The picture on the front of our KNP guidebook seemed to suggest we'd be driving amongst herds of elephants. Cool. Hennie (the Afrikaner we'd stayed with the night before) warned us against elephants, however, as he and his wife almost got trampled on more than one occasion. The secret, he told us, was to make sure, upon spotting an elephant, that none of its friends were lurking in the bushes nearby. Apparently, they don't take too kindly to cars and tend to stampede.
When people offer me life advice, I take it one of two ways. Assuming the person dispensing the advice isn't crazy or stupid, I consider the advice and take it. Assuming the person, however, is slightly crazy or the advice ridiculous, I sort of laugh it off. This advice was taken in the latter way. How not to get trampled by elephants? LOL.
I think, if this study-abroad experience has taught me anything, it's that I shouldn't assume I'm invincible. Bad things happen to me. I fracture vertebrae. I get terrified of snorkeling. That's just how it is. And yet, invariably I think I'm immune to danger.
So, yes, Kruger. After renting a car in Nelspruit we arrived at Kruger -- it was a little shaky at first, because Nick "learned" how to drive stick in three practice sessions before driving on a South African highway (being a former British colony, South Africa subscribes to the driving-on-the-left-side-of-the-road philosophy, as well as having the steering wheel on the other side, something he didn't learn in the U.S.), and we sputtered for a while before he got his bearings. It was midday, and people are allowed to drive their cars from 6 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (daylight hours, because it's really dangerous to not be a professional game driver on a wildlife reserve at night), and we'd reserved our lodging for four days and we'd be darned if we weren't going to get our money's worth. So we set out to see what we could see.
Which, at first, was basically nothing. Well, there were some deer-like things -- impala, steenbok, kudu -- but it was sort of like fishing when nothing bites. Not that I've ever fished before, but I imagine it'd be kind of boring, much like looking for wildlife without success. But then -- kabam! -- we saw some zebra! They were grazing. Amazing. They looked just like horses. Some of the cars stopped to look, but others drove past, because they'd already seen zebras, and BORING. We drove on with the occasional impala (by this point, their novelty was somewhat wearing off) in the distance but absolutely nothing.
And then -- and then Nick said "Oh my god" and reversed the car. And standing on our right, on the side of the road, not ten feet from the car, was an ELEPHANT. It was so ... huge! And so hungry! It was eating and ohmygodihaveneverseenanelephantinitsnaturalhabitatomgomgomg. So we turned off the car and just watched. We snapped pictures, we took videos, we marveled at the sheer size -- and appetite -- of one of the Big Five.
I think the best way to explain Kruger Park is to equate it with Jurassic Park (the original, not the ten million sequels). Same concept. Only, well, sans dinosaurs. And plus African wildlife. You just drive in your car and observe animals in their natural habitat, a self-guided safari. Sure, you're taking some kind of risk with the bigger animals, but you're also seeing these animals close up. Eeek!
But, like Jurassic Park, it's terrifying. Because our elephant friend realized he wasn't alone. Soon, he decided the tree he was tearing apart wasn't so important. He looked at us and took a few steps toward the car.
Let me once again mention that the car was off. Further, starting the car would probably only make Ellie angry (= goring us, grinding our bones to make bread, etc.), so I guess in technical terms we were, at that moment, SOL. And completely subject to nature.
Ellie-poo was approaching. My sweat glands were working overtime (note to self: the roll-on I just bought? Not so effective). I wished I hadn't just had a lot of water to drink. I was suddenly reminded of another scene in Jurassic Park, the one where the T-rex attacks and they're in the car and he throws them in the tree and crushes them, and the girl screams and there's blood everywhere and they almost die. (I guess watching that movie at a young, impressionable age might have been a mistake. Perhaps that + my overactive imagination were not really what I needed at this point.)
The elephant managed to actually enter the road and stopped just a foot or two from the car. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. My sweat glands and urinary tract were not the only bodily organs working overtime, however: I also had quite a few disjointed thoughts running through my head, not the least of which being, seriously? This is how I'm going to die? Getting trampled by an elephant in South Africa? No one's ever going to believe that! Ugh.
The runners-up include:
1. It's a boy. Elephants are enormous, turns out. No surprise there, but as I was bracing myself for eminent death, I really wished I weren't seeing the elephant's package. In such horrific detail. Wouldn't it be better to go out looking at a young, shirtless Streetcar-era Marlon Brando or something? Not at eight-foot-long genitalia. G-ross.
2. Why do I think I'm invincible? Avis, the company we'd used to rent the car, had even told us elephants were "notorious" for trashing cars. I wished I'd paid more attention to the how-to-avoid-an-elephant-stampede lecture. The good news, though, was that not additional elephants seemed to be lurking about. The bad news, of course, was that death was staring us right in the face.
So we sat there, staring at each other for what felt like a few years. I guess, in actuality, it was probably just a minute or two (however, if it's actually 2012, let me know. K?). The elephant was probably all "WTF?" and we were all, "FML." Nick had rolled up his window at one point, although it seems the good this would have done us is minimal. Unless the elephant didn't enjoy hearing girls hysterically babbling phrases like "Oh god, oh god, oh god" or "please, please, please, go away" or "how am I going to leave a pretty corpse if I get gored?" or "WHAT? I thought they were herbivores?" Nick tried to calm my hyper-perspiring self down -- "It just wants to eat. That's all it wants to do. Eat. It's going to go eat" -- but he seemed pretty freaked out, so it didn't assuage my fears.
But the good news: we're apparently pretty boring. After checking out our super-compact Hyundai, the elephant decided it needed to really pick up the pace if it wanted to keep up its eating-14-hours-a-day quota, so he trudged back across the road and proceeded to uproot more trees.
Sigh of relief. Perspiration ceased. I realized I now had a stereotypical dangerous-wildlife story to tell. Happy endings for all. We started up the Hyundai and were out of there.
Since leaving the park (I love how I am so well prepared for places well after visiting them), I've learned the elephants in Kruger are especially vicious, more so than other elephants at wildlife reserves. Does it make our close encounter that much more exciting? (Yes.)
A few minutes later, we stopped for a giraffe, which crossed the road slowly.
"Does... that thing like goring humans?" I asked. (I'll attribute my stupidity to being in shock.)
Giraffes -- not one of the Big Five (lion, rhino, leopard, elephant and buffalo), but still pretty amazing. They were so calm, too, and seeing cars pass by didn't phase them at all.
To sum up Kruger briefly, in three full days, we saw four of the Big Five. We ran across herds of elephants (none so close as the one we saw on day one), rhinos, buffalo and lions. The lions -- sightings are a little more rare than for the other animals -- were cute. Though, really, in the heat of the sun they seemed a little lethargic. At first I thought they were literally dropping dead, but it turns out they just have a not-so-subtle way of falling asleep. Otherwise, they were big cats. And I was glad I was in a car. Strangely, the big herbivores (elephants, rhinos, buffalo) are the scariest animals to see from a car because they can actually do some damage. No leopard sightings, though they're notoriously hard to spot.
And yes, we eventually got to be the tools who passed the zebra, because I mean, we'd already seen a ton of them so whatever. No other terrifying wildlife encounters. We also saw a cute baby giraffe and a bridge with lots of baboons.
Sadly, my computer is developing an aversion to SD cards, so my words will have to be illustrative enough. I will, however, upload pictures as soon as I can. Until then, pretend I've taken this picture (and yes, that I've stepped out of the car, because I'm a B.A.):
Picture courtesy safarisdirect.co.za
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