Introducing the Kruger National Park

I first visited South Africa's Kruger National Park (KNP) in 1958 at the age of 14. In the last 12 years Jan and I have visited several times.  Each trip has provided wildlife viewing above our expectations. We plan to return in July this year and so I thought I would introduce readers to this remarkable wildlife sanctuary now, because I will be posting frequent stories and photos while we are there.

Map of the KNP

Located in the northeast corner of South Africa, the KNP is one of the ten largest game reserves in the world. The tropic of Capricorn crosses the park. (see photo here) It was originally proclaimed as the Sabi Reserve in 1898 by the President of the Transvaal Republic, Paul Kruger.  Its original size was about 1,780 sq. miles.  An enlarged area was formally designated the Kruger National Park in 1926.  Now it covers an area of 7,600 square miles.  It is being merged with the Limpopo National Park in Mozambique and the Gona re Zhou Park in Zimbabwe to form the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park.  This remarkable initiative will result in a 13,500 sq. mile conservation area that will be one of the largest in the world.

Ultimately the goal is to create a fence-free park, allowing historic wildlife migration routes to be expanded, provide significant employment and income opportunities for rural people and greatly expand Eco-tourism potential in the region. 

The driving distance in the park, from Pafuri Gate in the north to Crocodile Bridge in the south is 250 miles.  

Animals in KNP have the right-of-way.

The uniqueness of  KNP is that one can self-drive and see an amazing variety of mammals, birds and reptiles. Although you can't drive off of the vast system of paved and graveled roads in the park the game-viewing is excellent.


Reasonably priced accommodations are offered, in the many fenced camps from camp-sites, RV parks, chalets, lodges etc.  There are several high end luxury lodges as well.  

Even the smallest species have right of way.

The South African National Parks excellent web pages http://www.sanparks.org/parks/kruger/ provide comprehensive information on trip  routes, accommodations, gas (petrol), restaurants, game viewing, weather and so on.

Marshall Eagle

The Park is unrivaled in the diversity of its life forms and a world leader in advanced environmental management techniques and policies. Truly the flagship of the South African national parks, Kruger is home to an impressive number of species: 336 trees, 49 fish, 34 amphibians, 114 reptiles, 507 birds and 147 mammals. 

Cape Buffalo near Punda Maria Camp in the north.

The KNP is easily accessible, of course, to most South Africans by a modern highway system and it is a favorite vacation destination during school holidays. When planning visits to South Africa it is always a good idea to Google 'SA School Calendar' and pick those periods when schools are not closed. 

I will write about some of the KNP rest camps we have visited and describe the private games reserve areas to the west of the park in upcoming blog posts.

If you have had experiences in the Kruger Park I welcome your comments and opinions.

 

Elephant Charges

I remember a very old joke from the 1960s rash of silly “elephant” jokes.  Question: What do you do when an elephant charges you? Answer: Put it on your American Express card. Or “what did Tarzan say to Jane when he saw the elephants coming?” “Here come the elephants.”

I have been asked many times whether I have ever been charged by an elephant.  The answer is yes, three times. All three episodes took place in the Gona-re-Zhou Game Reserve in southeastern Zimbabwe during the seven months I spent there in 1968.

The first time wasn’t especially exciting.  I was in my Land Rover, driving on a two-rut road across a very flat and open area when I come up with three bull elephants off to my right.  They weren’t too close but were walking parallel to the road about 100 yards away.  Suddenly, and without any provocation one of the bulls turned and began to run toward me.  I waited until he was about 50 yards away and was ready to accelerate away, when he raised his trunk and skidded to a stop, kicking up a cloud of dust. It was a “mock charge.” The bull trumpeted a few times, flapped his ears, kicked up some more dust, then lost interest, and turned to follow his two buddies. I was to learn later that a real serious charge could be recognized by an ears back, head down, full speed sprint towards the “threat,” which, in this instance, was me.  This fellow was just showing off.

The second charge was the scariest. As I have written before, the project I was working on involved rising very early and leaving camp by daylight.  We would carry out our 8 mile traverses and generally be done by the time it got really hot and return to camp by noon.  After a break for lunch, usually around 2:00 p.m., I would head out with my camp assistant Malvern Shumba to an area of the Mozambique countryside that we had not yet explored. I was using an old set of aerial photographs and some very outdated Mozambique maps to try and pinpoint target areas where the tsetse fly population would tend to be high. I was particularly looking for waterholes where elephant would always congregate. Because of the less than ideal conditions when the aerial photos had been taken, much of this area had been under cloud; so many waterholes had been obscured. During the many months I spent in this region of the country I was also compiling a record of the elephant I was seeing, mapping their locations, direction of movement and size and composition of their herds.

