South Africa TravelBlogue (Part 7 - Safari Day Two)

Wednesday 11/21

When I work up on Wednesday morning I found out my mom had barely gotten any sleep because she was so anxious about missing the 5 am wake-up call. We had our alarms set but we definitely didn’t want to be left behind. The morning game drive would begin at 5:30 so we had a few minutes to get ready and then we headed out to meet Louis and Fanoti at our designated vehicle. When I passed the patio area I noticed a lot of guests looking up at the trees. We had some visitors in the form of vervet monkeys!

 

GAME DRIVE 2

Once all of the passengers were assembled we set off for the open road. The game reserve was massive and Louis would follow his eyes, ears, instincts and Fanoti’s suggestions as we roved along. Some game drives yielded a staggering array of animal sightings and others were a lot quieter. This particular game drive was our first “quiet” one. However we got to see some of the bread and butter of the African bush.

Right off the bat we spotted one of my favorite animals: the classy and sassy plains zebra. Individual adult male zebras take care of groups of female zebras and their young. This particular harem’s leader made vocal noises to make sure his females noticed us and kept a safe distance. Louis pointed out that although zebras may stick out like a sore thumb to us humans most of their predators only see in black and white. When zebras are out in the open they make sure to stand close to one another and as a result the predators have a hard time distinguishing individual animals. Predators will always go for the slower-moving young, sick or injured prey since they have to expend a great deal of energy in the chase. If, for example, a lion can’t pick out a baby zebra in a group then that baby just might make it to adulthood.

Aside from a camouflaging advantage the zebra stripes also afford each zebra an unmistakable individual identity. Female zebras will step away from the herd in order to give birth. That way the baby will be able to memorize its mother’s stripe pattern before it meets any other zebras. No two zebras have the same pattern. They are as unique as a human face. A lot of people argue whether zebras are white with black stripes or black with white stripes. The only way to find out is to shave a zebra. If you do that you will find their fur is solid black at the roots. Problem solved!

You might be looking at these nice zebras and asking yourself, “So, did you ride one?” Heavens no! These animals would have kicked my tail if I had gotten anywhere near them. Louis told us that farmers did try to domesticate zebras for plow work and other farm chores but they found that extensive riding actually killed the zebras. Their kidneys are in a more vulnerable place than horses’ kidneys and the constant weight of a human or work load will cause kidney failure. Also, their backs are not as strong as horses’. Louis also told that zebras are pretty gassy animals and when they run away from something you can hear them farting. That’s right folks – plains zebras are classy, sassy and gassy!

Just around the bend from the zebra hangout we saw some mean-looking spotted hyenas. Despite their menacing appearance I was really glad to see them! They’re so darn interesting. They have the very strongest jaws in the entire animal kingdom. You can tell they are just made for ripping stuff apart.

 

Next up we saw another example of an adult male watching over a group of females. In this case it was a blue wildebeest. The wildebeest in the area have been getting dominated by a pride of lions. The rangers had to bring in wildebeest from Kruger National Park to prevent these guys from getting wiped out. The project was successful up until the new wildebeest wandered back to Kruger and never came back!

 

Other tasty animals in area included the water buck. They are named water bucks because in general they are never more than one kilometer away from a body of water.

 

BUSH WALK

After the morning game drive my mom and I ate breakfast and then we met up with Davi, Louis and a few other guests for a one-hour bushwalk. This was an interesting experience because there were a lot of rules and we actually got to walk on one of the roads we had previously driven on. It was fun being down closer to the ground and getting a different perspective. We had to walk in a single file line and stay completely quiet until we stopped off to look at something in particular. After vowing to stay in formation (even if a big scary animal charged us) we began our little walk. Louis pointed out a tree whose leaves contain latex. If you were to burn the wood from that tree for a campfire and inhale any of the smoke it would make you extremely sick. Direct contact with the latex would cause a severe reaction and ingesting it could kill you.

Next up we stopped off at a termite mound. We saw these things everywhere. (They always looked like animals!) I believe 1/3 of the termite mound is underground. Either that or only 1/3 of it is above ground. It’s one of those two. These termites don’t eat wood – they actually eat fungus. They are packed with protein so if you’re ever lost in the wilderness they’ll make a good meal. The termites create a complex system of vents which they can either keep open or temporarily block in order to control the temperature of the mound. The queen of the colony can control what type of termite she creates – workers, soldiers, reserve queens, etc. If the queen dies and there isn’t a reserve queen to take her place then the entire colony will lose purpose and die. (Queen termites can live for up to 40 years but one queen survived for 60 years in captivity.) The mound we were next to was only about four years old and it will continue to grow as long as there is a thriving queen inside. We saw many abandoned mounds and we picked up one of the pieces that had broken off. The stuff feels a lot like a porous brick. Louis told us that in the old days people would actually construct their homes using pieces of abandoned termite mounds.

In case eating termites to survive or using their old homes to build your own doesn’t quite make them useful or interesting enough to you check this out: you can use soldier termites to close your wounds if you don’t have a field suture kit. That’s right folks, according to Louis old school soldiers with lacerations would grab a soldier termite (with big pincers), hold their wound closed, let the termite bite them so the pincers would hold the cut skin together, and then snap off the termite’s body so the pincers remained in place. They would repeat that process multiple times until the length of the wound was closed with little pincer “staples.” Wild? Yes. Crazy? Yes. True? Not sure.  

GAME DRIVE 3

Between the bushwalk and the evening game drive I spent some quality time reading by the pool. When it was time for the game drive we jumped in the vehicle excited for whatever was ahead of us. I had already been jazzed by seeing zebras and hyenas that morning but when we saw this next trio the picture really felt complete.

 

The giraffes were the second-hardest animal to photograph. They were pretty shy and they’d scurry off almost immediately. (The very hardest animal to photograph was the warthog. They would sprint of every time I tried to get a picture.) Since giraffes are so tall and thin it was hard to focus the camera on their faces when they were on the move. It was always nice when they would settle in at a tree and stay put for a few seconds.

 

Remember how much I love zebras? Did you know I also love baby animals? Imagine what I thought when I saw this:

After staring at the baby zebra for what was probably too long we meandered over to a watering hole. We saw a lone hyena taking a very cautious look around before he/she got into the water to cool off. The hyena was very methodical. It would look around and then put one side of its head in the water. Then it would look around again and put the other side of its face in the water. Louis told us that a single hyena out in the open could easily be targeted by lions or a rival hyena clan. After a few minutes the hyena put its entire face in the water.

 

Hyenas got a pretty bad rap in “The Lion King” but I’ve always liked watching them on TV shows about African animals. The most interesting thing Louis told us about them is they are neither classified as canine nor feline. They are in their very own group. I personally think it looks like a bear.

The grand finale of the evening was meeting Salayexe, the mother of the cub we had seen the previous evening. Salayexe means “the lonely one.” She was named that because she had been born in a litter of two but her sibling died as a young cub. Now that she is a successful mother of her own cub I’m sure her life is busier than ever. Now if she could just find some baby impalas to keep her company…

TO BE CONTINUED!