I am coming to the moment where it dawns on me why this is such a profound thing I’m doing out here with Annabel and Mitch and the others and the hotel staff. And the wildlife.
The wildlife. That word takes on an entirely different meaning here in this complete, natural biosphere of the Madikwe wildlife reserve. This entire environment occurs, continues, with almost no human interface. That’s not to say we aren’t part of the equation here; but humans let life go on without interfering in it. We’re the interlopers. We’re the outsiders, the aliens. The animals live and die, kill or be killed, are born have sex and carry on without us humans. Life goes on here just fine without us.
It’s with the unspoken nod of Mitch that first night when he went another way rather than destroy that one spider web that got me thinking.
He also said at one point during one of the sundowners, “Let them be.” That is the mantra here in Madikwe. We watch from a little distance and let them carry on as they are meant to.
My small philosophical eureka moment over, on to the
Sunday Morning Drive
This morning is epic in so many ways.
First off, my wish has been to see some grumpy old hippopotamuses in their natural habitat.
Easier said than done: we get close enough to see a couple of ripples in the river and hear a couple of honks and snorts, but we cannot get close enough to see the honkers and snorters. I have to be content with this “horse-shoes-near-miss” and be happy I've been that close to a hippo in the wild.
More exciting things to come, we are about to discover.
We move down alongside the river until Mitch finds a ford across this smallish Mariko River. The ford has been improved so that safari cars can cross safely. Mitch drives us through the water and up onto the other side, where we’re not really supposed to be: this is now the Northeast Territory rather than our own Northwest Territory. But there’s a nice “watching spot” to see what’s going on in the stream.
A couple of Egyptian geese are perched on a tree near the water’s edge. They’re watching for fish and lizards, such as the baby monitor lizard sunning itself on some rocks. This one is a young one, only three inches or so long. When it’s fully grown it can measure up to 10 feet.
There’s a pied kingfisher. He darts up 20 feet or so above the water and hovers - just like a helicopter or a hummingbird (!) looking down into the water. In a flash he dives and darts back out, flying away … with nothing. No luck this time. We watch him for a few a few more dives before we start the engine up to go back across the ford.
Whoops.
We back up quickly, to let a long, very large, very old bull elephant saunter down to the water’s edge.
He takes his time. He drags his trunk along the dirt road, looking as if he were really tired. Then he uses his trunk to feel for the bottom of the water before he starts to drink.
He’s thirsty. A full grown male can hold up to 40 litres of water in his trunk. A full grown male will drink 240 litres of water in a day.
We sit back. Wait. Watch.
A good half-hour watching in fascination close enough to get a really good look at this old guy, and we wonder which way he’ll go when he’s had his fill.
He decides to continue along, crossing the ford where we're meant to go. He drags his trunk the entire way. Mitch explains:
Elephants communicate often through sound in the ground. They can sense, ‘hear’ underground vibes from miles away. This old guy is listening to where others may be. He’s also smelling.
The elephant’s ability to smell is six times that of a bloodhound. A bloodhound’s sense of smell is one thousand times that of humans. (I just looked that up on google)
We wait some more.
Since he’s on the road we want to get back to, we wait some more.
When he’s far enough away and going cross country, away from the road, we too make our way back through the water.
Thus endeth the Sunday Morning Drive.
We say goodbye to the other four and this afternoon it will be just the three of us. We will go in search of cheetahs, we hope!
Cheetahs normally hunt solo. But on occasion, they will hunt together. It makes their chances of success a little better. Alas, it is not to be. We will most likely leave Madikwe without having seen these beautiful beasts.
What we do see is the coming together of a mixed herd at dusk: zebra, impala, giraffes, wildebeests. They know somehow there is safety in numbers. Methinks they also know there are two cheetah sisters out there. Waiting. Stalking. Hunting.
As we stop for our last Sundowner here in Madikwe, we're next to one of thousands of trees symbiotically attached to a termite hill. It's a good time to understand this relationship.
Termites cannot digest cellulose, so they need to manufacture mushrooms, which they can digest. To do this, they need water. A living tree out here in the bush has long roots going down deep to where the water is. Termites build their hills next to the tree in order to take advantage of that easy access to water, which they need to grow their crops of fungus/mushrooms.
They do not kill the tree.
The tree must stay alive so that it can provide the termites with the water they need to grow their crops. These termite hills are much more sophisticated than one might believe: human architects and engineers alike have studied these termite structures because of how they allow passages to be shut off and reopened as needed to keep a constant temperature - like ducts in a skyscraper - something needed to successfully grow fungus or to cool and heat a large skyscraper.
We return one last time for a quiet dinner on the open-air terrace of our Madikwe Safari Lodge.
Tomorrow morning is our last drive and it is a humdinger!
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