Malvern was a tall, lean young African man with a friendly demeanor and an urge to learn. He had a bright set of perfect, white, teeth when he smiled.  17 Years old when I met him, he had a 10^th grade education at a government school near the village where he had been born, close to the tiny rail siding and border post named Malvernia -  for which he had been given his Christian name.  He was particularly proud of his family name “shumba,” which means “lion.”  Malvern’s English was excellent and because he had been born near the Mozambique border he was very helpful in translating the local dialect. Malvern impressed me with his fluency in both written and spoken English.  When I would leave at the end of the month to return to Salisbury (now Harare) for five days, he would present me with a list of four or five books that he always “hoped” I could bring him. Many were school text books. Apart from being good company, he also was very skilled in finding his way back to the Land Rover when the day was cloudy and the sun wasn’t where it should have been in the sky.  On several occasions I know that, without Malvern Shumba along with me, I would still be wandering aimlessly through the Mozambique countryside while the sky overhead would be filled with vultures.

On one overcast and very windy afternoon we came across fresh elephant tracks (spoor) crossing the road.  We pulled off and began to follow them.  It seemed to be a small herd of 10 – 15 elephant, moving slowly through a stand of mopani trees and shrubs.  The thick, dark green, foliage made it hard to see more than a short distance of maybe 20 to 30 yards ahead of us. To make things worse, the brisk wind rustling the leaves made it difficult to detect any sounds of the big animals’ movements. As was my habit I carried a .375 magnum rifle strapped to my shoulder.  Up until now I had never had to use it in self defense. 

An elephant in thick Mopani shrub, Mozambique

After we had covered perhaps two miles Malvern saw the back of one of the elephants through the trees, so we were pretty close. The wind was in our faces and the ground was soft sand, so I rashly thought that the elephant had neither caught our scent nor heard us. Very unexpectedly we heard a crashing of branches and saw the top of an elephant coming at high speed directly towards us.  I forgot to mention that Malvern Shumba could really run.  I began to sprint after him as I caught a glimpse of the elephant’s head bobbing up and down as she charged.  As I ran I swung the rifle off of my shoulder and began to hope for an open space where I might have one clean shot at our pursuer or at least fire a shot into the air to scare her off.  Not too many seconds later (time really flies when you’re having fun) I slowed and turned to face her but she had stopped.  I can only think that she must have had a calf, as mother elephants will rarely distance themselves from their calves.  Her work done, she must have returned to her family group feeling somewhat proud of herself. Two very relieved but winded tsetse control employees returned to their vehicle with their tails between their legs.

The third incident was probably the most dangerous but also the most amusing, if you can look back on a scary situation and joke about it.  The top man in the Tsetse Control division had come to our border camp to have a look at progress and see the area first hand.  Desmond Lovemore was an exceptionally talented biologist and administrator and had earned his reputation through a dozen years of hard work and achievement.  He had arrived in his Land Rover station wagon to spend a few days “in the field.”  On his way through Chipinda Pools, the local Tsetse Control field headquarters, he had picked up the local man-in-charge, Jim Pasqual. Mr. Lovemore wanted to take a drive through an area to the south of our camp that we had not visited. On the map there were three rivers indicated, named respectively Number 1, Number 2 and Number 3 Rivers.  After breakfast five of us got into the Land Rover. Along for the ride was one of the South Africans working with us, Alex Kritzinger, me, my immediate boss, Alec Robertson, Jim Pasqual, and Desmond Lovemore. Thinking back now, it is amazing that I have recalled each of the names but I suspect it is partly a result of the unusual incident that we all shared for several minutes 53 years ago.

Road along the Rhodesia-Mozambique border, May 1968

We followed the border fence (Rhodesia/Mozambique) southwest from our camp for about 20 miles until we came to Number 1 River.  It was a river on the map but in reality it was a dry river course that would only hold water after heavy rains.  I was sitting in the back seat on the right side behind the driver.  Next to me was Alex Kritzinger and behind him in a little side seat right at the back was Jim Pasqual, the smallest of the group.  He was also the most easily prone to hysteria. (My personal assessment.)  We were driving slowly over smooth sandy ground following very faint vehicle tracks.  To our left we could see a sparse tree line, where the river would undoubtedly flow if, or when, it might rain. The trees were dry and leafless, as this was during August, mid way through the winter dry season. 

