Looking for Animals in Africa: Botlierskop
Thursday, April 6th, 2006
Location: 10° 35.3′S / 000° 13.6′W
The Picton Castle is gliding through the South Atlantic at a leisurely rate of 2.7 knots. Eighteen of our 19 square and fore-and-aft sails are set, and the only sounds on deck tonight are the whispered voices of the On-Watch and the creaking of the rigging overhead as the tiny puffs of light air fill the sails. These moments of quiet provide the best opportunity for the crew to reflect on the places we’ve been and the things we’ve actually seen and done. With a limited time ashore, the Picton Castle crew have become masters at cramming in as much excitement as is humanly possible in all of the ports of call that we have visited. When we return from our adventures there are things that immediately press for our attention, namely the ship, and we often get caught up in a different kind of excitement, not really having the opportunity to debrief and absorb the on-shore experiences. Second only to spending time with schools along the way and getting a tattoo from Ti, the majority of the Picton Castle crew had one this thing somewhere around the top of their To-Do-When-Sailing-Around-the-World list—seeing Africa’s animals! Because African safaris can be quite costly and can take many days, a few of my shipmates and I opted for the budget, do-it-yourself option; so we rented a car and began our epic journey to seek out and find examples of Africa’s infamous wildlife.
Our first stop was Boulders, Simonstown, for the world’s finest vantage point for viewing African penguins in their own habitat (but I’ve told you about this already). We drove what is known as the Garden Route to reach our various destinations, and after about a nine-hour drive (and too short an overnight rest), we rose early to drive to Mussel Bay where the Botlierskop Private Game Reserve is located. At 7 AM it was already piping hot inland, so we loaded on the sunscreen and bought as much Gatorade as we could carry. At Botlierskop we had arranged to be part of Game Drive, wherein you are loaded into an oversized vehicle (designed for the South Africa military) and taken on a guided, three-hour tour of a private game reserve in hopes of happening upon animals in their natural state. I was relieved that our tour was taking place in an oversized military vehicle because I had no idea how else we would be able to scale the steep and winding mountain paths, but especially because some of the animals we would be viewing were quite large and dangerous, such as lions and rhinoceros, and this vehicle was practically indestructible.
We were underway not five minutes when we happened upon two elephants playing in a big pond. They were ducking so that their entire bodies were submerged in the water, with only their trunks in the air. They looked like they were having such a great time! When the female elephant stood up to see who we were, the male stayed below the surface and kept swiping at her tail with his trunk, teasing her. At one point, he wrapped his trunk around her trunk and tugged at her as if to say, “Come back and play!” Our guide told us that the full-grown male was probably somewhere shy of 5,000 kg and that a newborn elephant is born already weighing a hefty 120 kg! He also speculated that the female might be pregnant, but so early on it was difficult to tell. Female elephants are pregnant for a whopping 22 months! That’s just shy of two years! Our guide explained that the elephants like to play in the water when they can because they have very short hair and their skin can burn quite easily in the South African sun.
There was a terrible wildfire at the game reserve in November, and four of the eight rhinos that live in the reserve died when the herd miscalculated its escape. Losing the rhinos is quite tragic, but the reserves’ greatest loss of life were the smallest animals and snakes that could never be counted, and therefore cannot now be accounted for. Interesting enough, South Africa’s vegetation has evolved in such a way that some plants cannot release their spores until they’ve been scorched, the seeds germinating in the ashen soil. It had been only a few short months since the fire, but the vegetation was starting to take hold, leaving the dramatic, rolling hillsides a dark, textured brown.
Our guide told us that one game drive had already returned earlier that morning and that they had had great success seeing animals such as lion, buffalo, giraffe, zebra, and the rare black impala, but they had been unable to find the rhinos. Our guide embraced the challenge and hoped we’d be lucky enough to find them before any of the other drives do.
Kneeling in the shade of a prickly bush lay a bushbuck (resembles a North American deer), and after a few more minutes of driving we happened upon a bunch of warthogs (they look just like Pumba in The Lion King) chowing down in a little valley clearing alongside some rather large wildebeest. They were not too interested in what we were, but they were fascinating to watch! Then, as if some tiny lunch bell rang somewhere in the animal kingdom, several different species of animal just started coming out of their hiding spaces in the shade to get a bite to eat!
