South Africa - the Crux of Kruger

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South Africa’s most famous park divides opinion like no other. Although undoubtedly one of the greatest wildlife parks on the continent, Kruger is dismissed by many as being too managed and developed. So, is it a splendid safari dream or a nightmare in waiting? By Mike Unwin A morning in Kruger We hit the trail before dawn: six of us, plus two guides, picking through tangled acacia scrub along an ancient elephant highway. Night lingers in the quavering whistle of a fiery-necked nightjar, but the pale eastern glow prompts an awakening clamour of francolins and first light slants across the trail to reveal the imprint of its nocturnal commuters: the neat cloven shield of impala, the steam-iron stamp of giraffe, the tiny-pawed embroidery of a genet. Soon we find the tracks we’re looking for: four unclawed toes and three lobes at the back of a hand-sized pad means lion. It’s a big male, and he’s headed the same way we are. Our guides confer and their hushed urgency charges the air with adrenalin. Falling into step, we enter the mopane woodland, its litter of butterfly leaves crunching underfoot. With visibility poor, every shadow seems to hold a glimpse of something tawny, each swaying twig is the twitch of an ear. But time passes, tension ebbs and eventually the trail goes cold. We pause for breath by the clotted droppings of a wildebeest midden. I scan the horizon as water bottles are sought and swigged. This is wild, empty country, and there’s been no other sign of humanity for two days. Then suddenly a deep growl from the thicket ahead jolts me alert again – the unmistakable, menacing resonance of big cat. Our guide beckons us back into line; cautiously we move forward. A morning in Kruger We hit the road before dawn: three of us in a rental car. Unfortunately we’re not the only ones, and at the camp entrance gates we simply join the queue. Engines rev while fingers drum on dashboards and air-conditioning whirs into life. Bang on time the scout raises the boom and, as though at a starting gun, the convoy roars out into the dawn. As the 4WD in front pauses briefly for a startled bushbuck, three more from behind seize the chance to overtake, slaloming around the antelope in their race for pole position. And soon we find them: the same vehicles that had shot off ahead of us, now jammed into an impassable roadblock. This can mean only one thing: lions on the road. In the early morning safari business, as everybody knows, first out of the blocks gets first shot at the big prize – and lions have the handy habit of lolling on the warm tarmac as they return from a night’s hunting. At least I assume it’s lions. Unfortunately our little Corolla is too low-slung for us to see over the crowd. And though I could happily pass up this sighting – watching animals encircled by a ring of land cruisers is not my idea of a wilderness experience – we’re trapped by the convoy backing up behind, so a U-turn is not an option. We sit and wait for the cats to move off, which, given the hassle they’re getting, should happen imminently. To subscribe or buy back issues, click here  Yes, the two experiences described on the previous pages both took place in Kruger National Park. And if, like me, you’ve spent much time there, then at least one of them should ring a bell. South Africa’s most precious national asset is riddled with contradictions: on the one hand, one of Africa’s greatest wildlife experiences; on the other, mass-market tourism at its vulgar worst. Not surprisingly, the park divides opinion like no other. Despite generally being considered one of the great African wildlife parks, up there with Serengeti, Chobe and the like, today’s safari cognoscenti seldom have a kind word to say about the Kruger, dismissing it as too managed and developed. Instead they seek out more exclusive retreats such as Botswana’s Okavango Delta and Zambia’s Luangwa Valley. They have a point: Kruger is by far the busiest of Africa’s great wildlife parks, with over one million visitors per year, 25 rest camps and 2300km of road – 850km of them tarred. The largest camps, such as Skukuza, are more like villages, with shops, restaurants, film shows, petrol stations and conference facilities. In such surroundings the wilderness ambience can prove elusive, while the rather functional aesthetic, all concrete and tarmac, seems designed to offend purists. Even the park’s own weblog bristles at the antics of visitors: “Leftovers, empty drink cans, nappies and plastic bags were strewn all over the place,” reports one correspondent of Christmas Day in Shingwedzi camp. But some other statistics can help put this into context. Kruger National Park is vast: some 19,000 square kilometres (more than 22,000 square kilometres, if you count the private concessions along its western boundary). That’s the size of Wales. And as for one million annual visitors, my English seaside hometown of Brighton, a mere pinprick on the map, gets more than eight million (and they’re noisier, I can promise you). Meanwhile Kruger’s authorities enforce a rigid limit of 4000 visitors per day and will turn away any who exceed this number. Believe me – I’ve tried. In other words, Kruger may seem busy by wildlife park standards, but it’s still a very big and very empty place. Beyond the main roads that link the larger camps are quiet back roads where space and seclusion are easy to find. And beyond view of all the roads lie great tracts of wild country that no tourist ever lays eyes upon. Size isn’t everything, though, and Kruger’s detractors also argue that the park is too managed to count as true wilderness. Its boundary fence, for a start, immediately makes it less ‘natural’ than unfenced parks elsewhere, while interventions such as dams, waterholes, firebreaks and culling (most controversially of elephants) have further compromised its ecological integrity. Fair point, again: big does not mean pristine. Kruger’s management today readily concede that mistakes have been made over the park’s 110-year history. Were they to start again tomorrow they would probably create a more modern, zoned structure, with the camps moved to the margins and a no-go wilderness area at the core. And knowing what they now know about ecology, they would probably also be more circumspect about fire management and the provision of artificial water sources (which have skewed wildlife populations in some areas, speeding the decline of vulnerable species such as roan). But there is no turning back the clock. Kruger’s structure reflects a long and complex history – mistakes included – and many, if not all, other wildlife parks in Africa have benefited from its pioneering work in conservation management. Today Kruger also reflects the reality of contemporary South Africa: a country in the grip of modernisation, with a burgeoning population and land at a premium. Wildlife