Africa: Part 1 of 4
Balule Reserve, northeastern South Africa
“Toro Yaka” means “My Dream” in Northern Sotho, a local South African dialect. It is also the name of a small and nearly perfect bush lodge located in the heart of the Balule Reserve, which encompasses 38,000 hectares (about 95,000 acres) adjacent to famed Greater Kruger National Park. Balule is home to remarkable animals, hundreds of bird species, and a 1,000 year old leadwood tree. Lord knows how many leopards have snored on its branches.
I recently stayed at Toro Yaka for four days of photographic safari drives and was mesmerized by the ecosystem’s jigsaw puzzle of inter-reliance. Slowly bouncing through different types of topography, within 36 hours of arrival I had seen Africa’s famed “Big 5:” elephant, rhino, Cape buffalo, lion, and leopard. These five are not called the Big 5 based on size, but because of the danger they present to hunters and foot travelers. These are the species most likely to attack and kill you. While giraffes and hippos are much larger than buffalo and cats, giraffes have the demeanor of elementary school teachers and hippos will only kill you if you annoy them in or near their territorial water. The word in Africa is, “Avoid the hippos.”
Wild elephants are not circus pets and some have a very short fuse for idiots. Despite its massive size, a motivated rogue can run you down from behind and you will never hear it coming. On the grounds of Balule the elephants are used to safari trucks. The predators recognize a truck and its passengers as a single unit but everyone is warned to remain seated and never stand or climb out to get a better photograph. Doing so creates an unfamiliar site and threat, and the animals will flee or fight. The meek will run. Others will charge. Since many photographs are taken within twenty yards of these powerful wild animals, screwing up means the animal could be on you in seconds and you would have insufficient time to safely react.
The bush is the flora of the domain. Everything in it, from the tallest of trees to tiny seeds, plays an important, interconnected role in this remarkable mosaic of African life.
Elephants are the landscape architects. They knock down trees, use their trunks to break off branches, strip bark with their tusks, and consume about 500 pounds (each) of roughage each day. Their digestive system removes about 40 percent of the nutrients and drops the rest. Elephants bomb cannon balls of manure like heaven does raindrops. Since they feed 18 to 20 hours a day — and sleep only two — smaller animals and birds move have bountiful opportunities to pull the dung apart. Fertilized seeds spread this way, which is vital to reforesting the landscape.
Rhinos are endangered, massive animals with a face like a triceratops. They have poor eyesight but have acute hearing and sense of smell. They eat roughly 200 types of plants and male rhinos navigate the bush as loners but protect their space envelope by running down anyone or anything that encroaches. A rhino can easily outrun a person. We were sternly cautioned never to think otherwise.
Rhinos are browsers with teeth that act like pruning sheers, cutting branches clean at a 45-degree angle. I saw two at Toro Yaka, a female with a wire snare lassoed around her neck (thanks to a poacher probably hoping for impala), and a healthy young male. There are only 25,000 or so black rhinos left on Earth and all are in South African preserves. Their horn is coveted by Vietnamese, Chinese, and Middle Eastern money moguls. On the black market a single rhino horn — based on the going rate of $30,000 per pound — can sell for $100,000, making rhino horns more valuable than gold. Every day in sub-Saharan Africa the war between preservationists and poachers rages on. Rhino females drop a baby every three years or so, and poachers kill them too. Gun battles, deaths, and arrests are common. So are payoffs. The sorrow is not just in the rhinos’ rapidly dwindling numbers, but also the realization that the horn’s magical powers to cure cancer or make a man perform better do not exist. The horns are made of keratin, similar to fingernails.
On the other hand cape buffalo are herd animals — grazers of the savannah grass — and are similar to the leopard in one very dangerous way: neither bluffs an attack. If a buffalo or leopard starts toward you, it will not stop. Each attacks to kill.
I saw hundreds of Cape buffalo and never tired of looking at them. Each is a photogenic masterpiece, an old bull’s weathered visage telling a thousand stories. These are herding animals that rely on strength in numbers to protect the young and old from lions. The buffalo need savannah grass to graze, and cut it down low before moving on. This shorter grass suits the needs of two good friends, zebras and wildebeest, who are short-grass grazers. When the buffalo, zebras, and wildebeest graze on the grasses, it is too low for the lions to hunt. The cats need tall grass to hide.
The big cats (leopards, lions, and cheetahs) are elegant in different ways. The lion is majestic and powerfully built, while the leopard is a solitary hunter that is usually nocturnal and relies on its quickness and stealth. Cheetahs have blur speed — up to 75 miles an hour in a sprint — and can outrun an impala. They are also remarkably limber with their fluid ability to adapt and maneuver at a very high speed.
Female lions travel in prides (families) of other females, yearlings, and babies. The adults teach the young how to hunt, and all in the pride share the kill. Near sundown of my second day at Toro Yaka we came upon a lioness with a fresh kill, a 200-pound male waterbuck (a large member of the antelope family) that she ambushed near the river. We watched from thirty yards as two lionesses, three younger lions, and two cubs fed first from the waterbuck’s gut sack and then stripped meat from its hindquarters. We returned the site each of the next two days, monitoring the lions’ progress. In less than 48 hours the waterbuck transformed from a majestic horned trophy animal to a skeleton. Everything was eaten but the bones and horns. Nothing was left to waste.
The kill was made in the high grass 50 yards from the year-round Olifants River, which flows through the property. Although the river is stained by chemical runoff, hippos and crocodiles call the Olifants home and elephants frequently splash across. Three things make South African safaris, well, South African safaris, and water is one. The second is sun. The third is the bush, which is shaped and reshaped by the elephants, fire, drought, and rain.
From the stark reality of life and death from watching, for hours, the fresh kill of the lioness, to the sad witnessing of a different, emaciating old lioness struggling with a broken front leg to find food, I couldn’t help but think about how brilliantly all the pieces of this majestic landscape fit so perfectly together.
During my stay at Toro Yaka I went out for four sunrise game drives and four more at sunset. Every trip was a surprise, a wonder of natural gifts. A fitting finale came when we rolled back at camp after my final drive. We had seen virtually everything already mentioned plus the majestic kudu, herds of impala, wary little bush bucks and puku, wallowing hippos, lazy crocodiles, sneaky black-faced vervet monkeys, giant owls, and fierce baboons.
From the back row of the tall safari truck I climbed out, stepping back and down into empty space. Gravity took me the rest of the way. I landed with a spectacular thud. Sprawled on my back in the dusty darkness, looking up at a black sky exploding in stars, I did the fitting thing: I made sure all appendages worked and fanned out a snow angel in the cool evening dust.
A fitting tribute to Toro Yaka, the Balule Reserve, and the greatest show imaginable.