In October 2019, I visited the fourth largest island in the world, Madagascar (Greenland, New Guinea and Borneo are the three largest in that order). Even though Madagascar is part of Africa, it is different from the rest of the continent in many ways. The explanation lies millions of years ago.
The island of Madagascar sits off by itself in the Indian Ocean, like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle of Africa, waiting to be snapped into place on the continent’s lower right hand side. Way back in the mists of time, when the continents were drifting apart from each other like grown children moving away from home, Madagascar was tucked in between Africa and India when that huge land mass was called Gondwana.
When Gondwana broke up about 135 million years ago, the Africa-South America landmass drifted off in one direction, while the Madagascar-Antarctica-India landmass went the other way. About 88 million years ago, Madagascar split from India, leaving Madagascar on its own to evolve its numerous and fascinating endemic plant and animal species. (I hope you geologists out there will correct me if I have misunderstood something here.)
These many amazing species are a strong draw for tourists like me, who want to see lemurs, and species of chameleons, frogs, baobobs and other living creatures that are found nowhere else in the world. I want to see these endemic species before they disappear forever due to massive deforestation. And I want to meet the interesting folks who people this island – they have pretty special origins, too.
I hope you will follow me as I travel from the fertile slopes, lush rainforests and soothing coastlines of the east past mountains and terraced farmers’ fields to the arid and rocky southwest.
The way into our first camp in Hwange was a game drive in itself, where we saw elephants galore, tiny steenbok, elegant sable antelope (photo below), impala, giraffe, squirrel, slender mongoose, warthog, greater blue-eared starling, crimson-breasted shrike, long-tailed shrike, ground hornbill, coquis francolin (like a pheasant), pied babbler and kori bustard (largest flying bird in Africa).
While three of our group sleep in tents, four of us stay in a two-story canvas construction that has a dormitory-style row of beds and a dining table upstairs, and a single room, a common toilet and common shower downstairs. I sleep upstairs with my friends Birthe and Jørn from Denmark. We leave the sidings open day and night.
We have the whole camp to ourselves – and the animals. About 30 metres from our canvas house, there is a concrete trough to provide water for the animals. One night we hear an elephant slurping from the water trough and munching leaves and branches. Hyenas whoop, hoping to snatch a meal somewhere. Lions roar in the distance, marking their territory.
Another night, we also hear a lion roar. At first, the lion is far away, but it comes progressively closer until it is right outside our canvas home, that is, 30 metres away from us. Hearing the mighty roar of a lion this close is very exciting. The sound fills all the space and seems to shake the earth.
Depending on the weather, a lion’s roar can be heard seven kilometres away, so imagine how loud it feels when you are almost right beside it. Wow! All of us in camp are awake; all of us are quiet as mice. We cannot see anything outside, because it is pitch black, so we just enjoy the sound.
After a while, we can hear a huge tongue lapping water from the drinking trough. In fact, it sounds like there are at least two lions drinking. A little while later, they wander farther away and continue their territorial roaring at intervals until they are quite distant from us.
One morning we go on a game drive and the first thing we see are some other lions – a young male and three females. They are very laid back about our presence. The male crosses the road in front of us and lies down under a bush. The females get up, stretch and wander away. The male decides to follow them. What a great way to start the day!
During our final days in the bush we camp in an even more remote area, down by a river.
This means we are now all back to sleeping in our tents, and using the primitive toilet and shower facilities.
We explore the area by car and by foot.
We see black-backed jackal (photo below), warthogs, elephant, waterbuck, slender mongoose, terrapin (a turtle species), hippo, crocodile, and several bird species including fish eagle, black-crowned night heron and yellow-tailed stork.
On one of our walks, we flush out an African wildcat just in front of us. That is the first time I have ever seen one. It looks just like an orange, green-eyed domestic pussycat, but in a grumpy Garfield kind of way. In fact, this is the feline species that our domestic cats originate from.
At one point, our guides leave us behind for about an hour on strict orders to stay put and not wander around on our own. We while away the time with an impromptu game of elephant dung football. The game is over when the dung ball disintegrates.
On our last safari evening, the group goes on a lengthy drive to a waterhole, but I elect to stay back in camp and enjoy the solitude. As darkness falls, I hear a hyena whooping close by. I am not scared, but I am also not foolhardy. I do not have a weapon, I am alone, and hyenas are always hungry. Their powerful jaws can easily crush bones in one bite. So I retreat into my tent until I hear the sound of our jeep returning about an hour later. By this time, the only light is from a bright, waxing half moon.
We exchange stories about our evening away from each other, eat and go to be early, in readiness to break camp the following morning and to say goodbye to the fascinating African bush.
Look to the right and you see a herd of elephants. Look in the water and you see a pod of hippopotamus. Look to the left and you see impala, crocodiles, warthogs, kudu, zebra, buffalo, and a troop of baboons. In the warm glow of the afternoon sun, there is a variety of life at the waterhole, where the animals converge for their sundowners after a hot and thirsty day.
We are in Hwange National Park, the largest natural reserve in Zimbabwe and home to more than 100 mammal species and 400 bird species – an animal lover’s paradise. In the evenings, we visit various waterholes to sit quietly and watch what comes by until darkness falls and we can see no more. We then head back to camp for our own sundowners.
At the waterhole, skittish impala bravely drink within a few metres from crocodiles that could easily bring them down in one splashy attack.
Hippos crowd around each other grumpily, sometimes lashing out at a neighbor with loud grunts or erupting in angry open-mouthed, teeth-baring arguments.
Black-winged stilt and three-banded plover wade in the mud and a tawny eagle soars overhead.