has to pay its way, and simply shutting out the population at large from a sizeable chunk of their own nation under the guise of some vague ‘wilderness ethos’ would be both hard to justify and self-defeating. This reality, of course, is not confined to South Africa. Conservation areas Africa-wide are under increasing pressure to justify their existence. And those who enjoy exclusive fly-in safaris to private enclaves of ‘real’ Africa do not always see what lies beyond their luxury lodge. South Luangwa, for instance, suffers increasing conflict over land between villagers and elephants along the park boundary; wildlife movements in the Okavango are restricted by the buffalo fence that prevents wildlife mixing with livestock destined for export; and Maasai villagers have taken to spearing wildlife in Amboseli in retribution for eviction from their traditional grazing grounds. The fact is that truly ‘pristine’ wilderness is largely an anachronistic fiction. Our romantic imaginations, stoked by the tourist industry, continue to package Africa as limitless, virgin bush, inhabited by nothing but wild animals and the odd picturesque tribal community. And in the blissful seclusion of a private bush camp this fiction can be very seductive. But who built the airstrip? What happens to the rubbish? How many air miles did that French wine and designer linen eat up? Our very presence in any supposed ‘wilderness’ immediately compromises its integrity. The difference between a public camp in the Kruger and an exclusive lodge elsewhere is often little more than the capacity of the latter to keep its infrastructure concealed. Indeed that’s partly why we pay so much for it. As the wilderness debate rages, what Kruger undeniably does offer is a wildlife bonanza to compete with any in Africa. There’s no arguing with 507 species of bird, 337 varieties of tree and 147 different mammals. Nor with a lion population second in size only to the Serengeti’s, nearly one quarter of the world’s white rhinos and almost as many elephants as Kenya. These riches have not been put there for the punters – they reflect the natural biodiversity of an unusually glittering habitat portfolio. With six distinct biomes, seven perennial rivers, the Lebombo mountains and the granite hills of the southwest, Kruger offers an outstanding natural playground. Wouldn’t it be a shame to miss out on all this for fear of a little over-intrusive tourism? Especially since the latter is so easy to avoid. OK, so the larger camps may not suit those looking for the back of beyond. But Kruger’s camps come in many different sizes, including small and secluded. And it is easy to escape the crowds by meandering through the more remote backwaters of the park. And it is this meandering that does it for me: the freedom offered by the Kruger to explore the bush on your own terms. You may not see as much as you would in the hands of the professionals, but there’s something unbeatable about finding the wildlife for yourself. Take leopards: I have frequently been shown these elusive cats mating, stalking, hunting, possibly even playing scrabble in Zambia’s South Luangwa. But none of these occasions, wonderful as they were, has stayed with me like my first Kruger leopard. It wasn’t a great sighting – about ten seconds in all, during most of which I was fumbling frantically with camera and steering wheel as it disappeared down a donga – but it was all mine. The Kruger is also surely the most family-friendly of Africa’s great reserves. The self-catering camps stock everything you need for a low-budget, DIY safari, and the roads are perfectly navigable by a modest family saloon. For youngsters, to whom wilderness is pretty meaningless unless you can poke, chase or scribble on it, the camps and picnic sites can be a delight. A breakfast spent fending off thieving hornbills from your fried eggs can be worth any number of vehicle hours in pursuit of the Big Five. And if kids and picnic sites sound like safari hell, then you could escape on one of the park’s seven wilderness trails (if you book well in advance). Each takes eight guests for three nights on foot into the heart of the bush. I’ve walked in the Luangwa Valley, the Zambezi Valley and the Okavango Delta – all superb experiences – but for sheer wilderness value the Kruger takes some beating. Exciting memories are legion: that lion we tracked, lost and then found again on the Olifants trail; the buffalo herd that surrounded us on the Wolhutter trail; the black rhino that came steaming out of a thicket on the Metsi Metsi trail. These trails offer a total sensory immersion in the bush and a chance to share its secrets, from the musty odour of a waterbuck’s bedding spot to the hidden heat of a termite mound. Afterwards a wildlife drive feels like watching wildlife on TV. Don’t get me wrong: lodge safaris can be great – and I’ve certainly enjoyed some crackers. But just remember that no private retreat anywhere in Africa, however remote, exists independently of the world outside. Fence or no fence, the wildlife in any park today is confined by the pressures beyond its boundaries as surely as if it were caged. The Kruger is a microcosm of this continent-wide reality. Yet it is also big enough to be whatever you want it to be. You can enjoy glorious upmarket seclusion in the park’s new private lodges or slum it with the hordes in the public camps. You can try your own luck at wildlife viewing or entrust it to the professionals on guided night drives and day walks. From overnight hides to audio trails for the blind, there truly is something for everyone. And is accessibility really such a bad thing? It’s easy to be sniffy when you can afford an exclusive fly-in safari to the Okavango, but what about all those – the overwhelming majority – who can’t? Today Kruger is one of the few major African wildlife parks in which not every visitor’s face is white and/or foreign. Easy access and relatively low prices now draw an increasingly wide spectrum of homegrown visitors, and surely it is in these local hands that the fate of the park ultimately rests. Kruger National Park is an ambassador for conservation to a new generation of new South Africans: the broader its appeal, the stronger the message. Perhaps the casting vote should go to the wildlife itself. It was for conservation, after all, that Kruger was initially proclaimed in 1898; it took nearly three decades before tourism followed. As long as the park authorities can manage tourism without compromising conservation principles, then other concerns remain largely cosmetic. After all, does it matter to that pride of lions whether the gawping tourists have tracked them for two hours on foot or have simply followed a telltale convoy of vehicles? Once the cats tire of the cameras they will simply saunter back into the bush. And just so long as that bush remains, so will they.

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