ON SAFARI IN THE KAROO
The Samara Karoo Reserve is a Big Five reserve without the traffic jams and tour buses. It’ sa space of stillness, of big sky and endless horizon. But it’s by no means short of excitement
We’re halfway up Samara Mara mountain after a predawn game drive in the eponymous Karoo reserve when our driver stops abruptly. There’s an elephant dead ahead, and no room for both of us along the tight road. It’s a stand-off.
We wait, mountain breakfast plans on hold, hoping he’ll wind his way down the side of the mountain rather than head down the road. Some of us are calm, others intrigued; I’m stressed. One of us wants coffee, another wants a photo; I want to turn back.
We bide our time, edging forwards and backwards. But after Kahle the elephant starts heading towards us, our guide decides it’s best we beat a retreat. Only, that’s no simple solution: we need to reverse, then pull a four-point turn at the edge of the mountain.
That done, it’s down to the river, where tables have been beautifully decked and a spread laid out, and we get to eat breakfast with our feet in the river. It’s only 10am.
That’s the thing with a good safari: vast skies and open plains still the mind and time (unless, of course, you’re in a bit of a pickle).
Kahle, it turns out, has been the dominant elephant bull for six years. Speaking of our encounter with him, reserve manager Ryno Erasmus says: “He’s an elephant, he would now and again show a bit of dominance flap his ears and trumpet and show off and say ‘I’m big and I’m the boss’ and if he
sees no reaction from you he loses interest and carries on.
“You can stand in the road and go past [the most likely outcome] but he might go to the vehicle and smell something that reminds him of an orange
someone’s perfume or something and just by looking for that, he could injure someone.”
He adds: “If he shows you he’s not really interested, you just pass him. But if he’s standing in the road and saying ‘I’m in the mood today to show you I’m the boss’, then you treat him like the boss.
It’s all about the mood and the signals he gives off as to how you’re going to treat him”.
The road to rewilding
The Samara Karoo Reserve, in the Great Karoo, near the Eastern Cape town of Graaff-Reinet, is no small venture. In 1997 Mark and Sarah Tompkins began buying up farms in the area, removing fences and structures between them. In all, they bought 11 farms 27,000ha of property. Their aim? To rewild the area, bringing back the animals that once roamed free. The correct vegetation was a crucial first step.
As Erasmus tells us over breakfast, it all starts from the bottom up with the soil. But elephants like Kahle are a big part of the equation too. In areas where elephants have been hunted out, woody shrubs take over a process called “megaherbivore release”. Without the elephants, Samara’s land would start to turn from Karoo to bushveld.
“Elephants are ecosystem engineers and by nature destructive, but they’re also necessary for the ecosystem by knocking down certain trees and opening up the vegetation,” Erasmus explains.
Through the Tompkinses’ rewilding efforts, fauna returned and megaherbivores such as elephants have been brought in. Predators were reintroduced, and in 2004 cheetahs were brought back to the area for the first time in 130 years.
They’re among the standout successes of the reserve. It all started with Sibella, who came from a rehabilitation centre where she was treated for lifethreatening injuries after being attacked by hunters and dogs. At her new home she gave birth to 20 cubs, and her name continues as a legend on the reserve.
Today, the cheetahs are habituated to humans, and we’re told you can walk relatively close to them without fear. Some of the cats are fitted with radio collars to help track them in this diverse terrain, so if you can track them down you can walk up to watch them living their best lives.
On an afternoon drive, Klippers, our tracker, sits on a tracking chair on the front of the car (it’s mindboggling how he manages to stay there over all the bumps). We’re on the lookout for Naledi and her cubs. It’s dusk and we’re about ready to call it a day, but Klippers is having none of that. He heads off on foot with his tracking device. When he’s a mere speck in the distance, we get the message that he’s found them. We walk over to watch Naledi and her cubs in what seems likely to be the closest encounter some of us will ever have with cheetahs.
Until an hour later as we’re having drinks at the off-grid Plains Camp when two adult cheetahs pop up with barely a sound to drink from the pool on the deck; it’s magical and outrageous. But