Praks in Wonderland

Our journey started in Johannesburg (after about 40 hours of travel time from home to hotel door) and after a brief night of rest, we headed to the foothills of the Drakensburg mountains. The earth was so red that it reminded me of the US Southwest (Arizona, Utah) but there was an unbelievable amount of vegetation and life on every rock.

Even on the first walk we took around the place we spent our first couple nights, there were animals I could hardly imagine I was seeing. I kept asking my dad, “is that a normal size for this animal?” And every time his response would be that there were many sizes of that animal. The one that struck me immediately was a chameleon. I had always assumed they were moderately sized creatures but the first one we saw was so small I almost stepped on it!

As we continued our journey and visited a wildlife rehabilitation center, we gained a better understanding of the animals we were surrounded by. Hearing the horrible stories of poaching and how widespread it is, was extremely eye-opening. Animals you may not think of as being at risk are being severely affected. Something I didn’t know about before was that poachers will poison a water source to be able to kill the animal of interest (elephants or rhinos for example) and also eliminate the vultures that would eat their carcasses (in large groups vultures may announce the poachers’ presence to the authorities).

This not only puts the obvious populations at risk but has also led to vultures becoming endangered as well. You may look at a vulture and not think that it is a beautiful creature. There are many things in the wild you may not find beautiful, but everything has its place. Vultures are cleaners. Some animals are food, others are pollinators, etc. It was incredible to be completely submersed in the natural world and understand the way every single piece works together.

Watching a male lion consume the carcass of an unborn African Buffalo after it had killed its mother, hearing the snapping of bones and tendons, was illuminating and terrifying at the same time. It broke my heart to see, and hear, and smell, that fetus serve as food but at the same time I understood that it served a purpose.

The vast multitude of animals just casually everywhere was baffling. Especially the birds, my god, the birds. My father used to tell us stories about how when he was a child in India he would chase birds and end up lost across town with the police searching for him (so much so that his family is still friends with the policeman to this day). My sister and I never quite understood that, what’s so special about birds? …..well, let me show you.

Hundreds of types of birds, some colors I’d never seen in the wild. Tens of types of antelope, ranging from the size of a medium-sized dog up to creatures that stood taller than full grown men. Just a genuinely unbelievable variety of fauna in a, relatively, small area. We did get to see the Big 5. Lion, leopard, African cape buffalo, rhino, and elephant – named such for being the 5 hardest animals to hunt on foot.

I will probably say this about most of the places I visit and write about, but if South Africa has not previously been on the list of places you would like to visit it definitely should be. This region gave me a new perspective on the delicate co-existence of life on earth, and I really think everyone should experience that if they can.