Animals!

What I’ll most remember about April 2010 is all the wildlife we encountered. We visited South Africa’s Kruger National Park, and in 3 days saw more wild animals than all the rest of our time in Africa combined. We also paid a brief visit to Botswana’s Chobe National Park and spent time canoeing and camping in the Okavango Delta (also in Botswana), both areas teeming with animals. I’ve never been much of a wildlife tourist, but seeing so many unique wild animals in their natural environment has been pretty cool. So… what did we see? Here’s a run-down of the highlights.

Lions: various glimpses, from a male sitting in the grass at night in Kruger to an adolescent lounging on a dead tree in Chobe. I tend to mistake lions for rocks when looking for them in grassy fields, even with the help of binoculars. So the only lions I’ve seen had to be pointed out to me (repeatedly) by others. Who knows how many I’ve missed—certainly more than I’ve managed to see. Guess I wouldn’t survive for very long in the African wilds… and I’d be exhausted, running away from all those rocks.

Crocodile: our best sighting had to be Sunset Lake in Kruger—by far the most frightening lake I’ve ever laid eyes on. Ask Mandy or Alisha about it. They’ll back me up on this.

Hippopotamus: All over Kruger (including the scary lake noted above). But perhaps our most memorable encounter with these massive and temperamental beasts was in the Okavango Delta, where we bobbed in a Mokoro (traditional dugout canoe) and watched them go about their hippo-business from an unnervingly close distance. Their grunts and snorts are startling. And one night, while camping on one of the Delta’s islands, a troupe of them stomped right past our tent.

Elephants: too many to count. From close range encounters to distant sightings and road crossings, it’s always fun to watch them. My favorite sighting was probably in the Okavango Delta, where on the first day out we glided silently around a tall patch of grass to see what all the splashing was about: 2 adult elephants wading through the shallow waters, eating and drinking and enjoying themselves.

Wildebeest: they’re common in numbers, but not in appearances. Strange looking things—like a mash-up of buffalo and antelope and cow.

Giraffe: talk about strange looking… giraffes are really plentiful in Kruger, and we had plenty of up-close encounters with them. In fact, at one point, spotting a giraffe wasn’t even grounds for our stopping the car. The babies are especially cute—we always stopped for the babies.

Zebra: throngs of ‘em. They like to hang out with impala and giraffe and warthogs, and they’re quite social. And after careful inspection, I am confident in saying that they’re clearly white with black stripes, not black with white stripes.

Impala: the most plentiful of all animals listed here. Big packs of them. Best encounter with them was in Chobe, where two males were locked in a very long fight (a mating/dominance thing) while other males stood around and watched the action.

Rhinoceros: in Kruger we came upon three white rhino and watched from a distance of 10-20 meters as they munched on grass. Jeez they’re big. I wouldn’t have gotten out of our rental car for anything. It felt like Jurassic Park. Swaziland has lost its wild population of rhinos to poaching. In fact, in just 4 years (between 1988 and 1992) Swaziland lost 80% of its remaining rhinos to poachers. Anyway, if you’ve ever felt self-conscious about having beady little eyes and a disproportionately large nose, take heart and think of the poor rhino: they’ve got it much, much worse than you, proportionally speaking, and plus, they’ve got poachers to worry about. There’s no one hunting you for your big nose, is there? So cheer up.

Wild dogs: Perhaps my favorite wildlife encounter of all. Our first day in Kruger, at sunset, a big pack of them came trotting down the shoulder of the road we were on. They weren’t in a hurry, and neither were we. It was an exceedingly rare close-up look at this endangered animal. Then, the very next night along the same road, it happened again! Here they came, 20 strong, along the roadside. We could not believe our good fortune. Probably the same pack, out on their hunting rounds. They’re among the most skilled and efficient hunters in all of Africa, averaging one kill per day. They’re also among the rarest predators in Kruger (and apparently the whole continent). Anyway, they’re big dogs—not like a scrawny dingo or coyote—and their muzzles are thicker than a pit-bull’s… it was another “stay in the car” moment.

Kudu: of all the varieties of antelope in Southern Africa (and there are a lot), the kudu is my personal favorite. The males are enormous (think horse), their antlers are really long and spiraled, and they have great markings on their fur.

Warthogs: these ornery guys are everywhere. So common, in fact, I almost didn’t mention them here (sorry Mandy)… but I really like them. I like the way they trot around with their tail sprouted into the air and their monstrous head held high and proud. They’re face is exceedingly ugly, but what great posture. Once in Botswana we saw a family of them hanging out in the parking lot of the bus station. Commuters, I guess.

Water Buffalo: the males are big and scary. They always seemed to give me the evil eye-- and what have I ever done to them? They seem to relish standing in the middle of roadways, daring vehicles to get too close. Their strange, flat horns sit atop their heads like “little George Washington wigs,” as my wife puts it. Funny looking, and yet they don’t seem to have much of a sense of humor. They too offered a few “stay in the car” moments for me.

Hyena: just a peek at 3 of them, lying together on top of a big rock near the road just before sunset in Kruger. Great camouflage. Still, in the ancient blood-feud between lions and hyenas, I side with the lions. Sorry hyenas, but you just seem a bit too… villainous.

Baboons: absolute pests. The only reason I include them here is because in the Okavango Delta they’re actually living “wild” lives (as opposed to living off of human trash and roadkill), and once we even saw a baboon swimming from one little island to another. Swimming baboons? Crazy. Also, once in Chobe a one-armed baboon endeared himself to me. I was enjoying a cold beer on a shady patio and he came scampering down from the trees to ask for a sip. Poor little one-armed baboon, climbing around with all his two-armed peers, just trying to get by in this hard-luck world…

Vervet monkeys: also a bit too plentiful in human-rich areas, but not quite the pests that baboons are. They have a little black stripe across their forehead. Looks like a mono-brow. Hard not to smile when watching them.

Jackal: We only saw one, foraging along the edge of the Chobe River at sunrise while silhouetted storks kept their cautious eyes on him. Looks like a cross between a fox and a dog.

Birds: we’ve learned to identify lots of birds, either by sight or by song. Favorites include the fish eagle (which looks a lot like a bald eagle), the lilac-breasted roller (beautiful—and the national bird of Botswana, we’re told), the hornbill, different kinds of kingfishers and weavers, the corrie bustard (the funniest bird name), ostrich, honey-finder, the “go away” bird (cool Mohawk), various storks, jacana… that’s enough, I guess. In Botswana we hitched a ride with a couple from San Diego who had thus far identified 199 different bird species in their month of travel. Pretty impressive. They were anxious to get to 200 and debated whether or not to count a chicken that had crossed the road in front of us. They decided against counting it because, “it wasn’t in their book I concurred, and so, much to the chagrin of chickens everywhere, the San Diegans’ count remained at 199.

And of course there are all the lizards and snakes and frogs of all sizes, the crazy spiders and creepy-crawlies encountered in various campground showers, the bizarre assortment of flying insects (I especially liked all the colorful varieties of dragonfly in the Okavango) and the bats that feast on them (one whizzed so close to my head that I heard its wings whistle past my ear), the little biting ants and the beetles… my favorite of these is the dung beetle, which I finally saw up close in Botswana’s Tsodilo Hills (the Kalahari); such an industrious, mild-mannered little guy, not afraid to get his hands dirty.

Two big cats top our list of animals we’ve yet to see but really want to: leopard and cheetah. I don’t think we’ll go out of our way to see them, but with plenty of travel plans left on the African continent, I’m sure we’ll have opportunities.