Journey to South Africa
by James Lincoln Warren

It all started with a Miriam Makeba record.

One evening in the summer of 2008, my wife Margaret and I sat in our condominium home in West Los Angeles, spinning vinyl discs on our turntable.  The records we were playing are, not to put too fine a point on it, ancient, dating from our college days.  There are many acts and sensations that invoke memory, and for anyone of a certain age, playing old-fashioned records on a turntable with all its attendant rituals is one of them.

Any trip into a vanished youth bears more than mere memories.  One of the things it invokes, at least in me, is a spirit of discovery and adventure. As a U.S. Naval officer, I'd been all over the world, and even circumnavigated it once, but the one thing I regretted that I had never accomplished was crossing south of the equator.

It was Margaret's turn to pick a record.  She chose one she had gotten while a student at UCLA featuring South Africa's legendary chanteuse, Miriam Makeba. I was suddenly inspired.  My father, Bruce H. Warren, a retired U.S. Air Force physician, is something of a globetrotter. While my mother was alive, the two of them were constantly abroad.  Since my mother's passing, Dad has maintained his peregrinating ways.  I headed for the phone and called my father at his home in San Antonio, Texas.

"Dad," I said, "if you ever plan a trip to South Africa, let me know.  I'd like to go along."

I should have known better.  I should have known that Dad had never even entertained the idea of traveling to South Africa.  But being my Dad, he decided that a trip just for the two of us to a place I had wanted to see ever since I was a little boy would be a perfect gift. (Margaret, I should mention, was all in favor of the idea.)

Months later, he called back.  "Jim, what are you doing in July?"

Dad had found a reasonably-priced 19-day tour that featured an amazing itinerary.  We would start in Johannesburg, visit Pretoria and Soweto, and then fly up to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, whence we would take a bus to the Chobe National Park in Botswana.  From there, we would return to the Falls themselves, after which we would fly to Cape Town for four days. This was followed by a full day in Durban and its vicinity, and our tour would end with two days at Kruger National Park.

He flew to L.A. on July 9, 2009, and a couple days later, we were off.

The trip was full of wonderful experiences, featuring exposure to history, culture, and wildlife. Although the cultural parts of the trip were exceptional, including a visit to a school in Zimbabwe, dinner at a Zimbabwean home (Dad, who is interested in tropical medicine, was also invited by our hostess to visit the hospital in Victoria Falls where she volunteers), the powerfully moving museum in Soweto commemorating the student uprising there in 1966, divers demonstrations of African history, food, arts, crafts, tribal dance and music, and a visit to the now-closed prison on Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was kept captive during the years of apartheid, for me the great highlight was the wildlife.  Certainly from a photographic point of view, it was the most interesting part, and that is what I have chosen to share with the Gentle Reader.     

 
Chobe National Park rests on the south bank of the Chobe River, a tributary of the Zambezi, that marks the boundary between Namibia and Botswana. It is best known for the huge population of elephants that live there, up to 60,000 according to our river guide.  Because the river is a source of fresh water, there were all manner of species of animals that were visible.  At right, you can see a good-sized crocodile and a white heron.

 

In Africa, there's a frequent reference to the "Big Five", the five most dangerous game animals (most of which are now protected)*.  Number One is the elephant, followed by the cape buffalo (left), lion, leopard and rhinoceros. On our river cruise we observed elephants, cape buffalo, impala, kudu, giraffes, crocodiles, hippopotami (considered by all of our guides as the most dangerous of them all, but not a game animal), and all manner of exotic birds.

 

The most impressive thing in Chobe are definitely the many large herds of elephants, most of them breeding herds ruled by an alpha female and comprising her daughters, sisters, nieces, and immature males.
 

Here's a herd crossing the river.  The animals on the right are still walking on the river bottom, those on the left are swimming.

 

The dramatic shot on the left is a heron drying its wings after having gone fishing.  There were about four or five of these birds in this vicinity, but this one was the show off.  Must have been male.

At right, one of several groups of mud-wallowing hippos we saw. Most of the hippos weren't wallowing; they were in the water, but you only saw them when they surfaced for air, and then usually only their ears, eyes, and nostrils.

As evening approached, the boat returned to our game lodge, actually a luxury hotel made to look rustic, and we were advised to apply insect repellent.  Malaria is endemic in the Chobe/Zambezi river valleys.  Our beds had mosquito nets.

