I’d just spent three days reporting on the SAACI2013 conference, exclusively through social media. It was a first for me: taking pictures, writing notes, interviewing people, downloading, uploading, live tweeting.
Contrary to popular opinion, social media is a hard taskmaster and at times I felt like a spinning top with a constant deadline hanging over me. It took everything I had, not to run for the hills.
So, with the conference ended and several hours to spare before a late flight home, I headed for Addo Elephant National Park on the outskirts of Port Elizabeth.
I decided to enter the park through its proverbial “back door”, close to the little settlement of Colchester on the Sundays River, about 45km from the city centre.
It’s such a quiet entrance that if you blink, you might well miss the turn-off. The meandering road to the gate gives no indication that you’re about to enter South Africa’s third-largest national park.
And as I checked in at reception, I noticed that there was no cellphone reception. Happiness! It was just me in the Albany thicket, that peculiar Eastern Cape vegetation, on this quiet Tuesday afternoon.
My ears alerted me to the presence of buffalo – one of the Big Five – grazing peaceably in thick bush near a stream.
And then, the first elephants hove into view, presumably heading for a nearby dam. One large fellow was walking down the road ahead of the car. He moved off to the left, and I stopped to listen to him feeding on a prickly pear, crunching on it as if he were eating a large, juicy apple.
While he did so, a small herd of kudu browsed nearby, their pelts turning to gold in the late afternoon sun.
Back on the main road, I gave myself a pep talk and turned back towards the Colchester gate. (It’s always a mistake to push too far, too hard, when you’re on a game drive.) Here, the road passed through fields that had obviously once been farmed and it was curious to see large, grey shapes lumbering across this altered landscape with the sea behind them.
But Addo had saved the best for last. As I cruised down the last stretch of road towards the gate, I noticed something reddish slip across the road ahead of me. Jackal?
I slowed down as I approached the spot, and there, sitting next to the road, was a caracal, one of the more secretive of the cat species.
Photography was out of the question as the window on the passenger side was closed and I didn’t want to startle it. So I watched the caracal wash its face with its paw, just like any old moggy, and then give a large yawn. Finally, it decided discretion was the better part of valour, crossed the road behind the vehicle and slipped back into the thicket (and I managed to snap a quick photo at this point). A fitting end to a wonderful afternoon.
