Are We There Yet? (14 page)

The fact that Kruger exists at all can be attributed to two very different factors: the dreaded tsetse fly and an ivory-hungry president. Some sources list Portuguese navigators as having landed on the Mozambiquan coast in 1497, launched an expedition to the interior then prudently turned tail once it became clear that the area was awash with malaria, a fly that could condemn you to the delirious hell that is sleeping sickness and less than welcoming nomadic tribes that had settled there 800 years previously. Others assert it was a Dutchman by the name of Francios De Cuiper. Either way, the result was the same. Neither hung around. When the first stream of white hunters came along shortly before the dawn of the twentieth century, they discovered a landscape in which you could fire a shotgun in practically any direction and be guaranteed a pelt, tusk or trophy that would fetch a handsome price in the civilised world.

Having made a fortune from tusks himself, Paul Kruger – mad rooter and president of the Transvaal Republic – decided to curb the slaughter by proclaiming a game reserve in the southern part of the current park. Whether he was spurred by guilt or simply wanted to keep some ivory stock on hand should he need it in the future is a matter of some debate. Two things, however, are clear. His 1898 proclamation marked him as one of the world's first ecologists and it was accomplished despite strenuous opposition.

Originally known as the Sabie Game Reserve, the park was bordered by the Crocodile River in the south, the Sabie River in the north, the Lebombo mountains in the east and the Drakensberg range in the west. If the entire Kruger Park is an Aladdin's cave of natural treasures, this original slab is still the equivalent of a vault where only the most precious jewels are kept.

On its western fringes lies a cluster of what were once drought-stricken farms but are now private game parks which in the last decade have removed their boundary fences with the park so that wildlife moves unimpeded across the region. Obscenely luxurious and beyond the reach of all but the wealthiest of South Africans, their aircondi-tioned tents and individual fresh-water plunge pools are most often filled by either EU industrial barons whose fathers made their fortunes by dubious means in World War II or honeymooning orthodontists from Boca whose greenback tips alone substantially outweigh most of the hospitality workers' annual salaries.

Some also come to fulfil their Hemingway-esque big-game-hunter fantasies. Conservation is a costly business and many parks welcome guests willing to shell out wads of cash for items that will later be stuffed. Permits to dispatch populous species are exchanged for funds which become wardens' salar ies, concrete watering holes, poacher-patrol vehicles and so on. Even the odd Big Five species falls to a bullet, the theory being that the substantial fee – tens of thousands of US dollars – garnered to assassinate an ageing leopard or elephant that was likely to die or be killed within a short time anyway will better serve the next generation. One is sacrificed so that many will endure – the way of the wild.

A significant number of the guests at these resorts are lacerated and bruised during their stay. From Harley Street to Hollywood, canny South African medicos have established consulting rooms where they flog packages which put the rhino into rhinoplasty. What makes these deals so enticing is that for less than what it would cost the hook-nosed, weak-chinned or amply-buttocked to be operated on at home, they also receive a safari that does not merely sit in luxury's lap but is clutched to her velvety bosom. One can only imagine the excitement that beats in the chest of a cashed-up A-cup at the prospect of having seen the Big Five and coming home with the Big Two.

A century before the Botox-for-lunch set began flocking to the park's western rim, Paul Kruger's plans for the sanctuary had been put on the backburner in the wake of the Anglo-Boer war. Although little remained of Kruger's troops or the man for that matter – he died (some say of a broken heart, but don't they always) in exile in Switzerland in 1904 – his vision for the park was enthusiastically taken up by the powers that defeated him.

The man chosen to be the park's first warden was Major James Hamilton-Stevenson, a short-tempered Scot. Despite referring to the park in its early days as a “pathetic and dust-covered little wench”, over the next forty years he acquired an additional 10,000 acres and in so doing ensured the survival of one of the world's last wild kingdoms.

In what I like to think was a manner reminiscent of Yul Brynner in the
Magnificent Seven,
he also acquired a band of rangers who responded to a job ad that must have read something like: “Wanted: single men proficient with firearms to protect vast tract of malarial bush from trigger-happy poachers. Previous experience with ravenous wild felines and bouts of fever-induced delirium essential.”

