Fabian and I visited Kruger National Park. On Wednesday 11 July we flew from Johannesburg to Skukuza Airport, which is in Kruger Park. We picked up a rental car and drove 2.5 hours to Satara Lodge where we stayed 2 nights. The night of the 12th we took a nighttime tour to see nocturnal animals and whomever was awake. The morning of the 13th we took a walking tour in the bush and got closer to animals than I would have imagined was possible. On Friday 13 July we shifted to Skukuza Lodge to be closer to our flight to Cape Town. Saturday 14 July we went to Cape Town.
Upon arrival we picked up a rental car. With 2 minutes of leaving the airport area we saw elephants in the road. I could only think to say not to crash the car into the elephants. We were going slow but the elephants were so close to the car it was surprising. Within 20 minutes more we saw impala, zebra, giraffes, and all sorts of birds. Over our stay we saw 1000s of impala, 100s of wildebeest, 100s of zebra, 10s of Cape buffalo, about 10 groups of 4-12 elephants plus single elephants, about 10 groups of 2-6 giraffes, a pair of lions and a pride of 8, several groups of vervet monkeys, several baboons, a hippopotamus, a crocodile, an ostrich, a group of 8 wild dogs, a few jackels, a few hyenas, many hornbills, a ring tail cat, Cape ground squirrels barking, a secretary bird, nyala, eland, and more deer-likes. We had the feeling of being able to travel in any direction for 5 minutes and see interesting animals doing interesting things. The plant life does not move but it all seems to be in transition as all plants, even larger trees, have interaction with other plants and animals as well as with the earth and wind and weather.
I read what I could about Kruger and South Africa before arriving. There is a marketing or fanbase concept of the “big five game“, which are the elephant, cape buffalo, lion, leopard, and rhinoceros. I understood that these animals were nearby and entered Kruger park but I failed to understand how closely together all these animals lived. The big five and others all live closely enough together to observe each other continually. They pass each other traveling like people in the subway and they eat together like groups of picnickers in Central Park. What I was seeing was what every zoo in the world displays as the popular animals who represent wildlife. All of these animals are in one place, living together, and interacting directly with each other constantly.
The Lion King talks about the “Circle of Life” in which every life form plays a part in the story of every other life form. This is true everywhere but now I see that no where else in the world is this more apparent than here in Africa. My familiarity with wildlife in the United States is that perhaps there is a deer in the woods, and sometimes a bear, or a smaller wildcat, and there are birds and rodents and insects and plants. It would be unusual in the United States to see a wild animal interact with another wild animal, and uncertain even for someone visiting a wilderness area to encounter any large animal, much less several, much less several species who interact. In the zoos of the world the separate animals are in separate pens. In Kruger all zoo animals are together in a single place at the same time and free to take whatever action they choose in response to their environment, the other inhabitants, and whatever life they have for themselves.
I was struck wondering who takes care of all these animals at Kruger. Who feeds them? Who washes them to make them so clean and sleek and groomed? Who directs the predators to their designated prey, and who protects all the prey from being devoured to extinction? The animals seem to travel daily over long distances. Who tells them where to go, where they will find their snacks, how they will access water, and how they can achieve whatever they seek to accomplish? Who tells them when they should play their sports, and when it is fine for them to have naps, how to socialize with their own and other species, and how to find their full and satisfying lives? It seems that they animals have been doing this for 65 million years of mammalian evolution plus whatever lizard hindbrains directed them as birds or reptiles.
I was struck by how fragile the park was. In reading about Kruger before arrival I failed to realize before observing the park the most obvious information: animals are all here together for humans to see. I depend on online information. Wikipedia seems like the most professionally developed information source, and as usual, Wiki is the best in the world and also not good enough to meet needs. In a dubious unsourced amateur publication I read some numbers of how many animals live at the park. The park is a certain size and has 150,000 impalas, several thousands of elephants, zebras, wildebeests, and others, some few thousands of lions and some others, and dozens of many other animals. This information seems reasonably accurate. What I take away from it is that park is huge, and in its most healthy state it has a carrying capacity of 150,000 of one large animal which is closer to the bottom of a food chain of other animals above it in the food chain which must be lesser in number. Humans have to leave the park undisturbed to sustain all this life, which only needs to be left alone as its care. Also, at its most robust, this huge park will sustain only thousands of animals. A human city with 150,000 people is medium sized and rarely will such a city establish any unique or lasting culture. This park is a world treasure for all its life and yet is so much more fragile than any of the many medium-sized human cities in the world. If there is any misstep between now and the end of history all the life in this park will die forever and the environment will cease to exist. The absence of any plant or animal in this ecosystem will lead to quick ecological collapse. None of these animals can exist without all the others.
