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Principle Two: Water is life
The Lowveld of Mpumalanga and Limpopo is distinguished by a number of essential characteristics:
»It is a region with low rainfall.
»It has a hot climate.
»The area is adjacent to the escarpment and the Transvaal Drakensberg, which gets much more rain, and from which streams flow down to the sea, combining to form brooks that in time become rivers.
»It is a low-lying area of the country, which means the rivers sooner or later find their way there.
The game reserve is basically a dry, hot territory with a few large rivers running through it. And animals need water.
Some of the rivers are perennial, others not. But even those that don’t flow throughout the year mostly have water holes or other standing water. And there are also quite a number of watering holes and drinking dams in places other than rivers where animals come to drink.
It stands to reason that, if you want to see plenty of game, you must visit water holes and follow big rivers. The game is not necessarily right next to the rivers, but generally within walking distance of the water. That applies to herbivores like antelope, and also to the predators that hunt them. Many kinds of animals are absolutely dependent on water, like hippopotami, crocodiles and of course fish. These in turn attract certain kinds of animals and birds such as otters and fish eagles.
The most important of the rivers are, more or less in sequence from the far south to the furthest north:
»The Crocodile
»The Sabie
»The Timbavati (seasonal)
»The Sweni / N’wanetsi river complex
»The Olifants
»The Letaba
»The Shingwedzi (seasonal)
»The Levubu (seasonal)
The greatest of these is the Sabie. Not only in terms of water volume, but also in terms of the variety of its fauna and flora (biodiversity). There is just about nothing you can see in the game reserve that you cannot see along or in the Sabie River.
The mere reading of the list of big rivers shows another thing: It explains why so many – especially older – rest camps are situated where they are. They lie on the banks of the big rivers, which also explains why so many of these camps are so popular: because there is so much game.
Later we’ll look at the routes you can plan for game watching. It’s no surprise they include many miles along the great rivers.
The main routes also run past many other water sources: wind pumps, boreholes, pans, streams, water holes… Watch the vegetation, nearby and afar. Keep an eye out for a green seam weaving through the grey on the horizon. It’s probably a river. Look for trees and plants that betray water sources: ilala palms, yellow fever trees, huilboerboon trees, reeds. Stop by the water holes along the way, or on the banks of a full river.
Find water. Water literally is life.
Principle Three: Food is life
If you know where the food is, you’ll know where the animals are – which means you need to know what they eat. Predators live off game such as impala, kudu, zebra and blue wildebeest. And each of these animals in turn eats certain types of vegetation. All of which means the vegetation of an area or region determines which herbivores and which predators are found there.
For that reason it helps to know which ecological regions are most suited to support the different herbivores and carnivores so you know where you have the best statistical chance of finding them.
Herbivores either live off grass or leaves or fruit, bulbs, roots and so on, or a combination of these. The large beasts of prey are normally interested in the first-mentioned two groups. These groups consist mostly of zebra, wildebeest and impala (normally grazers), giraffe and kudu (mainly browsers), and buffalo (both browsers and grazers).
The grazers mostly prefer the open savannahs with sweeter grass varieties, and the browsers prefer areas with perennial thorn trees – therefore the following areas on the ecological map:
»Knob thorn/marula savannah, which is a long, thin strip in the east running from Crocodile Bridge in the southeast to just north of N’wanetsi. This strip is one of the most beautiful areas of veld in the game reserve, with knob thorn-, marula- and leadwood trees with dispersed growth and patches of grass in between.
»Related to this is the Shingwedzi tree savannah with mopani, umbrella thorn and mustard trees with grass in between (both sides of the Shingwedzi and Mphongolo rivers).
»Sabie/Crocodile thorn thickets, the area along the Sabie from Skukuza to Lower Sabie, and from there in a southerly direction to Crocodile Bridge. Patches of sweet thorn, umbrella thorn, paper bark thorn and knob thorn trees with long grass in between.
»Thorn veld, roughly the area between Orpen and Satara, and also between Lower Sabie and Tshokwane (mainly on the western side of the road (H-1)).
Elephants eat the leaves of trees, and are found in all the above areas. But they in particular eat mopani leaves, and are therefore one of the types of animals found in mopani veld. The same applies to buffalo, which are also at home in this area. Although buffalo are largely grazers, they seek out the mopani veld probably because there is often shade under the mopani trees. They are also close enough to water so they can drink twice daily.
The vegetation on the banks of rivers differs markedly from plants on the more remote plains, which partly explains why there are almost always elephants along rivers. They love grazing in the riverside reeds and stripping the leaves off large perennial trees on the banks.
For the same reason river banks offer food to smaller game that often graze and forage there, such as kudu, impala, waterbuck, bushbuck, nyala, baboons and monkeys. River banks therefore form an exceptional habitat for leopards. In fact, if you really want to have a chance of seeing a leopard, drive the Sabie, Timbavati, N’wanetsi and Shingwedzi routes set out below.
So, to summarise: high concentrations of zebra, giraffe, blue wildebeest, elephant, buffalo and impala will occur in the savannahs and thorn veld areas, with accompanying predators. These areas more or less coincide with the rest camps in the southern half of the park: Crocodile Bridge, Lower Sabie, Skukuza, Satara and Orpen, as well as Shingwedzi in the north.
The largest part of the northern half is mopani veld, where mostly elephant and buffalo are found. That means there aren’t many large herds of impala, kudu, zebra and giraffe, but especially along the rivers in these areas the mopani trees give way, and a larger variety can be seen. So, if you drive north, it’s better to know what to expect.
The Shingwedzi river is a totally different story. In
