After a sound night’s sleep, staff knocked on my door at 6am for the morning game drive. It was only about 8 degrees (Celsius), so I was glad I bought a fleece yesterday. Armed in four layers of clothes, I joined the others for a quick cup of tea and hopped into one of the large open jeeps. We stopped to watch two female elephants with their three babies for a while. It’s amazing how close they walked towards the jeep (about 5 feet away)! Next we saw a medium-sized rhino.
After that, my first cat! The oldest lion of the pride, at 13. He was more interested in sleeping than paying attention to us. I few minutes later, we tracked two younger males (10 and 11) in search of a female in their pride who did not yet have cubs. It was thrilling to watch them in the wild. We saw rhino in a watering hole, a brown snake eagle, and impala. Then we found a female leopard and stayed with her for a while. She was beautiful. On our way back, we watched nine elephant (four young ones – we think the ones we saw this morning along with four others). We also saw a male, but he was well hidden in the bush.
We came back for breakfast around 10, then I went for a nature walk with Rob. He showed me prints of elephants, hyenas, jackals, rhinos, and mongoose. At a camellia tree, Rob told me that the tree has significance in South Africa because clan medicine men use parts of it in rituals. They also believe that it can make women heavy (and they like their women heavy), so they have their girls pray under the trees so that they will grow up heavy. So maybe I can blame my camellia bush in Georgia!
Rob showed me around matted pile of rhino dung and told me that the males mark their territory by stamping their dung into a round pile. The females defecate around his pile but do not stamp theirs. If another male rhino wants to challenge the original, it defecates in the middle of the circle but does not stamp it down (like throwing down the gauntlet). However, a white rhino male can mess in a black rhino’s spot and vice versa, because they are not a challenge to one another.
When impalas are in season, the male will spread his dung in a large pile, then pursue as many females as he can. However, he is too busy to groom himself, so he will acquire up to 6 times more parasites than the other males, which means he tires quickly, sometimes within 24-48 hours. Then, another male steps in and adds to the pile, taking over until he is too weary from parasites. By the end of the season, the pile is huge!
Rob also told me wonderful stories of biodiversity and ways in which the trees and the animals support life for one another. For instance, all impala give birth within a two-week period, right after the first rains come in the spring. If an impala was impregnated late in the mating season, she gives birth to a small baby; one with a longer gestation gives birth to a larger baby. This is because there is less chance of the babies being killed if they are born and stay together in a huge group. If there will be a drought, the impalas all spontaneously abort the fetuses, because they could not take care of themselves and babies without water. Regarding the termite hills, trees grow on them because they do not eat living cellulose. The hills provide space to create fungus from dead wood, and the termites eat the fungus. The roots of the tree create favorable conditions by drawing water, and each termite carries a drop at a time to the dead wood to make the fungus. If it gets too hot or too dry, they can open or close their some of their numerous tunnels to keep the conditions just right.
It seems that the folks who were to join us this afternoon missed their plane, so it is to be me for the rest of the day. It’s so peaceful. I’m sitting on my porch with nyalas, warthogs, and vervit monkeys all around me. The monkeys jump onto my roof, then leap to the trees, race down, and run across the lawn. Sometimes there will be a loud chattering of some kind of animal in the distance, and the nyala will become watchful for a moment, then go back to grazing. Then there is just the sound of the wind as it rustles through the leaves, and the sound movements of nyala hooves as the animals move to graze.
Melissa, one of the managers, ate lunch with me. She’s having ostrich prepared for our dinner, and she and her husband Rudy will eat with me. I left with Rob and Ron (the trackers; actually, they are both excellent trackers) shortly after for the afternoon game drive. This time we found the elephants again, along with water buck, a zebra, giraffes, and kudu. We also spotted a beautiful older kudu male with gorgeous horns. We tracked two lionesses and their three cubs for a while, but it got dark before we could find them. Maybe tomorrow.
Rob showed me the Southern Cross and Scorpio constellations as it was dusk. When we were driving back, it became dark, and I looked up and saw the brilliance of stars that can only be seen when one is completely away from the electricity of cities and towns. I also thought I saw a light patch across the sky. I asked Rob, “Can you see the Milky Way in the Southern hemisphere?” He asked Ron to turn off his flashlight, and Rob turned off the lights on the vehicle. There it was, a white steak across the sky, the first time I had ever seen it.
Back at camp, we had a delicious meal of giant shrimp, ostrich with potatoes and carrots, and a crepe with cream and strawberries for desert while sitting by the fire. I’m back in my room now, warmed from the outside cold, catching up my blog entries (I’ll have to post when I get to Maputo; there’s not really service here to do it). I’ll grade a few more papers before getting to bed.
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