Chris and Tilde Stuart (Random House Struik)
But don’t fret if you can’t find any of these titles. The park shops always stock a collection of good books that serve the purpose. I grew up with the following (perhaps now classic) research works: the Afrikaans version of Mammals of the Kruger National Park and other National Parks by the National Parks Board (Eds) (National Parks Board), 66 Transvaal Trees by Fanie de Jong and others (Pretoria Botanical Institute) and Birds of the Kruger National Park (National Parks Board), the latter consisting of four thin folio-sized volumes in red, green, blue and brown, with a pen drawing of an ostrich on the front. These books have been out of print for decades, and were fairly basic. But they worked a treat. I learned to identify trees, birds and animals from early on.
Another thing: find a way to keep a record of what you see. One of two ways, or a combination, works well: take photographs as far as possible, or note down the sightings in a book, with the time, date and place. Let the kids do it. It’s a really fun game – kind of like hunting, only more economical! The satisfaction is so much greater when you look back on your achievements of the day or the week. It satisfies our hunter’s instinct like a trophy room does for a big game hunter. Trust me.
Don’t just check off the animals on a list. Once you spot the game, you must look, and enjoy. Look at the multi-coloured gloss of a starling’s feathers in the sun; the fat buttocks and swinging tails of zebras walking to water; the turns in the horns of a kudu bull and the chalk stripes on its flanks; how a giraffe’s lower jaw grinds from side to side as it chews; how a warthog kneels while upturning the earth with its curved teeth. Don’t take my word for it. Look properly, and you will see.
Nowadays photographs needn’t be a technical specialist’s exercise. Most smartphones, tablets and instant cameras take remarkably good pictures in the park – some are even in this book! – and digital photography means one can take an unlimited number of pictures. Of course if you’re an experienced photographer, there’s little I can teach you.
While we’re on the subject of books: It’s essential to purchase a book with a map of the Kruger Park as soon as possible when you arrive.
Back to the great animal hunt: I have decided to give advice on the basis of seven principles.
What “everyone knows” about game watching, ain’t necessarily always so. For example, I bet someone has told you that if you want to see lots of game you need to drive as slowly as possible and look around carefully because game is difficult to spot in the thick bush.
Then I have to ask: why have I invariably seen my best game when in a hurry on my way back to camp to reach the gate before closing time? And why have I, without fail, seen the most game on a long stretch of road, when my eyes are so tired they can barely focus on the road?
Let’s do some maths first. Let’s accept we’re keen to see lions. Recent estimates are that there are about 1 600 lions in the Kruger Park. But the park is about 380 kilometres by 80 kilometres, thus about 30 000 square kilometres.
The total road network of the park is about 2 600 kilometres. Let’s round it off to 3 000 kilometres. Let’s further accept that one can, on average, see for about 50 metres on either side of the road. Sometimes it’s further, often much less, but let’s accept it’s about 100 metres on both sides in total.
That means that at any given moment there is about 3 000 kilometres x 100 square metres – that is, 300 000 square metres – visible in the sense that one would be able to see a lion if it were there. That is 300 square kilometres, which is one percent of the surface of the game reserve. If lions were distributed evenly across the park’s surface, that would mean only one percent of them – 16 – would, at any given moment, be visible at spots on the road network. That means 16 lions on a total of 2 600 kilometres of road!
And yet almost everyone who goes to the park sooner or later sees a lion. How is that possible? This is why we have the seven principles.
Principle One: Do the miles
“One year I receive a brief to defend a group of agitators in the magistrate’s court at Giyani, a small town in Limpopo just west of the northern half of the game reserve – about the same parallel as Shingwedzi.
I decide that, rather than travel through Pietersburg (now Polokwane), I’ll enter the park in the south and make my way northwards. I’ll find a place to sleep somewhere, I reckon.
All I have is 24 hours… but in that time I cover many kilometres and experience many strange things.
The first happens at about lunchtime when I stop on the bridge across the Olifants river. Right in front of me, in the dry sand of the river bed, is the half-eaten carcass of a buffalo. And inside the carcass lies a giant black-maned lion framed by the crescent-shaped ribs of the buffalo. Clearly full to the brim, it observes me languidly in the afternoon heat.
The next morning I am at the gate of the camp when it opens at six. I have to be at the magistrate’s court at nine. It’s still half-dark and I switch on my headlights. I’m completely alone on the road, driving as fast as the law allows. Court doesn’t tolerate latecomers.
Suddenly I see a shape ahead in the semi-dawn. I brake hard. It’s a hyena, something so large clamped in its jaws it almost drags on the ground. As I approach I realise it’s the hind leg of a large antelope that’s been chewed off at the knee, red meat and white sinew protruding from the open end, a black hoof from the other end. Then the stench hits me through my half-open window.
I shout almost involuntarily and the hyena gallops grotesquely over the road, disappearing into the tall grass. Nature red in tooth and claw, indeed.
That morning I see a number of animals I would have stopped for had I had the time – including a giant elephant bull along the road, and a black-maned lion standing five metres from my car, posing in profile like an animal on a postcard.
At nine o’clock I walk into court at Giyani. But my thoughts are far away.”
It goes without saying that the chances of coincidentally seeing a lion if you were to drive, say, within 10 kilometres around the rest camp, would be about nil.
The main reason people frequently spot lions in the game reserve is that they drive considerably more than 10 kilometres. Most visitors book their accommodation in different camps, and most camps are situated reasonably far apart. As a child I could never understand how it was that for three days in Skukuza we would mostly see only a handful of impala and warthogs, and then always more species – and yes, predators – on the days we travelled to, say, Letaba. Today I understand that, statistically speaking, your chances of seeing large quantities of game are infinitely better if you drive long distances. It is as simple as that.
So, do the miles. Book your accommodation in such a way that you are forced to drive long distances. Plan your day so that, even if you spend the night in the same place as the day before, select a destination far from your rest camp where you can rest in the middle of the day, have a picnic, drink tea or just admire the view. Deliberately choose detours and circuitous routes to your destinations. Such long travels are not just fun because you see more of the environment; you also see much more game in this way. And it turns your holiday into an adventure.
