ANIMAL SPOTTING IN SOUTH AFRICA

We saw a rhino within five minutes of entering the reserve. We didn’t even have to search for it. The rhino came lumbering across the tar-sealed road as we rounded a tight corner, small calf close by its side. It walked slowly across the road, obviously familiar with the excited murmurings of park visitors and the whirring of cameras, before heading off into the scrubby brush on the other side of the road. The three safari novices in the car, Mary, Melanie and myself, thought that this animal spotting caper would be a walk (or drive) in a park. However, the quest to see the rest of the so-called big Five (lion, elephant, leopard and buffalo, so named because they are the game animals that are most dangerous to hunt on foot) would prove to be much more time consuming. It would also show that there are a lot of lion and leopard shaped rocks in the park.

First rhino (and calf) that we saw in the game reserve.

Hluhluwe Umfolzi is Kwazulu Natal’s biggest game reserve and the first park of its type in Africa. It is now most famous for its large number of rhinos, in particular white rhinos, like the ones that we had seen soon after entering the park. 1600 of them call Hluhluwe Umfolzi home. We saw rhinos (always white rhinos) on several other occasions until we almost became apathetic with a(nother) rhino sighting.

Giraffes under the shade

Going animal spotting was a different experience than I thought it would be. For one thing, this wasn’t a case of bouncing around the back of an old jeep, holding on for grim life as your driver pursued game whilst dodging anthills and potholes. Instead, you could slowly cruise along tar-sealed roads in a small car, watching intently out the window for wildlife. Nor was this a case of massive herds of gnu and zebra, like you would see migrating across the Masai Mara. But that’s not to say that the park was devoid of life. Birds like rollers and raptors were a common sight. Animals were seen but were often alone or in small groups, grazing by the roadside or in many cases, walking on the road itself, utilising it as just another trail, seemingly unafraid of passing cars. It was hard to know if they were habituated by the constant stream of traffic or if their behaviour had changed because of it.

Warthogs at the front gate

By the time we had seen our first rhino, we had already seen a group of warthogs at the front gate and before that some giraffes and zebras on the hill that sat opposite the park-gates. On our drive from the gate to our accommodation, we saw a variety of antelope (impala, nyala and kudu), a lone baboon and groups of giraffes grazing quietly by the road-side, managing to somehow look graceful and ungainly at the same time. By the time, we reached our accommodation at Hilltop Camp, it was almost dark and as the gates close at night, we had to hurry to ensure that we weren’t locked out for the night, an uncomfortable and potential dangerous experience best avoided. At Hilltop, we slept in round Zulu style huts with thatched roofs. The camps are fenced off but it’s still possible for animals to get in; we saw bushbucks and monkeys in the grounds so I guess it could be possible for larger predators to get in and roam about. It was a thought I tried to not think about too much when I went walking to the toilet at night.

A curious and photogenic male nyala

The next morning at breakfast, we heard stories of a young male lion up a tree not far from camp. We quickly drove to the spot but the guides there said it had left 5 minutes earlier, the first of many near-misses involving felines. That morning, we had our first sighting of buffalo, the second of our big five. A large herd came down a hill following a well-worn track, looking all the world like a herd of admittedly aggressive looking cows on their way to the milking shed. Some of the bulls sported impressive horns and some of their flanks were scarred, most likely from battling with each other. They passed slowly across the road, past our car (which probably weighed the same as one of them) before heading down to the stream on the opposite side of the road. 

Cantankerous bovine

We continued driving, sometimes alone, sometimes following a truck from one of the park’s lodges. We saw cute vervet monkeys playing and watched nature unfold as a Hamerkop caught a fish and then lost it after being bullied out of its catch by a larger black stork. We saw gnu and zebra and had our first elephant sighing as a pachyderm crossed over in front of us and then decided to meander along the road, bringing traffic to a complete halt for a dozen minutes or so.

The Hamerkop, right before losing its fish to a bigger black stork.

We still had no sightings of a cat (lion, leopard or cheetah) and about this time, the concerted effort dubbed Hunt for Big Pussy was initiated. Kerry randomly met friends who had been in the park for only a day. In that time, they had seen the Big Five, hippos, cheetahs and even wild dogs. Such reports gave us hope, made us optimistic that by persevering we could hope to see all of the animals that we wanted to. For a change of pace, we went to check out several of the hides erected around watering holes that may or may not prove tempting to animals. At one, we were able to watch a herd of impala for a long time, at another, some birds with beautiful long tails. But still no cats.

One of the hides, no cats but we watched a group of impala from here.

That night, we took our first guided trip. We sat on the back of a jeep with a family from England (the father talked incessantly on his cell-phone to an employee in England, much to the annoyance of everyone else on the tour). We enjoyed a beer at one hill-stop top, enjoying the last glimpses of light before we got back onto the truck, ready to begin spot-lighting. Night viewing is not as good for photography but can be a good time to spot animals, in particular the nocturnal predators. Leopards are commonly caught up in trees by the spotlight but not that night.  The highlight of our trip was a sighting of a rapidly disappearing hyena escaping from the spotlight and a civet that darted across the road in front of us. Not to be discouraged, we signed up for a dawn ride for the next morning as well, chancing on some elephants and a group of rowdy bull buffalo wallowing in mud. We also saw our first leopard, not a cat but a leopard turtle, one of the so-called little Big 5 (the others being the Elephant shrew, the rhino beetle, the Buffalo weaver bird and the ant-lion). Frustratingly, this would be the closest we would get to a leopard sighting during our time in Hluhluwe Umfolzi.

Our guide with a leopard turtle, one of the little big 5

Kerry was probably getting sick of the three of us wanting to drive and search for animals every waking minute but us non-South Africans were still keen to try and glimpse a big cat, eye RSI and scanning the horizon head-aches notwithstanding. We were rewarded for our persistence with a glimpse of a male lion, sitting majestically and aloof on a rocky outcrop, a good 100 metres from the road but easily seen through binoculars. In contrast to our excitement in seeing him, he seemed nonchalant, dismissive of our existence. The cliché misnomer “King of the jungle” never seemed more apt as he sat overseeing his domain, with us being just another of his insignificant subjects. This, after all, is his habitat, his environment and we were encroaching on his life-style.

The conclusion of Hunt for Big Pussy 

The greatest sight we saw was one of the last things we saw on our third night in the park. We stopped for a big solitary bull elephant that was acting aggressively (in the end, he actually charged at one car). The reason for his angst may have been that he wasn’t alone; instead, he was at the head of a thunder of about 50 elephants, including several juveniles. The elephants, ignorant of time, made their way slowly across the road as cars backed up on either side, waiting for the great beasts to cross. It was a majestic sight and easily the sight of our time in Hluhluwe Umfolzi. As we drove off marvelling at the size of the group we had just witnessed, we came across another one, this one maybe even larger in number than the previous one, foraging in a field not 500 metres from where we had waited for the other beasts to pass. Again, we took time to watch them interact with one another, being careful to keep a safe distance (unlike the car-load of Asian tourists we saw the next day who got out of their car to take pictures of an elephant less than 25 metres).

The second thunder of elephants we saw.

Hluhluwe Umfolzi may not be South Africa’s premier safari destination (that honour would fall to Kruger whose big cat sightings are legendary) but it makes for one hell of an alternative. Kerry’s father was probably right when he said that you needed to walk in the African bush to really savour and experience it fully, to get to know its sounds and smells (some of that smell in my case would have been fear). But that being so, I don’t feel cheapened by my experience. Those three days, as an avid animal follower, were a dream come true and something that I definitely want to repeat at other parks in Africa.