Like a vegetable-lover’s dream come true, blackened asparagus-like plants push out from rough dusty rocks on the dry South African terrain. Short stubby cacti and ones boasting fluffy pink blossoms stick out like stray hairs among other patches of rocks.

Rustling bushes ahead reveal a shy graceful impala that abruptly leaps away with five companions. Squawks from a group of guinea fowls alert others that humans are nearby and they take flight, pumping speckled white spots on black wings, red crown on shrunken blue heads.

As the narrow road turns a soft bend, a clump of brown and black body mass is nestled on dry grass. It’s half of a zebra carcass, bones protruding; gnawed skin is pulled back on broken ribs. A few meters away is a solitary thigh bone and another couple meters more lies its skull with buck teeth grinning blindly.

Upon a rock face, a large clearing is visible: hectares of grasslands with sparse trees. On the right, a small herd of kudus and two impalas dart from their hiding place extending slim hind legs as they disperse in different directions. Movement from further up turns out to be a small group of zebras and a family of giraffes, the young ones racing closing behind. A black wildebeest, looking more like a small buffalo from afar, follows several antelopes to gather under a tree in the middle of the massive land area.

They’re all staring back at us.

Hard to imagine that we are less than a kilometre from a large freeway and zooming cars. The sky is overcast, the wind actually making the usually hot spring weather chilly, and we, clad in jackets and fleece, are hiking a short trail in Groenkloof nature reserve in Pretoria. Being used to hike for free in trails from our respective countries (Canada, Germany and Switzerland), we are shocked to learn that we had to fork out R15 each to walk the trails. We now realize why. Some walking trails go through the same space the animals play and leave droppings. Being so close to wildlife is exhilarating and intimidating at the same time.

We ask a reserve worker if there are elephants and lions in the reserve after we hear an ominous unidentifiable rustle from bushes ahead of us on a trail. He confirms there were none and that it was safe to walk the trails.

Experiencing the wildlife reserves in a car is different altogether. We went out of the car to change drivers in Pilanesburg and were caught by a reserve warden who warned us never to do it again. We’ve also heard of stories where elephants open their ears up in anger and chased a car. Lookout areas where visitors can get out of the car to enter another caged enclosed area have signs cautioning people to get out of their cars at their own risk.

A Walk in the Cradle

Couple of weeks ago, we went hiking on a trail that was part of a lodge in an area called the Cradle of Humankind. The dusty red trail (free for us to use after we ask permission to trample on their property) leads up to a hill that overlooked farmland resembling prairie lands in Canada. We are also able to see impala and boks before we started our ascent.

The Cradle of Humankind, over a hundred kilometres from downtown Pretoria, is where civilization is rumoured to have begun. Arid heat radiating from the hot earth is unbearable after a couple hour car ride. Minutes later, we are enjoying cool air within damp cave walls several feet underground. The dead cave is Sterkfontein Cave where the most complete 4.1 million year old skeleton was found. This is also where Ms. Ples, another famous African skeleton was revealed under careful archaeological digging.

A book called Out of Eden: The Peopling of the World was featured on a radio show in SAfm about people who have migrated from ancestral Africa to other continents and what compelled them to do so. I haven’t read it yet, but it sounds similar to Germs, Guns and Steel.