Page 67 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - South Africa

WILD SOUTH AFRIC A  65

THE SAFARI EXPERIENCE

There is something hugely satisfying about South Africa’s wild places. Partly
it’s the liberating sense of space in the greatest reserves, many of them the
size of small countries; but mostly it’s the thrill of sighting a fascinating
assortment of wildlife, so familiar from television, here made living flesh.
Be it lions roaring on a moonlit night or jackal cubs at play, the safari offers
limitless natural wonder.

A Swahili word that means journey, the (see pp76–7). Ticking them off the list is
term “safari” came into popular usage in considered a rite of passage. Certainly
the early 20th century to describe the there are few exper iences more thrilling
trophy-hunting expeditions popularized than the sight of a herd of elephants
by the likes of Theodore Roosevelt, marching peacefully across the savannah
Ernest Hemingway and Karen Blixen. By or of a leopard lying in a tree, but safari
the late 1960s, these gun-toting safaris should never become limited to an
had largely become a thing of the past, obsessive quest for a quintet of select
as a combination of factors – dwindling beasts. With more than 300 protected
wildlife numbers, increased conservation areas to choose from, South Africa has
awareness and the greater international plenty to keep wildlife lovers occupied for
mobility offered by jet travel – ushered in months, if not years. Its many and diverse
the era of the photographic safari. Today, nature reserves range from the hippo- and
tourists arrive in Africa not with guns but crocodile-filled estuaries of iSimangaliso
with cameras, and the modern safari Wetland Park and the towering peaks of
industry is able to accommodate them the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg, to the red
in a variety of ways, from simple camp dunes and dry riverbeds of the remote
sites and government rest camps to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, home to
exclusive, eco-friendly tented camps and gemsbok and springbok. Further south,
lodges of the private reserves. Table Mountain National Park protects a
One surviving legacy of the colo nial host of endemic species unique to South
hunting era is the notion of the “Big Five” – Africa, such as Cape mountain zebra
lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo and bontebok.

Three springboks grazing, Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park
Safari-goers watching a herd of Cape buffalo, Sabi Sand Game Reserve

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