Day 11 (Part 1) - Goodbye to Ngala

Our last day at Ngala began with another wake-up knock on our tent door from a member of the security team, holding a tray of hot French-press coffee and granola chunks.  We bundled up in some warmer clothes and ventured out into the cold, dark morning toward the Range Rover, our security escort scanning the pathway and the trees with a flashlight along the way to make sure that no leopards had wandered into camp overnight.

The rest of our drive mates were already waiting – bundled up under blankets with hot water bottles on their laps.  This would be their last game drive as well – they are continuing on to Cape Town and we to Victoria Falls – the exact opposite of each others’ journeys. 

We went out into the bush with Lee-Anne leading the way, Richard, our tracker, sat propped up on the seat mounted to the front of the vehicle, only his eyes showing through his mass of scarf and tightly-pulled jacket hood.  These early morning drives in the season that is still technically winter down here have to be the coldest for Richard – his presence on the front of the vehicle essentially acts as the initial piercing of the brisk air for the rest of us drifting behind him.

We went out into the bush – the blackness slowly giving way to dark grays and purples, and then to lighter grays and browns, until finally the sun crested over the distance and the full spectrum of African yellows, dry greens, tans, rusted reds and chalky grays could be seen.  Our search this morning was the same as last night’s: the white rhinoceros.

We circled back to the same area we had left yesterday, where there were fresh tracks and other fresh… evidence, let’s say, of two bull rhinos.  Richard hopped off and took a radio to track the animals on foot – we drove around looking for tracks on the road and scanning the horizon for seemingly easy animals to spot given their size, but which when standing motionless against the background of identical color are almost perfectly camouflaged.  After nearly two hours of fruitless searching, we came upon a clearing and off in the distance stood the two bulls – looking straight at us, one with a massive, spear-like horn curving upward toward the sky.  They are unlike any other animal you will ever see.  They are enormous and truck-like and look as though they fell out off the pages of a book on pre-historic times.  They are like elephants, but with a sturdier frame and shorter legs.  Yet despite their hulking size, they are nimble on their feet, timid at times, and playful with one another. 

Around the same time that we approached them, the light-weight anti-poaching plane did a low fly-by, which made the rhinos a bit more skittish.  They rumbled across the road and into a very rocky, thick section of the bush.  We pushed after them into the bush, Lee-Anne navigating paths where there were none, avoiding immobile mahogany and ledwood trees and trying to by-pass rocky outcrops that were too jagged for the tires.  We were able to approach them and snap some photos for a moment, then they would wander off deeper into the brush.  

We would follow them a bit more and the same would occur.  This cycle repeated several times until the brush got too thick and the terrain got too rocky for the vehicle.  We turned around and tracked back through the brush – carving a new path, but which the bush would almost immediately reclaim with shrubs and grass so that you almost cannot tell that a massive vehicle with seven people had just driven through.  Evolving in this terrain over millennia tends to make the flora very hardy and robust.

As we came back to the road, we tracked our tracker for a bit, until we saw him straight ahead sitting on a fallen tree, appearing as though he saw us several minutes before we saw him.  Lee-Anne quickly let Richard know that we had successfully tracked the rhinos without him, to which Richard, among the most stoic people while on the job, smirked and said “You tracked them, or you hit them with your car on the road?”

We drove on, continuing our morning drive.  Coming up a hill on a straight portion of road, we were surprised to see an electric yellow helicopter jolt up from the ground about 500 meters ahead of us.  Lee-Anne quickly recognized it and noted that a team of professionals was going to do a rhino notch on the property today, and the action and location of the helicopter indicated that it was likely just ahead.

This next section requires a bit of background.  Rhinos are being poached at levels that will quickly extinguish the species within the next decade.  They are being poached because there is a belief in certain parts of certain southeast Asian countries (i.e., China, Vietnam) that traditional forms of “medicine” can cure cancer, impotence and illnesses – and that powder made from a rhino horn is one of the key ingredients in many of these types of “medicines.”  There is, of course, no scientific basis for this belief – and it’s not true.  But traditional medicine is widely practice in many southeast Asian communities and there are many, many people in that part of the world (see my blog entry from 2007 when I toured a traditional Chinese medicine factory in Shanghai).  The economic laws of supply and demand take it from there: there are many people who want to purchase rhino horns for this ludicrous purpose, and there is an extremely limited supply.  Hence, one rhino horn can provide enough income for a poor South African to feed his family for at least a year, maybe several years.  Coupled with poor enforcement of anti-poaching laws and a lack of leadership from top levels of the South African government on the issue, and you have a recipe for extinction.