South Africa is inexpensive to me coming from the United States economy. Travel, food, lodging, specialized tours, admissions, or whatever else all seems priced 20-60% of that which I expect of equivalents in the lower middle class life I lived in New York City or Seattle. Overnight in Kruger park is less expensive than a day in Woodland Park Zoo or Bronx Zoo. I am not sure how pricing happens here but it is out of whack with the world economy. If I met any local people other than servers in Kruger Park then I was not aware, as when I talked with people they were tourists. Whereas in the zoos of the city I always saw local school kids on field trips, and local community organizations taking their tour, and otherwise nearby people using the amenity, I did not have awareness of people of all social classes of South Africa having access to Kruger. I think that they do not.
Our camp, Satara, is 2.5 hours from the airport entrance, and perhaps to any park entrance. I asked a couple of workers if they lived at the park because I could not imagine them making a daily commute into the camp for work. They told me that the routine is 5 days working and 3 days off. I wonder if that means they commute 2.5 hours out of the park, and perhaps more hours to home, as part of those 3 days of time off. The cafe servers were working till 9pm and they were there the next day working at 7am. Perhaps when they are at the park the work consumes all their time.
It is not possible to request any African food at the park with the exception of the cooked meat which would be the same anywhere in the world. About meat – the park expects that guests want to eat the animals of the park as the various deer are on the menu. I suppose people go around the park, looking at the animals and salivating to eat them, then in the evening they eat the meat covered in sugary ketchup. The only food on the menu of the restaurants and cafe of Satara Lodge that was vegan was the toast and the iceberg lettuce salad. Fabian and I ordered the toast without butter and they served it with butter. We ordered a pizza without cheese and server asked us repeatedly what that meant. We explained, and eventually she said that we wanted the feta cheese pizza without feta cheese, and she instead gave us a regular cheese pizza. Among perhaps 10 waitrons none of them had ever heard the concept of vegan, and despite them all speaking perfect English and repeating back to us no meat, no butter, no cream, and no cheese, it was a great confusion for them and for the food service workers. If we had our way I would have liked to have had vegetables of the sort that any regional people ate but Kruger Park’s tourist accomodations exist to approximate what Africans who have never visited a Western country imagine that Western people experience.
We rented a car and could drive around freely. This was a nice experience but not at all sustainable if the park intends to ever increase tourism. Having fewer cars and more group transport would be more sustainable for more visits. There are no smoking signs everywhere with people smoking everywhere. People flick cigarettes from the windows of their cars. If animals are crossing the road and it delays anyone for a few seconds then many tourists will honk at them. If an animal is to the side of the road then people will drive by without slowing down, and only swerving. I doubt it is a problem to run over animals except to the extent that people would not want to pay for damage to the rental car company. It is as if the nature reserve is an amusement park with comestibles for marketplace consumption. People from Western countries should know better. The Chinese coming into the park seem oblivious and are dangerously nouveau riche with seemingly no awareness that anything they do can affect the future. If China develops as an economy, and it seems that it could, then the West has a weak position for requesting better behavior when so many Western people are setting an abhorrent example for the much larger upcoming global middle class. I have doubts that Kruger Park will exist much longer. Tourism is increasing, and the emphasis is on extracting money from the park and not for its long term sustainability. It seems bleak!
Evidently I am part of the global elite which gets to travel and experience whatever I want and I wish that I could be more comfortable as a steward of the inheritance of future generations. I try to think things through but the limit of my intellect tells me that Wiki is where I have specialization and leverage and Wiki is the best outlet for my time and attention. I do everything I can in Wiki in every direction to be most effective. I seek out funding and train others and do mutual support and try to be clever but I simply cannot complete all the things in Wiki which I could do if I had more resources. If I had the power I would connect better with the countless photographers and writers and researchers of this park and every other information-curating institution. All of these organizations have an educational mission which would be magnitudes easier to accomplish if they could access post-Internet digital publishing just a few years sooner than their current trajectory. I and other Wiki people have a vision of the world being connected to the Internet but I fear this will not happen before 20 years, and the major barrier is some social outreach, some software interface development, and some community infrastructure. All of these are inexpensive problems to address. Eventually the world will either have a complete Wikipedia or its equivalent, and that universal reference information will play a major role in guiding decisions about what becomes the inheritance to preserve till the end of humanity and which wildlife, cultures, or whatever else becomes wiped into history. Time seems so sensitive and I feel like getting the information out now without delaying even a few months or years will make the difference in how millions of people behave. I could be wrong, or perhaps I and other Wiki editors exist at the center of human history and guide all conversations and thought about what will be permanent and what posterity will only remember as part of the pre-Internet era. I regret whatever inefficiency I feel whenever I spend my own time doing anything other than what I do best, or when I see any of the huge amounts of inefficiency I see anywhere else. I regret that mostly likely all the people who acted as my servers at Kruger, working in what are lower level jobs in my home country, most likely got their jobs here in this environment of majority unemployment by getting college degrees, making countless concessions, and having to endure injustice beyond what I can comprehend. I wish that the local people were empowered to manage Kruger Park in the interest of the park and the local people and their own culture.
We saw a few hundred tourists at Kruger Park. In all this time we never saw black African visitors to Kruger. It seems like Kruger Park is not a place for the native people of South Africa.