just 30 meters or so from the truck. With the amazing zoom lens on my camera you can see his neck muscles move as he breathes! I ended the evening by having dinner with our driver, who told me about how he trained for such a job. It is so nice to see black families in a park, being guided by black rangers -- something unthinkable 10 years ago.

The next morning on went on an early morning drive at sunrise, this time with a white woman driver, this time finding lions relaxing on the top of a dam, many different birds, more elephants, more giraffes, and, I was told, a gnu, though it was so far away I might have confused it with a warthog or somesuch.

By lunchtime, with almost 18 out of 24 hours of game-spotting, I was happy to leave the park and head back to the timeshare at Hazy View. There I found out that Nora and Erhardt wanted to stay an extra day so that they could visit friends in Lydenburg, and that was fine with me. By this point, the Sperling family was back in Delheim, replaced by Erhardt's brother Gustav, who is a reporter for a Capetown newspaper, and his girlfriend Nicole.

Tuesday we headed to Lydenburg, a staunch Afrikaner community in the area where the Vortrekers made their last stand against the British. Erhardt's friend Jan and his wife live on a farm with their two children. He would like to teach English in a school, but says he can't get a job because of his color, so he is the private tutor to some spoiled German boys, but he is hoping to start his own school in a month or so. We had interesting discussions about education -- about which he knows a lot -- and about how to start a successful business -- about which he knows significantly less -- but it was a fascinating day, which ended with a drive over the Long Tom pass, where we could see on of the great French guns used the Afrikaners in their last days of the Boer War.

Yesterday Erhardt, Nora, Rudy and I headed back into the park where we saw lots of zebra and gnus, this time up close, along with more of the various species of bok and deer that inhabit the park. I tried to entertain Rudy with my rendition of Flanders and Swan's songs about the hippopotamus (Mud, glorious mud) and I'm a gnu. Erhardt was determined to stay in the park despite assurances that all places were full, and in the end we did get a tent (with foam pads, but no cots) and borrowed some blankets and pots and pans from the local warden whom Erhardt and Nora knew, and feasted on a genuine South African brai (bar-b-que) as the night came on. I was warm enough and slept well, missing the roar of the lions just beyond the fence. Nora and Erhardt were apparently cold, but heard the lions in all their glory. In any case, it was a night to remember. .

This morning Erhardt and I took one last drive, while Nora hung out with Rudy so that he could get some exercise before our flight home. We went to return the bedding and pots and then down one small road where we discovered two cheetah nestled in the grass. Now how, you might well ask, do you discover cheetah in the grass, especially when they are 50 meters from the road. The answer is you see other cars all bunched up together and figure they must be on to something. I doubt very much that I could have spotted them -- my main discoveries had been elephants and giraffes -- no rocket scientist needed there. We finished our animal experience with a visit to the cheetah research project, where we saw a video on the horrors of poaching and the various strategies being sued to combat it. Then we headed on to our tiny airport, boarded our tiny plane, and headed back to the cloudy, cooler clime of Capetown where I witnessed one more amazing African sunset.
My time is short -- have much do in the next 48 hours, but I have Internet access here at my very fine hotel, so more tomorrow.

The Baobab Tree which is farthest south on the continent

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