RANDOM RAMBLINGS
What they don’t tell you – but they should – when you make your bookings with SA National Parks (SANParks) is that you get the evenings thrown in for free.
In every national park I have been to, there’s been that time when the sun sinks below the horizon and the night falls softly around you like a comfy old duvet. It’s almost as though SANParks has a hidden entertainment team which arranges everything just so at sunset.
You don’t have to go “wow!”, but you should certainly sit and drink it all in – because with the variety and beauty of national parks we have, we are truly blessed.
I’ve sat, drink in hand, on the stoep of a chalet in the Mokala National Park and watched as a storm rolled across a slightly undulating Kalahari landscape, bolts of lightning illuminating the cumulo-nimbus clouds like Chinese lanterns.
I’ve observed, from the wooden deck of a tented unit in the Marakele National Park as a similar muscular storm marched in, angry, from across the Botswana border… and then rained itself out against the buttress of one of the nearby rocky mountains, sparing our flickering braai fire.
We’ve sat at Leokwe Rest Camp in the Mapungubwe National Park as night descended and marvelled at a pair of black eagles flitting back and forth in the dusk, to and from their chick high up in the red-faced cliff.
In Kruger’s Berg-en-Dal camp, my young son and toddler daughter looked on fascinated as a massive porcupine rooted for bulbs just outside the fence from where we were camped. And the following night, at the camp waterhole – we and scores of other visitors were entertained by a group of wild dogs chasing a group of impala. One got nailed on the edge of the water, while the other two buck plunged into it to flee the savage predators … but only one made it to our side. The other was snapped up in a foamy flurry in the middle of the dam by a croc.
National parks have provided the background to our family’s life in the past 30 years. They were the affordable place to go – nobody has much money when the kids are growing – and enabled us to show our children the variety this country has to offer.
From Tsitsikamma on the Garden Route, we have pictures of my son, then just crawling, eye-to-eye with a dassie on the lawn outside our unit; and later, when they were both older, they are looking down on the Storms River mouth from a high vantage point.
There are only a few parks left on the list which are on my bucket list – quick tip: Mountain Zebra outside Cradock is unforgettable – but I plan to get around to them in the next few years. The West Coast National Park is a must, as is the lesser-known and quite rustic Tankwa Karoo, while the Richtersveld is a good place to take a hardcore 4x4 (any manufacturers listening out there?). The Kgalagadi Trans-Frontier Park, which stretches across the border into Botswana from the Northern Cape is also on the list, because of its harsh beauty.
I had a chat recently with Hapiloe Sello, who is managing executive: tourism development and marketing at SANpark HQ in Pretoria. She was telling me about a new, nimble, marketingfocused organisation which is aiming to tempt more people into our parks, because the majority of South Africans have no idea how lucky we are. They are looking at innovative uses of places like the Golden Gate National Park, where there will be a jazz and classics concert at the end of this month.
She’s honest that there’s been some pushback from the “traditional” park users on developments like the hotel which is planned for Skukuza in Kruger. But, she makes the important point: it is the tourism operation which pays for conservation. From my perspective, Skukuza, the Kruger Park headquarters, has already long since ceased to be wild or rustic … and if a hotel can bring in money, why not?
Hapiloe says it’s sad that more black South Africans don’t visit national parks … perhaps because some still view game and conservation as a “white thing”. Those who do try it soon get the bug, she adds. But, nevertheless, a major focus of marketing efforts will be on this group.
I sometimes consider myself an unofficial national parks marketer because I would love to see people – and young families – getting out there like we did (and still do – Mokola here we come in December!) and making unique, South African memories.
And, trust me on the evenings…