Of Ostriches and Elephants
It is all a bit intimidating. Small head, long neck, a bulbous body grey-plumed on top and plucked chicken-skin pink underneath, propelled by long powerful legs and three-toed feet. It isn’t that hard to bridge the 150 million-year link between this modern bird and the dinosaurs. Her name is Olivia and, although nominally a wild bird, she has decided that making a living off people in the park’s camp is less of a drag than foraging with the flock on the dry, hot and stony Karoo lands. Disappearing into the wild once a year to mate and lay her eggs, like all female ostriches she then leaves the father to incubate and bring up the brood, and high-tails it back to camp. She thrives on scraps, handouts and the odd bit of rubbish. Watching the bulge of a orange peel-filled plastic bag work its way down her long neck, Karoo National Park’s manager, Leighton Smith, says the process is amazing – “Goes in as a plastic bag, comes out as a plastic bag. You can wash it and re-use it.” Thankfully, he says the odd diet does not seem to hurt Olivia. But he does keep a close eye on her. At present she is proving little more than a nuisance for some, and a great novelty for others, but there can come a time when her intimidating size and too curious and insistent beak become a habituated hassle. Our neighbour at campsite number 31 already thinks so. Brandishing a black ostrich-feather duster he indignantly and frequently shoos her away. Strangely enough she seems to like him the best. We think it might be love between bird and duster. The Karoo is our sixth national park since landing in South Africa’s Western Cape Province. The plan is to by-pass metropolitan centres in favour of parking up in parks, of which South Africa has a good number with great facilities for campers. Cities we have back home, it is the caracal and klipspringers, gemsbok and guineafowl, dassies, duikers, baboons and bontebok we are here to see. This is no Hemingway safari, it is small game we are after. And choosing the campervan option proves ideal, providing the flexibility and freedom to travel to our own rhythm. Our itinerary is our own, we can stay anywhere as long or short as we like, and change our travel plans on a whim. We don’t have to pack up everyday, petrol and diesel are cheap and we can cook for ourselves. And best of all, we can watch the animals in creature comfort. There is plenty of room, there are comfortable seats, there is fresh coffee and there is the mother elephant with her baby lumbering past our huge rear window. It sure beats a stuffy hatchback. We soon learn that while tv documentaries condense six months or more of patient animal stalking into 45 minutes of wall-to-wall animal action, in real life large wild animals play hide and seek with tourists. This is most obvious in Addo Elephant National Park, just north of Port Elizabeth on the southern coast. The huge animals completely disappear in bush that stands just over our heads. After a whole day of seeing little more than a dung beetle (which was kind of cool) and a particularly flighty sounder of wart hogs, we suddenly came across 20 elephants. Next thing more than 80 had stepped out from behind a tree to converge near the water holes. Just for once we didn’t suffer the park goers’ lament, “Oh, you should’ve been here yesterday.” Some of the elephants are grey, some war-painted in ochre, depending on which soil they favour as a mudpack to protect them against the sun and stinging insects. It is particularly enchanting to watch the hairy infants, their tiny legs pumping to keep up with mother’s ambling strides, heading for the water hole. Addo park has been instrumental in saving the Cape’s elephants from extinction. Farmers sought to exterminate them to prevent destruction of their crops and by the 1920s only 15 animals remained. The Addo herd now numbers more than 280 and is quite habituated to people in cars and the click of cameras. The one restriction is that all citrus fruit is confiscated from visitors at the gate each morning. This is to prevent the elephants, which are apparently addicted to the fruit, from trashing vehicles in order to help themselves. Our favourite park is Cape Peninsula, right on the doorstep of Cape Town and one of the world\'s treasures. Within its boundaries lie three of South Africa’s top 10 tourist attractions - the Kirstenbosch gardens, Table Mountain and the Cape of Good Hope. The parks’ 2285 plant species include the highest number of threatened species of any equivalent sized area in the world. By comparison, the whole of New Zealand has about 2000 plant species and the entire British Isles just 1492. Cape Peninsula\'s unique and exceptionally diverse flora, known as fynbos, qualifies on its own as one of the world\'s six floral kingdoms. It is where watsonias, proteas and Dame Edna\'s gladioli come from. Another special and peculiar feature is the fynbos\'s ability not just to withstand fire, but to explode with vibrant growth and colour in its wake. By the end of our three-week tour there is still one animal we haven’t got out of our system – the gemsbok, or oryx. A park ranger tells us that gemsbok are famous for having the fastest horns in the west. Research has been done. Somewhere someone has taken the time to toss stones at a gemsbok, and it batted away every single one with its horns. Was it a comparative study we want to know? Have stones been tossed at the heads of every other antelope species in order for the gemsbok to be judged fastest? He can’t say. Although we plan to visit its home, the Gemsbok Kalahari National Park, we have discovered that distances on a map of Africa may look the same as distances on a map of New Zealand but they are in order of magnitude larger. We decide to see less, better, and with regret rub that park off our list. South African national parks cater wonderfully well for visitors and overnight campers. This is in part because of their political history - under the apartheid regime they were the sole preserve of whites. However, the legacy is complex, as David Daitz, manager of Cape Peninsula National Park explains. To black South Africans they continue to represent the injustices of confiscation and exclusion from areas where they traditionally gathered food, water and wood for cooking fires. It used to be called hunting, now it is called poaching. Daitz believes that for conservation in South Africa to have a future the poorest of the poor have to support it. So he and other park managers are looking to manage natural resources hand in hand with the needs of local communities - potable water, food and firewood. The concept is called social ecology and he is heartened by the response to initial projects. While we had come to South Africa to feast our eyes on wildlife, it turns out we also feast our palates. South Africans love nothing better than a braai, or barbecue, and preferably with one of the native antelopes sizzling away - kudu, bontebok and grysbok. Even their national emblem, the springbok, is not safe from mastication. It is not uncommon to pass roadside rest areas where fellow travellers have stopped to light a fire and braai their lunch, or afternoon tea. For those in too much of a hurry, biltong, hard sun-dried strips of marinated meat, is another favourite way to eat their ungulates. A lot of people have asked us if it is safe. We played it as cleverly as we could, avoided hotspots and stayed out of urban areas as much as possible. And we found that even the depressingly abject poverty of the townships on the outskirts of every town was somewhat counterbalanced with widespread cautious optimism that things can only get better. They seem willing to give the change-makers the time they need. The lasting impression is of a huge landscape of inherent beauty and vibrant colour. We are glad we have not let the headlines put us off. Travel Facts We flew Wellington - Sydney on Air New Zealand, then Sydney - Cape Town on South African Airways (SAA). Five SAA flights a week connect Sydney and Perth to Johannesburg, one of the airline’s 16 international destinations on the African continent. Everything you will ever need to know about SAA can be found on its website – www.saairways.com.au. We found that during August there was no need to book campervan space in the national park campsites, the parks were relatively free of people and the temperatures were good, not too hot nor too cold. Driving is easy, the roads are good and well sign-posted, but if you want to listen to more than Whitney Houston on the radio, bring your own tapes. © Marieke Hilhorst/ORIGIN NATURAL HISTORY MEDIA |