Ever been attacked by an elephant? While everyone else was sipping egg-nog and snowboarding over the Christmas break, Gauntlet writer Hadija Gabunga took a trip home to South Africa. She found 30 C weather, constant humidity and a very angry elephant. Sometimes all it takes is a safari adventure to get back to your roots.
Today, most South African headlines depict a nation ready to crumble. Not only do headlines such as "Mbeki’s radical view on AIDS" illustrate this notion, but others that shout "The depleting South African Rand" and "Crime and Punishment in Johannesburg-South Africa’s Most Dangerous City" only further the gloom. News today, in any part of the world, takes a dim view of things. But there’s more to this vast and incredibly beautiful country than death, economic failure and crime. The beautiful landscape is the saving grace that helps the economy with a booming tourist industry.
Many people know of two of the more exploited tourist venues: Cape Town’s Table Mountain and the famous Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years. But those symbolize only a small part of what is South Africa. There is more to African wildlife than cute little monkeys or other feature attractions of the Calgary Zoo. There are still a few places left in South Africa that make adventure a reality-imagine having an ostrich steak for lunch and a crocodile tail for dinner. The famous Sabi Sabi game reserve is but one place where this can happen.
The reserve contains several game lodges all surrounded by wilderness. Because they are not fenced, chances are you’ll come face to face with wild animals. All of the wild game are in their natural environment. Security is tight. Armed escorts are necessary every night in case of a chance encounter with buffalo or any of the other "Big Five"-lions, elephants, rhinos, and leopards. If you’re lucky, you’ll avoid the Big Five at night, but run into them on a safari game drive.
Savannah Safari
The safari game drives begin with a 5 a.m. wake-up call in the form of a pounding knock on your door by a game ranger. After hopping into a Land Rover, the game ranger offers some warnings to make sure everything goes smoothly. At 5 a.m., most of the wild animals are elusive and difficult to spot. They don’t call them safari game drives for no reason-it really is a game. You could drive for hours and only see a few monkeys scuffling here and there.
The Big Five
However, if 5 a.m. is too early for you as well as the animals, take an afternoon tour, usually starting around 4 p.m. Then, the heat isn’t too harsh and you have a greater chance of seeing the Big Five. Don’t be nervous, however, as the game ranger has his gun (a 0.478 calibre elephant rifle) just in case he needs to chase off any uncooperative hyenas or rhinos. For the most part, the rifle is just a precaution and not intended to kill any of the animals.
Nonetheless, it does make you feel a bit safer when an angry elephant crosses your path. Threatened by the presence of our Land Rover, one adult male elephant charges, reminding us who the intruder really is. We apparently caught this one very furious elephant at a bad time. Apparently, it doesn’t take very much to aggravate a male elephant during mating season. The mere presence of a zebra grazing harmlessly nearby is enough cause for alarm. When an elephant is in heat, it is best to keep as far away as possible, unless you are a 5.5-ton female elephant willing to engage in the natural beauty of procreation. Male elephants are extremely territorial and only after backing away about a kilometre did the angry elephant we encountered calm its nerves.
Even wilder than that was our sighting of one of the most beautiful animals in the African animal kingdom-a female leopard. From the Jeep only a few feet away, we could hear the leopard’s teeth grinding and tearing away into an impala.
While the afternoon drive offers many sights, the best game drives are the night drives, around 6 p.m. Watching a pride of female lions feed and hunt is somewhat of an experience.
The last of the Big Five were much happier than the elephant. Buffalo were present, and made their presence known. Some early mornings they gave the lodge the appearance of an unkept golf course. Rhinos have no enemies (except humans) and no predator could defend itself against their incredible size. Imagine a two-and-a-half ton beast with protruding horns moving only a meter away. Even from the Land Rover, the ground shook. Their immensity and overwhelming size can leave anyone shaking.
We’re all Africans
With the unstable South African Rand keeping things affordable, there are countless tourists from all over the world looking for that real safari adventure. Some out of mere curiosity and others just want to get in touch with their roots. As one Swiss tourist kept reminding us between his talks on his cell phone and his constant ramblings about the Euro, "we are all Africans." Sometimes it just takes an angry elephant to realize it.