The next day, our party split.  Most of them elected to go into the park on a game drive, but about six of us stuck with the original itinerary and went to visit a fishing village across the river in Namibia.

If you look at a map of southern Africa, you will see that there is a slender tongue of territory that extends eastward from Namibia between Botswana and Zambia, all the way to Zimbabwe.  This is where the village was located, on an island called Impalala ("Impala Island").  We took a boat to the Botswana customs office, got our exit visas, and then were taken across the river to Impalala, where we received our entry visas for Namibia.

Our guide then took us on a short hike from the government compound through the brush to the closest  of the villages on the island, stopping along the way to show us various plants and explain their mostly pharmological uses.

 
The village we arrived at was called the Baobab Village, on account of the huge and ancient baobab tree that dominated its center (left).

There were no men in the village, because they were all out fishing. Only the youngest children weren't in school, and so the village was not at all crowded.  we were greeted by a group of women with their wares.  The women cure the fish and weave lovely baskets, which they offer for sale to tourists at very reasonable prices.  The village itself seemed to be constructed mostly of mud supported by lattices of branches, with small yards in each dwelling enclosed by reed fences.  There were a couple of fields on the outskirts for growing sustenance crops, but as we were there in the Southern Hemisphere's winter, they were fallow.  There was one source of running water and no electricity, except for batteries: on our way out of the village, we heard a radio playing a Dolly Parton tune.  It was pretty amusing.

 
When we got back to the lodge, the folks who had gone on the game drive were very excited because they had seen two young lions unsuccessfully stalk a cape buffalo.  That sounded very exciting, but both Dad and I knew we had made the right choice in visiting the village instead, especially since there was another game drive scheduled for the afternoon.

We had seen a giraffe hidden in the bush on the drive from the airport to Botswana, but we got our first real look at these magnificent animals in the park.

 
Our guide told us that there are two types of giraffe in Africa, the North African and the South African.  (He was wrong; there are many subspecies, but he correctly identified the one we actually got to see.) The Southern, which is the only breed in Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, is taller and more lightly colored than its Northern cousin.  Males and females may be distinguished by their horns and color, females being slightly darker.**  That's a male on the right; he was very tall.

The game drive lasted all afternoon, and we saw many elephants, including a huge independent bull who charged another one of the vehicles, or so they claimed. I think it was probably only a bluff, because if he'd been serious he could have turned the vehicle over with ease.

One thing our guide pointed out to us is that when giraffes walk, they pick up both feet on each side of their bodies at the same time.  And he was absolutely right.  It looked so bizarre — both left feet off the ground, then both right feet, then both left again — how do they keep their balance? It seems like they should topple over.

The answer, of course, is that they sway their massive necks to counterbalance their bodies.

We also saw a number of cape buffalo, impala, kudu, and even an eland at a distance.

 

But the drama occurred just as we were preparing to leave the park.
 

After a call on the radio and a rapid conversation in Tswana, the local language, our driver raced over to where a herd of cape buffalo were gathering in a circle.  (We didn't get a shot of the tightly packed herd for some reason, but just below you'll see the same herd grazing.)

The young lions had been spotted again.

There were two, a male and a female.  The driver opined as he thought that the male was giving the young female a try-out to see if she was worthy to join his pride.  I don't think so — the male was young, too, too young for an alpha.  Why would she have given him the time of day?  I figured they were probably siblings.
 

The cape buffalo weren't too happy about the cats being so close.  Two bulls approached them.
 

And the next thing we knew, the lions scattered as the buffalo charged.  The male ran right in front of our vehicle not ten feet from me (I was seated in the front), sprinted past our truck, and then turned to face the threatening buffalo — from a safe distance, of course.  Dad got this magnificent shot of the male roaring:

You talkin' to me?

 

The next day we crossed back over into Zimbabwe, seeing some zebras in the bush along the way, to stay a couple nights at the Victoria Falls Hotel.  I thought this was the most fun place we stayed because it was so Edwardian, with full length portraits of the King and Queen and hunting trophies on the wall everywhere. Jolly good fun, what?

 
From the terrace, we could see the mist rising into the air from the hidden Falls and the canyon carved out by the Zambezi River below the Falls and the bridge into Zambia across the river — we couldn't see the Falls because they drop into a defile.

