Africa - Part Two: Mala Mala Game Reserve

The Africa Harvest board meeting was inspirational, and Cape Town is a beautiful city. Wine country was lovely, and learning about South African history and apartheid was instructive. But the absolute best part of the trip was our 4-day visit to a game reserve near the Kruger National Park. Mala Mala is a private reserve that borders the national park, with no fence between them so the animals can roam freely. One gets there by either a 2-hour trip by road down a bumpy dirt road or you can fly into the private airstrip, which does get one commercial regional turboprop flight per day. Every day we'd get taken out in open land rovers, with a ranger and a guide, and go after sighting wild beasts. On our arrival, which was late Sunday afternoon due to a flight delay, we were whisked off to join our 'group', which consisted of Ranger Anthony, Tracker Calvin, and the Spencers a nice couple from Albany, NY. As night fell, and the stars took over the sky, we bounced along the dirt tracks and through the bush looking for (and finding!) leopards. Amazing! That night at dinner, we were told that sometimes lions come right into the camp and so it is prudent to allow your ranger to walk you back to your room after dinner, which is outside around a large bonfire. (What the ranger does if there actually IS a lion is left to the readers' imagination!) Michael Rattray, the owner of Mala Mala, suggested leaving the sliding door of our room open (making sure the screen door is firmly shut, though), as you can hear the night sounds of animals. And sure enough, I was awakened at 4am by the sound of lions roaring.

After breakfast the next morning, we went out to look for lions. Anthony and Calvin find tracks, and hop out of the vehicle to commune in siSwati, which is a Bantu language spoken in Swaziland. The most I can manage is 'Sawubona', which means 'hello' (literally, 'I see you') in Zulu. After an hour of driving around, hopping in and out of the truck, poking the ground with sticks, Calvin walking ahead on the track minding the dirt, Anthony following after him with the rifle ('just in case'), I decide these guys are mostly for show, and I figure we will not be seeing any lions that morning. They at last return to the truck and I say, "did we lose him?" Anthony is disappointed in my lack of faith: 'oh, no, he's just over there lying in the grass'. And Calvin, with a big grin, says, "Lion. Big one." Here he is, our first lion - he came so close to the truck I could have reached out and patted his mane. Although he likely would have taken my hand off! He turned up again later in the week, with his 'brother' and two beautiful lionesses.

The animals in general - at least the predators if not the prey - pay little attention to the trucks, and seem to regard them as harmless. Anthony believes they do not really grasp that we are potential prey, as long as we are sitting quietly in the truck, and not standing up and waving our arms about. During our time there we went out morning and evening every day and saw lions 3 times, leopards 3 times, a herd of 400 cape buffalo, hippos twice, many elephants, zebra, giraffe, kudu and impala. We only saw rhinos (white rhinos) once, and that was thanks to Don's sharp eyes! Here are Don's rhinos - a mother and her 'baby'!! He was a little freaked out when she pointed her big horn directly at us.

In the world of game viewing safaris, it is popular to talk about 'The Big Five'. These, ostensibly, are the five most dangerous animals to hunt and they are (in no particular order): lion, leopard, cape buffalo, rhino and elephant. Leopards are generally hard to see, but Mala Mala is arguably the best place in the world for leopard viewing, and we were very fortunate. So if you are keeping score, you will want to tell people you saw The Big Five. Michael Rattray likes to add two more to the list: wild dogs and cheetah - because they are both harder to find and to view.

The most elusive animals we saw were the wild dogs, which are beautiful animals and very interesting to watch as they are quick as lightning and following them in the rover is really like a chase through the bush. They are endangered animals, and there are less than 5000 of them left in the wild. We watched a pack - 11 of them, 0.2% of the worlds total population - hunt impala, but they didn't catch one while we were there. Here's a picture of them on the alert.

We saw leopards - mother and son - with a kill and a pair of hyenas try to take it away from them. We tracked 4 lions as they hunted impala after dark one night.

The only one we missed was the cheetah - guess we'll have to go back someday! Here's one of the leopards we saw at night. An incredibly gorgeous animal!

All in all, an awesome adventure, and one I will remember all my life. Made even better by the beautiful surroundings of our camp, the delightful company of our hosts and fellow guests and the knowledge and skill of our ranger and tracker. A highly recommended vacation!