It wasn’t hot or cold as we began our trek up the side of a little mountain. It was rocky, though, and the trail narrowed considerably at times. It was very wild. So wild, in fact, that you didn’t need to muster much imagination to envision a large snake popping up out of nowhere, or some big, fiendish “cat” sunning on a boulder. It was peaceful, and still, except for...
BEEP, BEEP-BEEP!!!
rrrrRRRRRRRNNNNNNDddddd
CHOP..CHOP..CHOP..CHOP
In case my attempts at city-life-based onomatopoeia are lost on you, I'll go ahead and let you know that we weren’t really in the sahara, or kalahari, or anything close to traditional “African” safari-land. We were at Groenkloof Nature Reserve, a park situated right outside the city of Pretoria. As in, there were several points on our otherwise remote-looking hike when you could see the smoggy city skyline, and the hum-to-roar of the interstate was an omnipresent reminder of our true location.
But despite the ambience, the park was great! It’s nice to be living in the city but still have this rural oasis for hiking, biking, and sightseeing. It’s not the only one of its kind in Pretoria, and not the first one we visited, but so far, it’s my favorite for one very large reason:
Giraffe.
If you visit a “nature reserve” in the southeastern United States, whence Todd and I hail, you might be lucky to see a deer, really lucky to see a coyote, and insanely lucky to see both. I have family who have seen an actual, real-life black bear, but that’s not normal. My mom danced around a snake once, but we don’t speak of that *hi mom*. I think when we use the term “nature reserve” back home, we mostly mean a place you can hang out around the flora and fauna, but you have to leave your gun at home.
However, at a South African nature reserve, you can count on a handful of African animals to be milling about, and it’s kind of an exotic feeling. I imagine it’s about as close to being at Jurassic Park as most people can be.
I had a pretty good idea that we wouldn’t see too much wildlife when we started our hike up the mountain. We would need to be in flatter, grassier places, preferably downhill, as that’s the way water tends to run. When our hike afforded us a view of the valley below us,Todd and I would scan the horizon in search of black and white herds, or large concentrations of bok (springbok, impala, kudu, etc., we just call them all “bok”), but what we really wanted to find was a giraffe! Not all the parks in Pretoria have them, so this was my chance!
The tracker in me (ha!) kept an eye on the ground, but I’m not sure what I was hoping to interpret from the various droppings we stepped in.
“I wish I knew my poop,” I said to Todd at one point, trying to deicide what manner of beast would have left that particular mess.
“I think you’re tracking a horse,” came his expert opinion. Well, the park does offer horse tours...
I had to face that I have absolutely no idea how to tell the difference between zebra, horse and giraffe droppings, and it would probably serve me better to keep my eyes out rather than down. As we neared the end of our hike, winding around on a rocky trail overlooking the road the 4x4 vehicles take for sightseeing, we looked out over the valley, and that’s when we spotted them.
At least six huge silhouettes. They were incredible! I wanted to scamper right down the uncharted side of the little mountain and take whatever fate would befall me (which would be me, falling), dead set on getting some close-ups. But Todd (the two words I use to describe him when he knows best and therein ruins my fun) thought it would probably be wise to keep going on the trail a bit farther. He thought it would meet up with the main road eventually, at which point we could backtrack to the sighting.
I was panicked. I’d waited all morning and come out here with the express intention of seeing and stalking giraffe, and here I was, this close! I kept looking down towards them every time there was a break in the trees. At one point, I noticed they had started walking, single file, to who knows where! Todd finally gave in and we took what appeared to be a bok trail down the side of the hill, hoping not to meet with a ravine.
It didn’t take us long to realize that the giraffe were heading towards us, just as we were racing headlong down the hill towards them! We got really close...like probably 10 yards away! They stopped and stared at us, the giant horses they are. We followed them around for probably 20 minutes. They weren’t in any real hurry, and didn’t seem particularly bothered by us, snapping pictures and whistling at them to get them to look our direction. At one point, Todd tripped on some rocks which startled the whole little herd and they comically skipped back a few steps.
The coolest thing they did, though, was gallop. Have you seen a giraffe gallop? Or more interestingly, have you heard them gallop? They didn’t do it but for a couple of seconds, but while they did they sounded like massive horses, running in slow-motion. It was so cool. Totally worth sneaking around in shoulder-high grass to get pictures of them watching us curiously.
To get back to my Jurassic Park metaphor, the giraffes are like the brachiosauruses, the great tall things that eat plants and are majestic to watch. The zebra are like some other little abundant herbivore; they can be the stegosauruses. The ostriches are like the velociraptors. They’re super intimidating, ugly, and mean.
While there are much cooler car safaris you can take in other parts of South Africa, where things like elephants, leopards, hippos and lions pop up, there’s something really...adventurous about walking around with giraffe :)
Giraffe are so cool :)
Here's Todd for a proximity reference. See how close we are‽
The zebra. Todd got a bit closer than this, but frankly, zebra are so much less interesting when there are giraffe to be had.
They're like donkeys, really.
This is a velociraptor shot we got at a different park in Pretoria earlier this year, but it's just to remind you of the evil disposition of the ostrich. We saw one lone ostrich at Groenkloof, but he was too far away to capture photographically.
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