All things bright and beautiful

If a wildlife enthusiast dies and goes to heaven, she would find herself in Kruger National Park, South Africa. The park is justly renowned for the sheer magnificence of its landscape and the prodigious diversity of its animal, bird and plant life.

I was in Johannesburg for a workshop and there was a lot to see and do in that city—the new Constitutional Court built on the site of the notorious Fort Prison complex and the township of Soweto being two major shrines for visitors paying their respects to a vibrant post-apartheid society. But Kruger beckoned. So I took the short flight out to Nelspruit and, an hour-long taxi ride later, was on safari in the bushveld.

I went on hikes at dawn with armed rangers and bird-watched on my own around my rustic thatched-roof bungalow at Berg-en-Dal camp (this version of ‘rustic’ included a fully equipped kitchen, running hot water and air-conditioning). But the classic safari trip has to be done in a jeep, bowling along dirt tracks in search of megafauna. While animals get uneasy when they see humans, they don’t mind motor vehicles because they appear like large harmless animals. Or so the guides tell us tourists. And if one’s project is to see Kruger’s Big Five: the lion, elephant, Cape buffalo, cheetah and rhino in the space of a single day, the safari ride is highly recommended.

I made sure to arrive early at our pick-up spot and got the best front seat in the open-air van. The driver John Mahumane doubled up as our guide. The van filled up and by five o’clock we were off through the rolling expanse of 20,000 sq km of grassland and scrub forest. First off, a warthog! It stood stumpily by the roadside, endearingly ugly with its short tusks curving around its snout. The sky was overcast and the air cool; it felt like it might rain. I was a bit anxious that we wouldn’t see much in the dimmer light, but the warthog was a good omen. We soon spotted a male giraffe munching leaves close by. Tiny red-billed oxpeckers hopped up and down its body, pecking at insects and mites, a crew of personal attendants doing a very thorough grooming job.

A herd of about 40 impala grazed a little further, their skin a gorgeous golden, hind quarters and ears crisply marked in black, elegant spiralled horns and impossibly slender legs. Some looked up at us and sprang vertically into the air before leaping away with balletic grace. Lovely. A flock of helmeted guinea fowl with bizarre blue and yellow heads scuttled into the roadside brush, eager to get under cover and out of our sight.

We drove a longish stretch without anything exciting coming into view. I kept my eyes peeled but there was nothing, just green scrub forest speeding past. All except the glimpse of a white rhinoceros which, given the distance and intervening vegetation, could just as easily have been a bhains. There hadn’t been an ooh moment for a while, so John got onto his radio and consulted with other jeep drivers.

Soon enough, we reversed and raced off in a different direction, gliding to a halt near a giant marula tree. And there, sprawled out in plain view on a low branch, was a large male leopard. His sleekly muscled body oozed power. He raised his head to give us a look of bored disdain, and then rested it on his paws to doze, tail hanging languidly. Wonderful.

We were doubly lucky. Heading back after our fill of admiring gazes and photography, we came across another leopard, similarly stretched out on the low branch of another marula tree! It was smaller and more intent on keeping an eye on the herd of impala grazing further away. Daylight was fading and when John shone a bright spotlight on the leopard, its eyes gleamed red. As we drove on through the darkness, another rich vein came into view.

Countless nightjars were abroad, sitting on the roads because the warmer air there attracts insects that get snared in their whiskers (our guide was very knowledgeable). Many lapwing-like spotted dikkop (a.k.a. thick-knees—nice name isn’t it?) took off in startled flight at our approach. We saw three scrub hares, poor pink-eared things desperately hopping to get away from the onrushing lights and sounds of the van. In a nice symmetry, we also saw a tortoise going plod-plod along the road.

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