Our first view of the awe-inspiring waters was inside the grounds of the National Park, from the escarpment opposite.  You can't see the bottom from most of the vantage points, but the roar of the water is so loud you can feel it, and the mist falls down like permanent rain. The Falls were not at their fullest, but that was actually a good thing, since it meant improved visibility. The next day we got a more comprehensive, although not a closer, view, on a ten-minute helicopter flight.

 

 

That afternoon we crossed into Zambia over the bridge to take a zip line ride — that's sliding down a steel cable in a harness — over the canyon.  We didn't get a Zambian visa, though, much to my disappointment.  They also offered bungee cord jumping off the bridge, but since I personally regard that as categorically insane, I wasn't tempted.

Here's the bridge.  The cable we flew down is actually on the other side.
 

The following day was my favorite of the whole trip.

It started with an elephant ride.  I didn't know that African elephants could even be domesticated, except for limited tricks as in the circus, and it turns out that they are willing to take passengers but not willing to do any work, as is common with their domesticated Asian counterparts.  There were about eight or nine elephants of different ages, all female.  At night, they have to be sequestered, because it seems that wild elephants regard them as enemies.  I suppose that's why circus elephants can't be rehabilitated into the wild.

One of the girls was very headstrong and didn't want to stay with the group, but she was not at all hostile, and she did eventually return to the fold after eating some delicious thorny acacia twigs.
 

But what made the day extra special was the afternoon activity: the Lion Walk.

There were five lion cubs, four male, one female, ranging in age from one year (Alex, on the right) to two months (Sasha, in my arms below).  (Rather oddly, I note that "Alex" and "Sasha" are both diminutives of "Alexander".) Four of them accompanied us on a brief hike.

These lions are all orphans and belong to a lion conservation park in South Africa.  Because they are orphans who can't survive in the wild, they are acclimated to humans as cubs.  For this reason they are shipped up to Zimbabwe until they start to mature enough to protect themselves from the other lions in the South Africa park, and also to get used to being around different people so they will be less dangerous to their caretakers and others.

Alex was my favorite.  Most of the time, he acted like a big goofy dog, and showed occasional signs of an adolescent temperament: he would wander ahead or behind the rest of the group as a demonstration of his independence.

 
But at other times he was all cat, like here, playing with a stick.

Toward the end of our walk, our guide had dropped his name tag and a few of us stayed behind to help him look for it in the grass.  The majority of the group was well ahead, but Alex had stayed behind.  The nametag being found, one of the women in the group and I started to walk back toward the main group and were closely observed by Alex.

He detected that we had been separated from the herd, dropped down to hide himself in the grass, and began to stalk us.  He switched from goofy clumsy pet to sleek predator in a split second, like Clark Kent turning into Superman.  His behavior was corrected at once, and the guide wasn't at all amused, but I thought it was great.  But then as the Gentle Reader is well aware, I am a cat lover.

 
Sasha was the youngest and smallest lion, incredibly cute, and I was very surprised when one of the guides scooped him up and put him in my arms, where he seemed perfectly content.  Of course all the the women shrieked that they were next, and it led to a bit of competition between them, rather like a Bargain Basement Clearance Sale.

Everybody got a chance to hold and pet Sasha, and I was the last as well as first to carry what was essentially a big kitten with rough fur.  At one point he endearingly stuck his face against my shoulder.

Love them tiny paws.
 

Our final night in Zimbabwe was a sunset river cruise on the Zambezi above the Falls.  This was idyllic, aided by the gin and tonics, a prophylaxis for malaria, since tonic water contains quinine.

What?

Elephants, hippos, crocodiles, and antelope were all in evidence.

The next day, we headed off to Cape Town.

 

Cape Town is one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  The picture above was taken from Robben Island, the prison island, but it shows you Table Mountain and the city spreading below.  There are a lot of beautiful suburbs, some so extremely exclusive they put Malibu to shame, and quaint towns in the general vicinity.

The view from atop Table Mountain alone is worth the trip.