Fortunately there are small factions of people with a brain on their shoulders who are trying to do something to reverse (or at least slow) the regression of this species, and Lee-Anne is one of those people.  Her efforts have raised tremendous amounts of funds, which had lead to the purchase the helicopter and the light-weight plane and other persons and technology necessary to prevent and police poachers. To learn more about her organization, visit Our Horn is NOT Medicine.

Rhino notching is one such effort, but an unfortunate one.  In a rhino notching exercise, a ranger rides in the helicopter while a skillful pilot maneuvers it over the bush and around a crash of rhinos and with pinpoint accuracy, the ranger darts the rhino exactly in the location where the dart needs to hit to be effective, but will not harm (or even kill) the rhino.  When the rhino begins to show the effects of the drug, a team of professionals swarms in on jeeps and begins to stabilize the rhino making sure that it lands in the right position so that it can be fed oxygen and that its blood will circulate.  If the rhino starts going into the thick brush, the helicopter swoops down to 20 or 30 feet and directs it back into the open.  Once the rhino is out, the team – looking like a pit crew at a Nascar race – takes DNA samples, cuts a pattern into the rhino’s ear so that it can be identified, and inserts a chip into the rhino’s horn using a drill and an epoxy resin.  Sadly, this is not to track and protect the rhino so that it can lead a safe and healthy life, but instead is a complex system being put into place to prosecute those caught with rhino horns to the fullest extent of the law with insurmountable evidence linking the horn in their possession to the carcass of a murdered rhino – and hopefully act as a disincentive to other poachers.

We watched the notching from a distance.  This one was even more special because Ivan Carter, a hunter, conservationist (yes, those can be consistent with each other) and documentary filmmaker was using this notch for part of an upcoming US television series.  So cameramen and a small camera drone also complicated the scene. 

When they were done with their work and filming, the crew motioned to Lee-Anne (about 500 meters away) to bring us over.  We pulled up next to a jeep full of staff from the lodge (which the company brought out to include in this important event and give them an experience that they can orally pass along to others in their villages).  And then we, in small groups, were allowed to walk up to this majestic, sedated beast.  We touched the rhino’s thick, warm skin.  We felt its side swell with air as it breathed.  It was one of those experiences for which words and pictures fall short of relating to another person.

We pulled away from the rhino and watched the team administer the anti-serum to wake it up.  It took effect quickly and within 2-3 minutes the animal was up and stumbling around, then started jogging away from the clearing (its ear surely in discomfort) and smelling the air for its companions, which were chased away by the helicopter, but which stood atop a neighboring hill about 750 meters away, watching the entire time out of concern and compassion for their friend.

We rode back to the lodge, each of us slightly different than when we left on the drive that morning.  This was an experience that people don’t get to have.

On the way back to camp, we were surprised to come around a curve and find underneath an ancient mahogany tree Richard, from the lodge, with a full outdoor breakfast set up.  The six of us, Lee-Anne, and the Richards (our tracker and our cook) enjoyed a last meal together as a group and discussed the portions of our trips together and the portions of our trips yet to come.

After breakfast, just 500 meters from the camp, we turned the corner and stumbled into a group of about 20 old bull Buffalo, which had been pushed out of the herd by the younger more dominant males and themselves formed a boys-club coalition to graze in relative safe conditions until their lives came to an end.  This was the last remaining species of the Big 5, named after the five historically hunted species in southern Africa that are the hardest and most dangerous to kill: lion, leopard, buffalo, rhino, elephant.  To find and photograph all of the Big 5 in just two days time was an impressive feat.

In a stalling fashion, we packed up our bags.  Lee-Anne hung out at our tent as we packed and we chatted about how great it was to see one another and when we might cross paths again one day.  There aren’t a lot of people like Lee-Anne – certainly not enough of them.

(Richard, not Lee-Anne)

We took our transfer car, along with our Singapore friends, to Hoedspruit airport, passing a few animals on the way.  The airport is tiny – there is one check-in counter and three flights a day, but with a number of local men hanging around to help you take your bags the 10 feet from your van to the check-in counter in exchange for a tip.  The main guy at the kiosk weighed each of our bags and then said “Your bag is overweight,” but never followed-up on the comment with a penalty or repercussion for our American-style packing job.  I watched our bags be thrown into a pile of similar-looking bags and I separately watched four tags print out – but I couldn’t be sure that those four tags made it to those four bags.  We’ll see on the other side.

Inside the airport there is a little food counter with a small woman.  You can buy little cheese and tomato sandwiches, candies, chips and a number of drinks, including several kinds of beer.  Jen had a Windhoek lager and I had a Castle (Nambian and South African, respectively) and we each had a cheese toasty.  Our Singapore friends boarded their flight to Cape Town and we wished each other a good rest of our respective trips.  After a while our flight to Johannesburg boarded and off we were to our next leg of this adventure.