The Eastern Cape province of South Africa is an up-and-coming area for safaris. While Kruger National Park, in the eastern part of the country, was set aside to protect wildlife in 1898, the development of the Eastern Cape as a safari area has only been taking hold in the last few decades. The area had previously been made into farmland by farmers who drove out the big predators that would have feasted on their livestock if given a chance.
In recent times, history has gone into reverse there, back toward what it was before being settled by farmers in the early 1800s. Bit by bit, conservationists have been buying up farmland and “rewilding” it, restoring it to what was its natural condition from time immemorial until the farmers drove out the wildlife.
One of those reserves is the Kariega Game Reserve, where I went on safari in May. This 10,000-hectare (39 square miles) reserve was started in 1989. It’s about an hour and a half drive from the airport in Port Elizabeth, where I arrived. The reserve is in a coastal belt of 1820 Settler Country, near the end of the famous Garden Route, one of South Africa’s signature attractions. It’s a malaria-free area, which is a bonus, and not always the case.
Kariega sunset. Credit: David Cogswell
In 2019 the name of Port Elizabeth was changed to Gqeberha, after the Xhosa and Southern Khoe name for the Baakens River that flows through the city. But changes like that take a while to implement, and at the moment the city is usually still being referred to as Port Elizabeth.
Kariega is a Big Five reserve, meaning that it has all five of the animals the big game hunters considered the most dangerous to hunt on foot, and were therefore the biggest prizes. They were lions, elephants, buffalo, leopards and rhinos. Of course, if any place has the Big Five, it has a wide variety of other wildlife as well.
There are still some hunting concessions in South Africa, where a few people still go to shoot animals. But a far greater number go to just to see the incomparable African wildlife. Today’s safaris are to shoot videos and photos, and to feel the great thrill of being out in the African bush, breathing the same rich air as those magnificent elephants, giraffes, lions, zebras, etc.
The Kariega Game Reserve has five lodges: the Main Lodge, Ukhozi Lodge, The Homestead, River Lodge and Settlers Drift. I was installed at the River Lodge, which is at the edge of Bushmans River. It has 10 rooms. I stayed in what was a sort of duplex cabin, two accommodations in one cottage. A safari camp along a river is unusual, and it allows this lodge to offer river safaris.
Staying at the lodge is an all-inclusive arrangement, including all food and drink. As in virtually all safari camps, the days’ schedules are built around the game drives, one in the morning and one in the evening, sunup and sundown.
Typically at safari lodges, you get up around 5 a.m., and meet at the main lodge for a cup of coffee or a snack from a prepared layout of breads and other morning nibbles. You leave for your game drive at 6:30 a.m. around sunrise. The predators are most active at night, so those hours at the edges of nighttime are the best times to see activity.
Your exploration lasts around three hours, after which you return to the lodge for a hearty breakfast that you are really hungry for after roaming the bush for a few hours.
The middle of the day is at leisure, to rest, read, swim, explore the grounds, the coffee table books and wilderness artifacts in the lodge. There’s wifi throughout the grounds when you’re near the buildings. A lunch buffet is laid out from 2-3 p.m. At around 3:30 you go out for your afternoon game drive.
Elephant at Kariega. Credit: David Cogswell
Into the Bush
Our ranger guide was named Aussie. In the morning we piled into the Range Rover and headed out into the bush. At that time it’s cold and you need to be warmly dressed. As you move up and down over hills and valleys, you pass through pockets of cold and warm air masses. When the sun comes up it warms very quickly and you have to start stripping off the layers you put on for the morning.
The African landscape, in all its infinite variation, is breathtaking. It’s a scene that evokes memories you didn’t know you had, as if you had been there before, even if you haven’t in this life.
When you are roaming around the open country, you are usually looking for certain animals, the rarer ones, such as lions and leopards. The predator’s life is tough, and there aren’t many of them compared to the large numbers of their prey, the impala, the zebras, the wildebeests. So the lions become the goal of the quest. But in fact, all of what you are observing and sensing is really the point. It’s all amazing. The guide gives a highly informed commentary on the things you see, the things that capture people’s attention. Conversations start up and go which way they will, as conversations do.
Our guide spotted some dung and large footprints. What kind of large animal eats grass? he asked us, rhetorically.
Answer: a white rhino. And why is it called a white rhino? Not because of the color. It’s actually a bastardization of the word “wide”. The two main kinds of rhinos are known as the white rhino and the black rhino. Neither is really black or white, rather shades of gray. But the “white” rhino has a wide mouth, which fits its eating preferences as a grazer of grasses. The so-called black rhino has a narrower mouth, which suits its style of eating called “browsing,” eating from the trees and bushes.
Those kinds of pearls of wilderness lore are constantly dropped for you by your guides when you are on a game drive, things you won’t need back in the industrialized world, but they are fun to discover in the bush.
We caught up to the white rhino, and it ignored us as it grazed with its weak eyes half closed.
We came very close to a herd of elephants, about 15 scattered around a small grassy area. They are conditioned to the sight of humans and don’t shy away. They are interested in us and come close. It’s a wild feeling to be so close to an animal that is so powerful it could hurl your car into the air if it wanted to.
Lion at Kariega. Credit: David Cogswell
And we saw some lions, a whole drama that played out with two young males, one approaching a female who walked away and left him standing there. Another unrequited love in the bush. The lions are always a highlight. They really are the royalty of the wilderness and they carry their regal status haughtily.
The rangers always want to show you a great time and when they succeed in getting you to see some mind-splitting sights and dramas, you can see that they share your joy. That’s their raison d’etre.
As the sun lowered toward the horizon, our guide wheeled the 4×4 into a nice open plateau that he had scouted out for danger, and we pulled up for our sundowner. Aussie prepare a table with a tablecloth over part of the jeep and opened up the bar, a nice, tidy selection of liquors, mixers, drinks and snacks. There we stood around as in an open-air cocktail party, shooting the breeze as the sky turned bright, blazing orange across a vast horizon. In this unspeakably rapturous setting we carried on conversations as if everything was routine. But it was spectacular and there was a euphoria going around.
We had dinner in the boma, an outdoor enclosure. Our dinner was mainly a brai, a kind of barbecue, with a variety of selections so everyone could find something they like. We drank South African wines, with an emphasis on pinotage, made from a South African grape.
Our safari was the typical length, two nights, four game drives spread over three days. Normally two nights of your life aren’t momentous. But two nights in the bush are. I guarantee it.