We were talking among ourselves and not paying too much attention to what seemed a pretty unexceptional and featureless landscape.  Quite suddenly we saw an elephant cow coming out of the trees to our left and heading directly toward us. It was all the more unexpected because it was the first elephant we had seen that day and usually females do not leave their herd groups. She was a fairly young cow, probably eight to ten years old.  She was running at full speed with her ears flattened against her sides and her head down. Mr. Lovemore accelerated and the cow tried to adjust to our movement as she came to a slight rise coming up out of the river bed.  The change in direction and the slight rise caused her to stumble and she went down to her knees in a cloud of dust directly behind us.  We all let out a collective sigh of relief, thinking that was the end of it.  But to our amazement, she clambered to her feet and came after us again. Before we fully realized it she was pulling up right behind the vehicle continuing her hot pursuit.  I looked back as she came to within a few feet of the back window of the station wagon, her head bobbing up and down at a furious rate. By now we must have reached at least 30 miles per hour and she seemed to be keeping up!

I turned quickly to look ahead and felt a sinking feeling when I saw a large dead tree had fallen across the track. From a distance the faint tracks in the sand seemed to go right under the tree.  I turned back to see the cow’s progress begin to slow, as she lost ground.  At the last minute, the tracks led us off to the right of the tree and we were able to cruise around the obstruction without losing speed.  All this time, Jim Pasqual, from his little seat in the back of the vehicle was repeating, hysterically, “he’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming.”  As quickly as it had begun, the threat was gone.  For a long time afterwards we tried to speculate why a lone female elephant would have charged a moving vehicle, for such a great distance, and with such incredible persistence.  It may have been that she had been wounded by a poacher or that the sound of a car engine was associated with some traumatic event in her life.

All of the people that I was with that day were far more experienced in animal behavior, particularly elephant behavior, than I was at the time. I was fortunate that this wasn’t something that had happened to me on one of those frequent occasions when I was alone.   It would have been a tough story for anyone to believe. This episode reinforced the adage that animals in the wild can be, at times, completely unpredictable and that elephants really can move at speeds up to 25 mph (40km/hour)!

Snakes in Africa

There seems to be a sense among most people who have never been to Africa that it is heavily populated with snakes.  In my 25 years on that continent I rarely saw a snake, although I learned a little about them as a Zoology student.  I’ve never had too much interest in snakes but I have never been particularly afraid of them either.  During 1997, in the Gona-re-Zhou Game Reserve in southeastern Rhodesia, not far from the Mozambique border, one of the Senior Tsetse Field Officers with whom I worked, came across an eight foot long python that had swallowed a small impala. It was a comical event in several respects. 

First, the unfortunate man was an energetic, very highly respected, African man of very small stature, standing about 5ft. 4in. tall, with a slight frame to match his limited height.  Despite his small size he was an excellent supervisor by virtue of a strong will, terrific leadership qualities and a wonderful sense of humor (humour).  He was leading a group of men in single file along a dirt path across a flat, sparsely vegetated, area of low mopani shrubs. It was July, in the dry season, when most of the leaves had fallen, so he would have easily seen the python had he not been talking and frequently turning to look back at his companions. In other words he wasn’t paying attention.

Second, most Africans have an innate and terrible fear of snakes of any kind, especially those that are bigger than they are. Encounters with even the smallest snake, chameleon or lizard snakes become the topic of conversation for weeks afterward.  Steven happened to look down as he was about to step on the python and suddenly launched himself into space, clearing the animal by about four feet. The other men scattered and only regrouped when they realized that the snake was almost completely immobilized by the large meal it had consumed and which was slowly being digested in its stomach. Most of the serpent was about six inches thick except for the great two-foot long bulge in its mid-section that was about 12 inches in diameter.

An 8 ft. Python photographed in Tanzania in 2005.

Over the following weeks the story of Steven’s great leap over the Python was embellished and exaggerated out of all reasonable proportions, always accompanied by raucous laughter and banter. I saw the snake about half an hour after the incident while it still lay where it was discovered, rendered completely harmless by its excessive appetite.

One of the most venomous snakes in Africa is the Black Mamba. A mature specimen can grow up to 12 – 14 feet long and they slither through the bush at great speed. Fortunately they are shy and tend to avoid confrontation.  A Black Mamba bite, before the development of antivenin, always resulted in death to a human in as little as 20 minutes. Its venom is both a potent neuro-toxin and cardio-toxin, making it doubly lethal.  I have seen a fully grown male Eland, weighing over 1,500 lbs, killed by the bite of a Black Mamba which it must of encountered by accident. 

Black Mamba - National Geographic photo

My only encounter with a Black Mamba brought us literally face-to-face.  I was working on a Tsetse Control assignment in Mozambique and one hot afternoon I was alone in my Land Rover and driving along a relatively smooth track, through an area of open bush, probably at a speed of about 20 mph. It was in late September when the days were almost always hot and sunny and the air was dry, so I had removed the metal cab and window frames from my vehicle and lowered the front windshield to benefit from the breeze. I had also removed the metal doors on both sides of the cab.