North of Cape Town is the South African Winelands, headquartered in lovely and historic Stellenbosch. The scenery is beautiful, reminiscent of Southern California at its most lovely. They've been making world class wine there for over three hundred years, and in the early 20th century developed a native grape called Pinotage, a hybrid of Pinot noir and Cinsault (which is called Hermitage in South Africa, hence the portmanteau name).  I'm no wine connoisseur, but I enjoyed it; it's very full and fruity, and reminded me of a good young Beaujolais-Villages.  Oenophiles may contradict me at their leisure.  During our turn in the winelands, we had lunch in Franschhoek, a town established by Huguenots in 1688, at Reuben's, which we subsequently discovered was one of the most famous restaurants in South Africa — the chef was featured on national TV ads as part of the workup for the World Cup next year, which South Africa is hosting.  The restaurant deserves its reputation, believe me.  Dad had a ribeye and I had sprinkbok.  Mouthwatering, one of the best meals I've ever eaten.
As a former mariner and student of navigation, one of the things I most wanted to see was the Cape of Good Hope.

I was in a very special place, the discovery of which changed the entire history of the world.  The Cape was proof that there was an eastern route to India.  This had at least as much influence on the direction of world history as Columbus's discovery of the New World.
The Cape and environs are all part of Table Mountain National Park and are protected areas, more for the unusual flora than for the fauna.  But there is some pretty special fauna.

Behold the African or Black-footed Penguin, formerly identified as the  Jackass Penguin on account of their dulcet and decorous donkey-like voices, on Boulders Beach, just south of Simon's Town on False Bay (where we had another fabulous lunch, this time of kingklip, a South African species of cusk eel, a fish that is not really an eel at all, and saw a visiting American warship, which gladdened my heart), northeast of the cape.  Cute little guys, about a foot tall, but they didn't sing for us.

From Cape Town, we flew to Durban, where  we stayed at the highest ranking hotel on our itinerary, the Beverly Hills Hotel (!). Very luxurious, although they didn't have a Polo Lounge, alas. Since neither Dad nor I had brought our trunks, neither of us went down to the beach to dip in the warm Indian Ocean.  Where there be sharks — you could see the buoys of the shark nets bobbing on the surface.  In fact, after a visit to a combination living-museum-type Zulu village and crocodile farm (where there were some whoppers over a century old), we visited the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board, which is responsible for maintaining public safety with regard to sharks in the local waters.  They also perform research, and we got to observe a shark dissection, which was very interesting and informative.
The final leg of our journey was in Kruger National Park, the largest game preserve in South Africa at over 7000 square miles, about the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined.

I've mentioned game drives before — at left is an example of the type of vehicle.  Seats nine in the back in three rows, each row elevated slightly above the one in front like seats in a theater.  Dad and I sat in the back row, where the height gave us a longer view.
Kruger wasn't quite as abundant in numbers of animals as Chobe was, but it made up for fewer animals by the breadth of species we saw.

One of the first things we saw was this eagle, known as a Bateleur, dining on a dead jackal, which the guide opined as had probably met its end through the agency of a local hyena pack. (We never saw the hyenas, but we didn't expect to — they are nocturnal and the park shuts down at five p.m., right about sunset.) We had seen an African Fish Eagle in Chobe, but the Bateleur was the first of at least five different species of eagles that we saw in Kruger.

One of our ambitions at Kruger was to catch sight of the two of the Big Five we hadn't seen yet.  There aren't any rhinos in the northern section of Chobe, and leopards are solitary.

After our first day there, we had seen any number of wonderful creatures, but no rhino and no leopard. If our last day was like our first, we'd only see Three of the Big Five.
We did see our first gnu.  For some reason, it was hanging out with a bunch of impala — being a herd animal, it probably felt safer in any herd rather than hanging out on its own.  After all, there were lions about.  We'd seen two young males lounging near the river that very morning.

