![]() ![]() Of Kruger National Park’s (KNP) 7,523 square miles (about the size of Israel), Jock had exclusive rights to game drives on 23 square miles, and could also track game on any public land within KNP. Telling me how he does the tricks would only detract from the experience. To be honest, I didn’t want to know how Laz was so good at his job. Laz and his fellow rangers–usually three or four trucks went out at a time–would communicate on the radio to let each other know if they spotted something that was worth taking their passengers to see. Even when it got dark, and the rest of us could barely make out an elephant if it was charging the vehicle, Laz was pointing out tiny rodents climbing up trees with nothing but a flashlight he waved back and forth in front of the truck like a windshield wiper. Laz was undoubtedly looking for and finding clues that were going right over our heads. He would examine dung and tracks in the sand, listen for birds tipping off the location of land animals, scan the horizon for movement hundreds of yards away, and I imagine he was doing things we didn’t even realize, like smelling for clues. And we were off to a pretty good start.īut as exciting as it might have been to see that first elephant, Laz made sure the full Jock experience was worth the price of admission–and a massive upgrade from casual cab-side animal spotting. But I can’t blame her, because that’s why we were there: to see things we’ve never seen before, and see them up close. My wife, perhaps without realizing it, exclaimed “Oh my word!”–simultaneously channeling the wonderment of a 5-year-old and the phraseology of a 90-year-old. Sure enough, about 30 feet from our car was an adult African elephant. Our driver, a part-time safari ranger himself, pointed to his left and matter-of-factly said, “Elephant.” In fact, we saw one from our cab from the airport to the park, 90 minutes before we arrived at Jock. It didn’t take long for us to see our first TB5 animal. Laz says it wasn’t uncommon for European hunters to have safari tales about how a buffalo, or a rhino, killed one of their family members or friends. There’s also some historical context around TB5, as Laz explained to us one night over dinner: When European hunters would come to Africa to hunt dangerous and rare game, many were killed attempting to fill their trophy room with heads and hides. From the airport gift shop to the hundreds of small shops in between Kruger and Johannesburg and Cape Town, TB5 adorned kitschy souvenirs, from placemats to postcards. *These days, TB5 is essentially a marketing campaign, a brand, even. But in fact these are the five animals that were historically the most difficult (and dangerous) to hunt on foot.* (We did see TB5. ![]() The Big Five (TB5, as I’ll refer to them) might seem arbitrary to the uninitiated, as it was to me I was more excited about seeing, say, a giraffe than a Cape buffalo. The goal of of a safari trip is, ostensibly, to see The Big Five: African lion, African elephant, Cape buffalo, African leopard, and rhinoceros. You don’t want to be the guy, my friend warned, who makes the ranger turn back so you can use the bathroom in the middle of a drive. ![]() *On the advice of a friend who had been on safari in South Africa a few years before, I made a point not to have too much caffeine before we left. We’d step out of our room, spray ourselves down with bug repellent, head to the dining room for a quick cup of coffee* and a snack, and get going on the first of two three-hour game drives that day. With our eyes barely open we threw on the safari outfits we’d carefully picked out a few weeks before–breathable outerwear to keep us cool (which we’d learn would not be a problem on safari in September) and cover us the strong African sun and the persistent, (possibly) malaria-carrying mosquitoes. From that point we had 30 minutes to get out of bed and get to the green open-air Toyota Land Cruiser where Laz was waiting. We awoke at 5 am to a call from Lazarus (Laz for short), our safari ranger for the duration of our stay. (All photos courtesy of Kimberly Calise.)Įach day of our three-night stay at Jock Safari Lodge began the same way. This first post, in a series of, well, I’m not sure how many yet, describes our experience on safari in Kruger National Park, South Africa’s prodigious game reserve, in the northeast corner of the country. The following travelogue details the first four days of a recent two-week trip my wife and I took to South Africa. ![]()
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