As I glided through the  bush (or “veld”) enjoying the cool breeze on my face, suddenly and very unexpectedly I looked to my right and saw a large Black Mamba approaching rapidly, with his head just about level with mine. Before I had time to react I passed in front of him, and at that moment he reacted by rearing back to avoid me and spreading his cobra-like neck flaps.  I reacted by hitting the accelerator and gripping the steering wheel.  Its head was about three feet from my face for an instant, and it was one of those moments in my life when I felt completely and utterly helpless. We passed one another so quickly that, had he had the time or intention of striking, he almost certainly would have missed me, so I can’t honestly say that I narrowly avoided death in the wilds of Africa on this occasion. 

In that one second I saw him up close and then he was gone, lost in the dust cloud my vehicle was creating behind me. I stopped some distance down the trail and looked for a while but he was long gone. There is a common seed pod of an African acacia tree that is 12 – 18 inches long, flat and dark in colour. (I can’t recall the exact species.) As it dries in the sun, it curls up, and on a windy day it rolls along the ground with a rapid spiral movement.  For a long time after my close-up meeting with Mr. Mamba, one of those seed pods would blow across the ground in front of me and, catching that movement out of the corner of my eye, I would cringe – imagining it was a snake.

Photo credits - The photo of a Black Mamba was downloaded from the National Geographic website and was taken by George Grall.  I took the Python photo while in Katavi National Park in Tanzania in September 2005.

For information about the Black mamba go to: http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reptiles/black-mamba/

The senses of an elephant

Elephant rush to a water hole - Hwange Game Reserve, 1975

Gary Gerhardt wrote an excellent and informative article in the Adventure section of the Rocky Mountain News on Saturday 1st July, 2006, describing how animals have developed super-acute senses of smell, vision and hearing to give them a survival edge. (See "Elevated senses are common attributes.") The article reminded me of a personal experience in the 1960's that brought home just how sharp the elephant's sense of smell is. The elephant's vision is poor and its hearing is good but its sense of smell is amazing. 

In 1968 I was employed by the Government of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as an Entomologist in the Tsetse Control Branch (See note below.), and was on an extended, 7 month, field assignment in the southeast of that country on the border shared with Mozambique. A typical work day began about an hour before sunrise when leaving my tented camp and ended around noon. This avoided the hottest part of the day from noon until about 3 p.m. Returning to camp for a light lunch I would often go out later in the afternoon to explore the remote areas of Mozambique, looking for water holes and doing plant and game population assessments. 

Elephants were of particular interest to me. Tsetse Flies are always found in areas with specific vegetation types and where game densities are high. They can be carried great distances by elephant and elephant routes were important to explore. Elephants often engineer the primitive road networks of remote bush areas.

One afternoon I was by myself. Normally I would have a companion but for some reason on this particular day I had ventured out on my own. I drove along a rough track for several miles, took my bearings and left the Land Rover to hike to a prominent rocky feature I had seen on some aerial photographs. I left that rocky "outcrop" and crossed a 200 yard wide open grassy valley before stopping on another high rocky spur. The wind had been blowing from my left and when I was about halfway across I saw a small herd of elephant approaching from my left a considerable distance away. I knew they couldn't smell me because of the strong wind blowing from them toward me. 

Reaching the opposite high ground, I sat down and turned to look back across the open grassland and watch the herd, still walking at a leisurely pace toward where I had crossed. I could see the path I had taken quite clearly as there was a straight line of bent grass to mark my route. What happened next was remarkable. 

The instant the leading elephant reached my track, she halted abruptly. The others fanned out on either side of her and as each one "touched" the imaginary line my scent had created they stopped. It was as though an electrified fence had suddenly been erected in their way. Each member of the herd, about 12 or 15 in number, became agitated, sniffing the air with trunks extended, flapping their ears, and several trumpeted repeatedly. Their distress and confusion continued for about a minute, until the herd's matriarch turned and led them away at high speed back in the direction they had come. They absolutely would not cross the line I had unintentionally left with my scent. I was too far away for them to see me and they certainly couldn't hear me.

This was an extremely remote area but I had seen evidence of poaching. The game was undoubtedly familiar with human scent. What amazed me was the acuity of the elephant's sense of smell. With a strong wind blowing I would have thought my scent might have dissipated but that was not the case. I suspect the elephant's sense of smell is similar to that of the bears that Gary Gerhardt wrote about in his 2006 article.

Note: The Tsetse Fly carries the human "Sleeping Sickness" pathogen. This pathogen also causes "Nagana" which kills domestic livestock and is therefore of significant economic importance in Africa.