Few experiences can be as exciting as sitting nervously in game vehicle while a pride of lions slowly walk by – a mere feline pounce away. Some of them pause, and stare at you straight in the eye. What is she thinking?
“Mmmm. That one looks tasty”.
She knows that with a single leap she could be on the back seat in a micro-second, wreaking havoc with her massive claws.
She does not make the leap and instead carries on walking with the pride, until the next one purposefully glances up.
Game-viewing vehicles have no top. An agile big cat could launch itself on to the vehicle and choose whether to shred the guide or any of his passengers on the rows of seats behind him.
The guide has a gun, but if a lion were to jump on an annoying photographer he would not be quick enough to respond. It would also be impossible to shoot if the lion were tangling with a person in a vehicle full of passengers.
It seems like a disaster waiting to happen. Guides take visitors out for game drives at dozens of reserves every day. Yet I have never heard of such an incident at a properly run game park.
Several years back, I was with my family on such a game drive at a private lodge in the Eastern Cape. We came upon a pair of mating lions. A third lion, a big male whose coalition partner had excluded him from the party, was angrily venting his frustrations at the wind about 20 metres away.
The guide parked our vehicle at a respectful distance and I began taking photos.
While clicking away, I thought, “What if one of them leaps into our vehicle? Would it make a difference if I flung myself in front of my family?”
The cuckolded male was angry anyway. He stared at us. He stared at the happy couple. He stared at us again.
Our guide quietly placed his hand on his rifle, but did not remove it from its rack.
I carried on taking photos, but thinking, “What if the lucky male could no longer stand our voyeuristic intrusion and decided to do something about us?”
Fortunately, nothing dramatic happened and beside moderate camera shake, I was able to get some photos.
Guides say that lions don’t attack people on vehicles because they don’t recognise a person as being distinct from the game viewing cruiser. They see the vehicle and all the people on it as one single (imposing) entity that they cannot overcome.
Personally, I don’t buy that explanation. Lions are very good at identifying prey and I doubt they would confuse a person with a part of a truck. I believe that lions learn while they are very young, to distinguish between what is prey and what is not. That is why some prides sometimes hunt elephants, but others do not.
There have been rare, tragic accidents at small safari-parks that allow self-drive visits and at reserves that allow lions to jump on the back of feeding trucks. Allowing predators to find meals on the back of vehicles is dangerous and irresponsible. It means that the lions recognise trucks as food dispensers, therefore they are more likely to attack people on game viewing vehicles.
What about elephants?
Last weekend, my wife Ilza and I spent a wonderful day at the Addo Elephant Park (AEP). We invariably gravitate to the main waterholes in the park because all animals need to drink, especially when temperatures are hovering around 30 degrees (86F).
When we went to the park in January (twice) and February we saw large herds of 30 or 40 elephants at the Marion Baree, Rooidam and Gwarrie waterholes. They were great sightings but we were a little disappointed by the desolate Hapoor waterhole – usually one of the most frequently visited spots in the whole reserve.
This time we saw a herd of about 30 elephants tightly bunched around Lismore. The herd was made up mainly of elephant cows and boisterous calves. The young ones sparred with each other, ran around and rolled in the dust – but none of them were drinking from the tiny waterhole.
Four dagga boys (male Cape buffalo) occupied the water and appeared to have frightened the much larger elephants off. It was so strange to watch how dozy looking geriatric bovines could scare away a sizeable herd of elephants.
After some time, the buffalo slowly wandered off in their own directions and the elephants could take charge and quench their thirst.
I was a little worried about going to the Hapoor waterhole because recently I had heard that the dam wall was leaking and management might have to redo the whole area.
I need not have concerned myself – assembled around Hapoor was the largest gathering of elephants I have ever seen. Several large herds had congregated around the area – actually Hapoor is made up of the main waterhole and two smaller drinking ponds. It is hard to say exactly how many elephants were there, but I estimate that the number was somewhere between 150 and 200.
That is an incredible number of elephants essentially in one place.
There were many visitors’ cars parked around the waterhole and a few on the access roads. We parked on the apron right in front of the main waterhole and watched in amazement as they walked around, suckled their calves, pushed each other around.
Sometimes they drank and a few of them swam in the muddy waters of Hapoor, but most of the time, they seemed to be socialising in smaller groups. What were they discussing?
It is incredible how so many very large animals can be in such a small area and appear to get on with each other without any problems. There were occasional incidents of sub-adults shoving and testing their strength against each other, but it was overwhelming peaceful.
Elephants were walking around the parking apron coming close enough to cars so that if I leaned out, I could touch them. Many times they were less than a metre away from my car, yet they never touched it.
On the other hand.
As we left the Hapoor waterhole, we were driving up a dirt road when I noticed a single elephant standing in the road up ahead. It was walking towards us.
Many times in the past I have encountered similar situations where we follow the standard procedure. Park your car on the side of the road making sure the elephant has enough space to walk by. Switch off your engine so the noise does not rattle him.
This time it felt different. I had stopped on the side of the road and he still kept coming.
His ears were flapping and he definitely picked up the pace. That in itself is not unusual. Elephants usually walk faster when they are thirsty and they walk towards a waterhole. That big fella was lumbering towards Hapoor.
Those flapping ears? Well, maybe it was from the accelerated movement as he trundled down the hill.
Then things changed for the worse. He moved to the centre of the road signalling that he was not interested in simply walking by.
I put the car into reverse and accelerated backwards down the hill with a mean looking elephant bull staring me down.
WATCH: Bull elephant chasing us down the road
It was difficult keeping the car on the road. I am not used to high speed chases in reverse. I was worried the elephant would gain on me and I was worried that any of the other visitors from the parking apron could have followed me up the hill.
Fortunately, none of the nightmare scenarios came to pass and I am still alive and able to write this Real Safari Newsletter. Eventually he got bored or felt that he had made his point and wandered off the side of the road.
Whew!!
I hope you enjoyed this week’s edition and feel free to pass it on to your friends who might also be interested in taking a drive on the wild side.