One of those who thought this sounded like the cut of his jib was Major AA Fraser, a whiskey-swilling behemoth for whom the most cursory of record-keeping was anathema and who was known to deal with the frosty Kruger nights by dozing off beneath his twenty-five dogs. Another was Harry Wolhuter, who in 1904 literally fell from his horse into a lion's mouth and vanquished the cat with the combination of three fortuitous strikes from a six-inch blade and primal screaming.

Characters like Fraser and Wolhuter have of course been replaced by rangers with hospitality training programs under their belts but, as I was soon to discover, the lions ain't goin' nowhere.

As the temperature bounded effortlessly into the low thirties, the animals retreated from the road in search of shade. What made the searing stillness even more exciting – in an odd kind of way – was the unmistakably pungent evidence that I'd just missed a large herd of elephants.

As is the custom in Kruger, cars frequently stop as they approach one another to share information on recent sightings. It's a convivial affair that frequently leaps language barriers through clumsy mime. There was no need for such malarky with the occupants of the first vehicle I encountered. The pair of bull-necked Afrikaans lads in the ute were atwitter with excitement and throwing feline plurals in my direction.

I followed their prescribed route over a bridge marked as a safe spot for passengers to get out of their vehicles and stretch or snap, then turned onto a dirt track 500 metres away. Beneath a gnarled thorn tree lay a blood-flecked lioness gnawing on a giraffe leg the length of her body. The carcass had been dragged beneath a tree to avoid detection from the air and its entrails covered with dirt to mask the scent.

Standing a metre high and easily tipping the scales at 150 kilograms, the lioness moved with a languid fluidity. Even as she ate, the bulbous muscles in her neck and chest shimmied beneath the skin. From a crouching start she could have covered the five metres between us in less than a second, but ascertaining that I was merely an ardent fan, she went back to her cartilage tartare.

After a few minutes she was joined by another female. And another. And another. And another. From every direction they prowled out of the undergrowth until nine converged on the carcass, each met with teeth-baring hisses and the flashing slashes of claws like meat hooks. Most were likely entitled to a share of the spoils as lionesses have mastered the art of hunting in packs.

With the hard work done, the male strutted into the picture. Incidentally, your average male lion can put away thirty-five kilos of meat – around 15 per cent of their body weight – in a single sitting and mates four times an hour for less than a minute over a two-day period. It's good to be the king.

What had been a flicker in the rear-view mirror turned out to be the man of the pride. He made the mistake of loping a little too close to my car's exhaust pipe and emitted a roar that caught the attention of my sphincter way before my ears. Which is to be expected when a low-frequency rumble that can carry up to eight kilometres through the bush emanates from a metre behind you.

Sporting extravagant pectorals and crowned with a coarse faux-fro, the lion reminded me of David Hasselhoff in
Baywatch.
Until he began to eat, at which point the resemblance took a turn for the Orson Welles at a seafood buffet.

A transfixing hour later I drove back to the main road and within ten minutes was putting away a cheeseburger in the Shingwedzi camp restaurant. Considering the view it afforded, it seemed absurd that I had the tennis-court-sized thatched pavilion to myself.

The support cast of the spectacle before me was airborne. Midnight-blue birds washed opalescent by the sun were trailed by tangerine African monarch butterflies and a variety in a yellow I'd only seen previously deep in lemon-delicious puddings. The main players were a wallow of hippos (I'm not sure if this is the appropriate collective noun, but it damn well should be), a smattering of waterbuck bearing perhaps the most unfortunate marking in the animal kingdom – a ring of white fur on the rump which looks uncannily like a target – and a thirty-strong troupe of chacma baboons.

With 109 kilometres between me and the evening's camp, I reluctantly pulled myself away and continued south. Kruger spoils you for choice, and the grazing zebra, loping giraffe and nyala buck – one speaks of them in the singular apparently – that had me pulling over to gawp in wonder earlier in the day now warranted a mere deceleration as I scanned the grassland for the more spectacular.