First there were giraffes. Oh, what a sight! There were three juvenile giraffes on the right side of the path, just beyond the side of our vehicle, slowly stripping leaves from the branches of low shrubs with their long, black tongues. Giraffes are the only mammals that can lick their own ears! They were absolutely beautiful. The young giraffes had a much lighter colour and fewer markings than did the adult giraffe stripping high trees on the other side of the clearing. When giraffes are born they often land on their heads from about six feet in the air, and they can usually run within an hour or so of being born. When giraffes walk, they walk with both left legs and then both right legs! The only other mammal to do that is the camel. But when a giraffe runs, it gallops like a horse. It was unbelievable watching them move! They were so awkward in their gait, but their long necks and faces were so elegant! Did you know that giraffes have the exact same number of vertebrae in their necks and backs as do humans? The vertebrae in their necks are just larger and have greater spaces between them than ours do!
After the giraffes, we approached where the zebras were having their relaxing mid-morning snack. Something new that I learned was that the species of zebra that lives in the Botlierskop reserve is the only species whose stripes go all the way around their belly, too. Most zebras’ stripes just wrap around as far as the tummy, leaving the tummy white in colour. And did you know that a zebra’s short hair is not the only thing that is striped? Their skin is striped, too! The zebra were quite nervous of us, although they appeared to be relaxed. The lone adult male in the group stood so that he could keep one eye trained on us over his shoulder, and his ears were pointing straight back at us. He kept walking away from the group of zebras feeding, just as he would do to distract a predator and protect the group.
As we continued on our never-ending quest to find the white rhinos, we came across hundreds of rare black impalas. There are probably hundreds of thousands of red impala in South Africa, but black impalas are quite rare, and we learned that Botlierskop had the greatest black impala population of any private game reserve in South Africa. Black impalas are worth a great deal of money, dead or alive—a red impala can be sold or traded for $60–100, but a black impala will go for thousands of dollars. Mixed among the impalas were a large population of waterbuck. While an impala is quite tasty to predators, the waterbuck has evolved a protective mechanism: its coat is incredibly oily and bitter, and as a protective strategy it will run into the water to escape its prey. Somewhere through evolution, other predators have learned to not eat waterbuck, but to use their escape strategy for their own benefit. Take, for instance, the crocodile. When a waterbuck runs into a watering hole or river to escape its prey, the crocodiles know to not bite the waterbuck, but rather to attack whatever is trying to catch the waterbuck!
Our vehicle drove along a long plateau overlooking the mountains and valleys it had just taken us two hours to drive through. Pressed for time, our guide told us we needed to see the rhinos now, or it was never, because the lions were in a reserve located all the way on the opposite side that we had started from. Then, as if by magic, the guide spotted something that none of us could see. Along a high picket fence that divides the extreme edge of the reserve from the rest of South Africa were four enormous rhinos seeking a little shade from the heat. We bounced along the rough path in record time and approached the rhinos until we were less than seven feet away. Three of the rhinos were hot and tired, lying on top of one another like a dog pile. But one large, male rhino stood guard and paced in front of the vehicle with his short tail curled high into the air, which was a sign of aggression (glad to have an armoured vehicle now). After we learned a bit about the rhinos and took lots of pictures, it was time to head to the lion reserve.
Once there we noticed a team of men working away at the fencing system that encloses the lions’ expansive reserve. The lions have to be kept in a reserve separate from the rest of the animals because they would be the dominant predator and eat them all! A reserve employee feeds the four lions a measured amount of beef once a week or so. You’d think than an enormous and powerful animal like a lion would need to eat lots of food to keep them big and strong, but that is not true. In their own habitat, a pride of lions might make a kill only once in two weeks. If they are lucky, they might bring down a large animal once a week. This works out okay because South Africa’s lions are adapted to such conditions. It is also quite hot and lions like to stay as camouflaged as possible, so they tend to rest where there are fewer animals to encounter them. This is a smart way to stay cool from the heat, and it also protects the lions from natural enemies as well because lions sleep 18–20 hours a day! Reminds me of our ship’s cat, Chibley!
It was time then to leave the lion reserve and return to the lodge. We thanked our guide and grabbed a quick bite to eat under ostrich-egg chandeliers. Soon it was time to be on our way again. It was going to be another eight-hour drive to the place where we planned to camp for the night. We were going to sleep in a mud hut alongside a long and beautiful (but muddy) river—that the owner assured us would be hippo and crocodile free (more people are killed each year in South Africa by hippos than by any other animal). After a good overnight rest in a mud hut, the next morning we would hit the road again, bound for Addo Elephant National Park, where they have more than 400 elephants and a whole slew of other African animals, many of the populations as large as that of the elephants!