Most herd-oriented herbivores exist in one of three types of nomadic group.  A breeding herd usually contains a single alpha male, females, and juveniles.  (Elephants are the exception to the alpha male rule — there are no permanently attached mature males in any breeding elephant herd.)  Young males may gather together in bachelor herds for mutual protection.  And then there are solo males, usually former alpha males that have been supplanted in a breeding herd by a younger, tougher buck. I'm pretty sure that this wildebeest was a female, though.  We did see others later.
There were two types of monkeys that abounded in Kruger, vervets and baboons.  The baboons were bigger and bolder than the vervets, and they were also more social.  Groups of vervets rarely had more than six or seven individuals, but the baboon troops might have upwards of thirty.†

And they didn't seem to have any fear of motor vehicles whatsoever.  A couple times we came across big males sleeping soundly in the middle of the road, halting traffic in every direction.  I'm pretty confidant this was deliberate behavior on their part.  All monkeys are opportunists, and there is no opportunity like a created one.  We were told that these baboons were not as aggressive and intelligent as the famous bad-behaving baboons down at the Cape, but I'm not so sure if the truth is that they simply don't have the same opportunities.
Our last full day in Africa arrived.  It was very cold and everybody wore several layers of clothing.  It warmed up during the day, but we knew it would be cold again that evening.

One of the first things we saw was an amazing mixed herd of cape buffalo and elephants, dozens of both kinds of animals, both attended by large numbers of juveniles.

This old male seemed suspicious of us, but he didn't seem to notice when the rest of the group started to move on.  Our guide said he was being left behind because he was too old. I think he was a rearguard and was just waiting for us to clear off.

And then we saw the rhino.  The guide had heard over his radio that one had been spotted not far from where we were, and he hurried to get there in time, because he said that rhino sightings were very rare. We watched as it trotted across the road and into the bush.  We were excited. Four out of Five!
At last, triumph! A leopard!

She was very young, and probably had left her mother recently in order to stake out her own territory. It took us a while to make her out in the bush, she was camouflaged so well.

Her body was maybe about three feet long, so she wasn't very big, but she moved with that unmistakable and  powerful feline grace.

What a beauty!

So we did get to see all of the Big Five. (As a matter of fact, we saw all five that day.) Our guide told us that he had never been that lucky before, to see a rhinoceros and a leopard on the same day. But to close the day, the pi่ce de r้sistance.
We were looking for one of two animals: zebra or cheetah.  We weren't really expecting to see a cheetah, since they prefer much more open spaces than the bush country, and one hadn't been spotted that far south in Kruger for almost three months. But we had a reasonable expectation of observing zebra.

We never succeeded, although other members in our group, in a different car, did.  But what we did see was much better.

A rhinoceros family.  And we were the only ones in the entire park to see them. We could barely make them out in the bush, very well hidden — but our guide realized they were heading for a water hole, and so he doubled back hoping to intercept them on their way, and so it was.

Papa Rhino did not seem to like us even one little bit.  He stood guard as his child and mate crossed the road en route to the pond, and only turned his back on us when he was satisifed we were no longer any threat.

One the way back to our lodge, we also got to see the whole of the local pride of lions, of which we had the day before only seen two young males.  They were all in the same spot, males, females, and cubs.  The cubs were playing.
The next day, we flew back to Johannesburg, barely making it in time to catch our international flight home — we were four hours late getting out of Nelspruit, where they had the airport, because of a mechanical problem with our aircraft.

There's nothing like hurrying to catch an eighteen-hour flight.  Hurry up and sit down!

At Dulles, we learned our luggage was still in Africa and worse, I was confused with somebody on the DHS watch list and was delayed as they checked me out.  Dad thought I was going to miss that plane, the one back to L.A., but they finally let me go and eventually we crawled out into the Southern California sunshine.

But not as Southern as the sunshine we had just left.

It was the trip of a lifetime.  There is much left to tell, but hey, if I don't save some stuff, what am I going to chat about over cocktails?

So I leave you with this photo of a cousin of mine, hanging out on the hood of his car, dreaming about traveling to exotic destinations and having adventures.  Why not?

I did.

___

* A correspondent from Pietermaritzburg, KwaNatal-Zulu (who wishes not to be identified on line), informs me that the Big Five are the five most dangerous game animals while hunting on foot, although it seems to me that hunting from a vehicle doesn't somehow make the animals less dangerous; and also that the rhinoceros corner of the pentagon is specifically a black rhino.  All the rhinos we saw were white rhinos, so technically, I suppose, we didn't get to the see the Big Five after all—but us writers being notorious liars, methinks that I will overlook the distinction and forever claim that I did.

** The same correspondent writes that the contrary color variation is correct, i.e., that it is the male who is darker.  I therefore leave the choice between correspondent and guide to the Reader.

†  My correspondent also reports that large gangs of vervets are not rare, having observed troops of twenty or more maraud through suburban gardens.