My first elephant appeared at a drinking hole 150 metres from the road. Even from this distance the sheer bulk of the animal had me opting for idling in case a swift getaway was required. A full-grown male stands as high as the guttering on a double-storey house and easily accounts for five tonnes.

You do not want to piss them off. As I found out after turning onto a concealed dirt loop far faster than I should have. Whereupon my windscreen was filled with a wall of dusty brown elephant vagina. Stomping on the brake, the car fishtailed off the powdery sand track as the tyres vainly battled for traction. The elephant spun through 180, flapped her ears forward to make herself look even bigger and tucked her trunk under her body in the classic preparation for a charge. With a piercing trumpet of aggro, she bolted towards the car, then pulled up abruptly as it became clear that I was not merely beating a swift retreat but disembowelling one.

By the time I reached the Letaba camp, my heart rate had dropped to mere panic. Arced along the foreshore of the river after which it is named, this is one of the park's bigger camps and includes dozens of rondavels, a general store, elephant museum, audito rium and restaurant.

Letaba is an oasis of shaded lawn and curved stone paths beneath clusters of chocolate-bark mopani trees. It is immaculately neat in the pseudo-military manner that only government-owned enterprises can muster. My double room with private patio and river view – cue gambolling hippo – set me back the grand total of $40 for the night. There was even a resident herd of bush buck, the species that inspired
Bambi.
I could see paradise by the dashboard light.

On the way to the general store, I was halted by a notice alerting visitors to the reptilian dangers that routinely slip through the barbed wire of the compound perimeter. The first venomous suspect to watch out for is the puff adder. Responsible for 60 per cent of the fatal bites in the region, this piece of slithering death is thick, yellow-brown with pale-edged black chevrons on its back and produces a cytotoxic venom. Which means swelling, necrosis and eventually the shuffling off one's mortal coil. It lies in wait and its preferred strike zone is the shin.

Not that you want to remain vigilant only for what's lurking in the grass. Curled around mopani limbs, the boomslang is the acme of disguise. Comprised of a mahogany-brown body, yellow throat and algae-green eyes, it is rarely discernible in the tree in which it lives. However, when it wants to get your attention, 1 mg of its poison acts as high-octane haemotoxin which prevents the victim's blood from clotting, resulting in a haemorrhage of epic proportions.

The final member of the trio of local agony is the black mamba. Easily sliding into the five deadliest snakes on the planet list, it can grow four metres in length and raise up to one-third of its body length when getting ready to rumble. Two drops of its venom will kill a man but it usually doubles the dose as a matter of course. By the time even the speediest medic has sliced a chunk from your recently punctured flesh to suck out the poison, your throat would be throbbing, your bowels would be prompting the nausea of a thousand congealed kormas and your muscles would be in the grip of seizures that would make you feel as though you were being ripped into bite-size chunks.

Mindful of these lunging venomous dangers, I hotfooted it to the airconditioned sanctuary of the general store, a large portion of which was given over to souvenirs that made Disneyland look like Orrefors. Should one come over peckish, the very animals that had filled you with awe in the bush could do likewise in the stomach department via kudu, impala and springbok pates. And if you were searching for a gift for that person with everything bar taste, look no further than the vacuum-packed canisters of genuine elephant dung.

Outside, dusk was falling in pastel smudges and a mauve cumulonimbus levitated above green hills in the distance. Cormorants waded amid buck by the water's edge; tree squirrels darted across the grass at my feet, and a lone elephant lumbered over to the meandering Letaba for a drink.

With another 4am rise scheduled for the next day, I turned in early and elated.

For those to whom dawn is a rare experience, it feels pristine to the power of ten when you're in the wild. The air was as crisp as starched linen and alive with birdsong. The neon bar of orange that hovered just below the horizon gradually flushed the sky peach. The dark bush began to yield forms and movement. My third and final day in the park would be spent travelling to the Phalaborwa gate, located roughly halfway along its north-south axis. The first animals that clip-clopped across the road were a herd a gnus, named after the high-pitched sound they emit.