Roar of wild on our doorstep

BUTTING IN: Black wildebeest spar during a bit of playful activity at Kuzuko. Picture: GUY ROGERS

Tracking spoor in the shadows of Kuzuko elephant herd adds to adrenaline rush, writes Guy Rogers

We were so close to the elephants we could hear the matriarch “belly rumble”, a subterranean growl which, our guide whispered, was warning the herd that we were there.

Crouched behind a spindly tree, we held our breaths. Life stood out in sharp relief. A wafer of moon hung in the blue sky above the pale green spekboom forest and a southern boubou called once.
Otherwise the bush was quite still.
The elephants were perhaps 25m away.

Suddenly in the foreground, another mammoth reared up out of the spekboom, where it had been lying prone, until then invisible to us.
There was a calf too. Branches snapped and there was a shrill, angry trumpet.

We tensed, but our guide chuckled softly. It was just the calf protesting at being pushed aside by its mother.
It persisted and she allowed it to, signalling she was content with our presence. The youngster thrust under her flank and the herd was feeding peacefully again, reaching up their trunks to bend down the tastiest branches amid a symphony of primeval farts. For half-an-hour, we watched and listened in awe, then backed away quietly through the bush.

Our walk with the elephants took place at Kuzuko, a private contractual area on the northwestern side of the Addo Elephant National Park.
It was early morning and, led by our guide, senior ranger JP van Wyk, we had left our vehicle and stalked the herd from the east, keeping the sun in their eyes.
Using his ash bag, a little pouch filled with ash for zero smell, Van Wyk showed how the slight breeze was favouring us.

He pointed out interesting things as we walked: well-trodden animal path “highways”; the lair of a baboon spider with its ornate raised lip; gerbil runways under an overgrown fallen branch; the husk of the kirky bush, slow-burning, so just right as a fire starter; how the leaves of the jacket plum tree get serrated to repel over-zealous browsers; and the giant pancake spoor where the elephants had been.

It was an experience my son and I will never forget. Besides the thrill of being so close to the elephant, I had heard about their low frequency communication system before and it was amazing to actually hear it. It sounds like a rumbling tummy, but scientists say it is produced when the elephants expel air over their long vocal chords and the sound resonates through their giant frames.

Earlier, before dawn back at Kuzuko Lodge where we were lucky enough to be staying, my youngest boy and I had padded up to the swimming pool for an exhilarating dip as the baboons barked from a krantz across the valley.

It would have been a pleasure to spend our time wandering the peaceful pathways at the lodge gazing out over the Karoo towards Somerset East and Pearston, a plume of dust occasionally rising from a vehicle moving on the gravel road in the far-away distance. But there were too many interesting things to do.

History is an important part of Kuzuko. Guided by ranger Luke Beckmann, we visited the graves of two settler families who farmed in the area.
An inscription conveyed something of the hardships they must have experienced on this wild frontier. “In sacred memory of Mary Anne (born Pote) beloved wife of FI Gowar, who departed this life on 10th November 1869 from Putrid Sore-Throat after a brief illness of five days, aged 21 years, six months and 14 days.”

Kuzuko has rescued the two original homesteads for unplugged off-the-grid accommodation and is busy converting the old barn into an environmental education centre to host kids from local disadvantaged schools.

Not far off on the flank of the Zuurberg mountains are several caves revealing the presence of a much older community that probably overlapped with these settlers. Squeezing past aloes and pig ears, chandelier euphorbias and black turrets of hyrecaeum (petrified dassie droppings and urine sometimes harvested for the perfume industry and traditional treatment of epilepsy) Beckmann showed us San rock art that has been dated at 400 years old.

There are paintings of eland, elephant, possibly a lioness, and, even what looked like a giraffe, raising the debate as to whether the species could in fact have been indigenous to the area, contrary to accepted wisdom, or whether this painting was just a memory brought home by a nomadic people.

It was easy to imagine the Bushmen sitting in these caves looking down at the plain, planning an eland hunt – or maybe a raid on the newcomers’ livestock.

Kuzuko has recently been in the news as the new home of Sylvester the lion, the escape artist from the Karoo National Park, and it was good to learn how well he’s fitting in and to understand the natural forces (dominant lions) that set him on the run.

But that was a subject for another story and in the meantime there was the daily tapestry of delight on our game drives.

Posses of ostrich racing madly over the veld raising their wings left and right as they veered; the even madder gait of the black wildebeest, which whirls its white tail to confuse pursuing predators; a kori bustard, biggest flying bird in Africa, beating slowly through the golden evening air. Young Australians Gemma Bradtke and Amy-Lee Woods, in South Africa after Bradtke won a radio competition that allowed her to choose anywhere in the world she’d like to go, summed it up: “It’s amazing”.

On the last night of our visit out again with Beckmann, we came upon an animal we had never seen. Bulky and vigorous, shadowy legend of the Eastern Cape thicket, the bushpig was rooting around in the undergrowth, oblivious to our headlights. We got the whiff of death on the night air and spotted the protruding leg of a kudu carcass. The boar was looking for maggots, a great delicacy, Beckmann told us explained softly.

After 15 minutes it pulled its head out the bush and stood for a moment in the open staring at us, utterly wild, a slab of grey bristly mane, tusks and muscle, then it dashed off into the bush.

The honour was ours, boet.

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