Everyone must do their bit

We’ve just spent a delightful (as always) two weeks in the Kruger. We entered at the top and came out at Phabeni, so we saw a lot of the park and most of the camps. A few observations worth noting: Many of the tourists complained about the lack of game sightings. I explained that there was water in every depression and the grass was knee-high so they didn’t have to come to the regular waterholes. They also didn’t realise that a lot of animals died in the recent drought, but those that survived were flourishing and breeding well. That’s just nature. Paging through the SANParks paper, I came across a few interesting articles. The first one dealt with the waterholes that SANParks management has decided to shut down. Their reason was that the lions were sitting there picking off the game. A staff member whispered to me that it was the management that were actually incapable of maintaining these pumps. Sad, as I’m sure a lot of animals may have survived the drought had they had water and didn’t have to move so far to drink. If this is actually the case then management should remove the windmills and redo the maps as a lot of time can be wasted driving to non-existent waterholes. Broken rusted windmills are unsightly too. The other article that caught my eye was the death of animals being hit by cars. SANParks states it’s because of visitors travelling too fast. I question this. Having spent two weeks on the road every day, without a doubt the visitors were the best behaved on the roads. The worst were the SA Police vans travelling in excess of 100 km/h. We saw four travelling that speed, and when we indicated to them to slow down, we were greeted with the bird. Is there that much crime in the Kruger? There were no reports of poachers being arrested at that time, and besides, they have their own poaching enforcement agency. I also observed several high-ranking police officers (brigadiers) loitering around the Skukuza shop. In uniform. I thought it odd. The other speedsters were SANParks staff racing in private vehicles to and from work, and then the vehicles delivering food and removing garbage. I would have thought their employers would allocate sufficient time for food delivery and garbage removal for vehicles to be able to drive at the park limit of 50 km/h, but the way they pushed through visitors at sightings and exceeded the speed limit clearly indicates that they were all running late. Another sad sight was the condition of the huts and safari tents. Clearly maintenance was lacking – in our case the doors had no striker plates and the latches were tearing the wood out of the doors. Water had accumulated in the hollows of the tent’s roof and it would be just a matter of time before it burst and flooded the tent. It was also a perfect mosquito-breeding pool as there must have been in excess of 200 litres in the hollow. Basin plugs were missing and toilet seats were falling apart. A shame. Let’s just hope they start a maintenance programme soon, before our jewel is wrecked. The Kruger is unique in the world and should be looked after.