The Wild Coast
I spent four days traveling through a region formerly known as
the Transkei. It is mostly rural, with people living simple
lives of farming and agriculture, many of whom live in homes
without electricity.
Most people live in round, one room mud and straw huts. It is
also a barren place with grassy plains and dry trees (along with
several tea plantations) though there are some places that have
gorgeous waterfalls, oasis pools, and small forests that were
quite appealing. I visited Magwa Falls (110 meters) and Fraser's
Falls (200 meters or a little over 700 feet high), the latter of
which were not only gorgeous but scary to behold up close: you
could walk right up to the cliff edge (no guardrails) and peer
straight down the chasm. (I did this by laying on my belly,
crawling over to the cliff ledge, and peeking over.)
I bicycled through the coastal Mkambati Nature Reserve one day
and saw whales in the sea, large mammals on land (Zebra,
Baboons, Wildebeests, Blesbok, etc.), and ate lunch at a
gorgeous freshwater lake setting (a series of pools and small
waterfalls surrounded by hills and forest that
eventually spilled into the sea - I thought of the place as
"Little Eden" as it was a gorgeous setting in the midst of a dry
land.) After lunch I climbed up to a rock some 10 meters (33
feet) above the largest lake and took the plunge into the waters
below. (I've got a lot more respect for Olympic platform divers
now: 10 meters is a LONG way up from the water.) I finished the
all-day bicycle ride and spent the night in a tent not far from
the banks of the Msikaba River with my Xhosa guide and a
traveler from the Canary Islands. On another day I canoed among
the mangroves of the Mngazana
Estuary (with a German gal named Filipa/Philipa who spoke
EXCELLENT English) and visited the coastal cave of the San
people (i.e., the Bushmen). That night I slept in a one-room
Xhosa home in a rural village on a hill overlooking the ocean.
My Xhosa hosts were easygoing and friendly and I slept well,
waking up the next morning to go explore and then swim in some
gorgeous tidepools on the rocky seashore of the "Wild Coast". |
Animals are communities
Take the African buffalo for example. As David Attenborough has
written, "A buffalo standing in a swamp stolidly chewing the cud
is not alone. Oxpeckers cling to its flanks. Ticks are boring
into its hide. Leeches may have fastened on to it when it went
to drink and now lie within its mouth attached to its lips.
Tapeworms, hidden from view, may be trailing through its
convoluted gut, roundworms encysted in its muscles and flukes
moored in the veins of its liver absorbing its blood. All these
creatures are robbing it of sustenance. But there are still
others, even smaller, which are providing it with food and
without these it would starve. Microscopic organisms are
swarming in the compartments of its stomach, helping it to break
down the cellulose in the plants that it has eaten which
otherwise it could not digest. Most large animals, in fact, are
not the single individuals they seem to be. They are walking
menageries, whole communities of different species which, in
their various ways, are committed... for better or for worse, in
sickness and in health, to live together." Having such knowledge
changes how one views wildlife. Whenever I saw a large mammal, I
saw the animal but I also tried to remember that it was also a
walking menagerie as well. |
Mankind is not the only destroyer of forests
Moving to the Botswana portion of the trip, I'll start by saying
that one of the most visibly obvious facts to the traveler is
that elephants definitely do a fair share of deforestation. There
has been a large international outcry over the destruction of
elephants from poaching in Africa over the last few decades and
rightfully so as the illegal ivory trade caused decimation of
many herds. In Botswana, however, there is a very healthy
elephant population and one can see that this animal is an EATING
MACHINE. A herd of elephants leaves a wide path of destruction in
its wake: the landscape at times is
denuded from having the elephants eat all the trees and bushes.
All you see is a landscape of dirt and elephant turds, the latter
of which are merely dried balls of grass and leaf fiber. I found
it interesting to think that another creature besides man could
be so destructive of the environment. |
What did I see?
Well, in contrast to animal spotting in South America, mammals
are easy to spot in Africa. That is because in the thick South
American rainforests, camouflage and secrecy are the way of life
whereas in the open woodlands, savannahs, and waterways, safety
(and therefore survival) is often found in numbers (herds), not
camouflage. So if it is insects or birds or monkeys you are
after, go to South America. If it is variety of plant life or
diversity of tree species, go to South America. But if you want
to photograph mammals, go to India or Africa.
Space does not permit me to list all of the different animals I
encountered (lions, hippos, giraffes, elephants, monitor
lizards, mongooses, foxes, hornbills, crocodiles, fish eagles,
etc. etc). Suffice it to say that I came away with a very
fulfilling appreciation for the variety and general
"interestingness" of each animal. Take something like the
antelope, for example. Instead of thinking an antelope is an
antelope is an antelope, I now have interest in all the
different individuals: Red Lechwe, Common
Waterbuck, Sitatunga, Bushbuck, Common Reedbuck, Kudu, Steenbok,
Tsessebe, Klipspringer, Impala, Red Hartebeest, Blue Wildebeest,
Sable Antelope (a magnificent animal) or Roan Antelope, to name
a few. This new appreciation for each kind of antelope would be
like someone saying, "Yeah, an American is an American" only to
visit the U.S.A. and come away saying, "Well Washington was like
this, Illinois was like that, Tennessee had this, Louisiana was
like that, Nebraska had this flavor to it, New York was quite
different, etc." |
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A welcome home present
When I got home from India last year, I found a copy of a
magazine called 'Christianity Today' awaiting me that had a
gorgeous picture of two Indian girls playing in the ocean surf
of India and
an issue dedicated to the church in India. This time I got back
from Africa and found an issue of National Geographic awaiting
me, this one entirely devoted to Africa. One of the beauties of
visiting other places is that they hold so much more interest
for you in the future. It's like reading an article about losing
a child: before you become a parent, you might read it with
interest; after becoming a parent, you read such an article with
avidity and empathy. Traveling to places rids me of detachment
and makes those places come alive.
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Happy Trails to you until we meet again,
David |
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