Elephants pad silently down to the water, dip their trunks and drink deeply. Some also choose to take a refreshing mud bath, while others opt for a dust bath. We enjoy spending time with these mighty animals, watching their behavior and their interactions with each other.
Elephants need to drink 100-160 litres of water daily to help digest the coarse and fibrous food they eat. They are quite particular about the water they drink. If it is too muddy, they will dig a hole beside the muddy water to access clean water.
A much smaller animal, the rock hyrax, can be find among the rocks in the vicinity of the waterhole. Hyraxes live in harems with one male ruling over up to 17 females. The males tolerate no competition whatsoever and even kick out their own male offspring when they are about a year old. Within the harem the animals have close body contact to maintain body heat during the cold nights and to share body odour. Perhaps that is what the little guy is doing with the much larger one in this video:
Our accommodation in Matobo Hills is in gingerbread-house bungalows that are nestled up against the rounded boulders characteristic of the area.
Rock hyrax scramble about in these rocks – and on my bungalow’s roof, waking me up in the morning.
I look out the window and spot a klipspringer, a tiny antelope (50-60 cm high) with huge brown eyes and eyelashes to die for. When we are not looking at ancient paintings in various caves, we clamber about in the boulder landscape.
From our local guide we learn about medicinal plants. He shows us which plants can be used to staunch bleeding, which have an antibiotic effect, which are antiseptic and which are deadly poisonous and can be used for hunting.
We also see loads of wildlife on our forays into the bush, including leopard, klipspringer, bushbuck, kudu, zebra, warthog, impala, baboon, hyrax, Verreaux’s eagle (which has hyrax on its menu), little bee-eater, fork-tailed drongo, hornbill – and giraffes necking.
We visit a reserve where there are four white rhinoceros habituated to humans. That does not in any way mean they are tame. No siree! Although we can approach them very closely, and they look like they are snoozing, they have their tiny, near-sighted eyes on us, their ears constantly moving to detect our presence, and their feet positioned so that they can quickly rise up and either chase us off or run away from us.
White rhino are not white, but have that name from the Afrikaans word for “wide”. This is because their muzzle is wider than the so-called black rhino (which are not black), which have a pointed muzzle.
Weighing in at 1600 kg (female) to 2400 kg (male), rhinoceros are one of the largest land mammals. The size of their body, head and horns are enough to keep most enemies at bay, although not humans with weapons, unfortunately. Based on no scientific evidence whatsoever, rhino horns are used in Asia to treat a variety of ailments, so rhino are highly threatened by poachers.
Rhino take their time when having sex; copulation lasts for about half an hour and with only one mounting. The adoring couple hang around with each other for up to six days after mating, perhaps re-living that one glorious, protracted act of love-making.
Interesting trivia: A group of rhino is called a “crash of rhino”.
The sunsets in Matobo Hills are beautiful, and we enjoy them each evening before setting of for our next destination: Hwange National Park.
We clamber over large, round boulders and push our way through dense shrub. Finally, we reach our goal and are rewarded with a look into the ancient past: cave paintings.
We are now in Matobo Hills in the western part of Zimbabwe, not far south from Bulawayo. The area called Matobo Hills is a UNESCO World Heritage site. In addition to its alluring geography, it is renowned for its wealth of fascinating cave paintings – some of them at least 13,000 years old. Other evidence shows that people have been living in these hills, protected by boulders and caves, for about 500,000 years.
The rock paintings tell a story of human interaction with animals. The beautifully executed drawings show kudus, giraffes, impalas, zebras and other animals as well as human hunters. The artwork has been carried out over the space of many years, as can clearly be seen in the way the artistic style evolves.
In the few days that we spend in Matobo Hills, we visit several caves with paintings and other artefacts that show evidence of human habitation. There are apparently several thousand caves, small and large, with cave paintings – and more keep being discovered. What a legacy these ancient hunter-gatherers have left behind!
The rocks themselves are also a work of art, created by Mother Nature, the best artist of all.
Walking is wonderful, but driving also has its upsides. It gets you over a larger geographic area, allows you to come closer to the animals before they run away, and keeps you safe from predators.
Within the course of four days in Mana Pools, we see literally tons of animals, both on our walks and on our drives. The mammal species we spot include painted dog, leopard, side-striped jackal, vervet monkey, baboon, warthog, zebra, waterbuck, impala, nyala, greater kudu, eland, elephant, banded mongoose, dwarf mongoose and slender mongoose.
We also see a wealth of birds. For you bird nerds out there here is the list: Retz’s helmet shrike, grey helmet shrike, orange-breasted shrike, bateleur (an eagle), fish eagle, tawny eagle, gymnogene, white-backed vulture, helmeted vulture, hooded vulture, saddle-billed stork, open-billed stork, yellow-billed stork, marabou stork, grey egret, great white egret, cattle egret, squacco heron, Egyptian goose, African jacana (called “Jesus bird” because it can walk on water), sacred ibis, lilac-breasted roller, black-winged stilt, blacksmith lapwing, fork-tailed drongo, Maeve’s starling, lovebirds (photo below), white-breasted bee-eater, owlet, and trumpeter hornbill. Pretty cool, eh?
One of the absolute highlights of our days in Mana Pools is spotting the endangered painted dogs. They are canids but are neither wolves, dogs nor hyenas. They have their own genus.
The painted dogs we see are apparently three sisters. They are part of the “black-tip pack” that features in the BBC documentary Dynasties narrated by the legendary David Attenborough. (Incidentally, while in Mana Pools I read David Attenborough’s 2018 book Life of Earth. I highly recommend it.).
The painted dogs lie in the middle of the road, which is quite typical. It gives them a better overview of things. They snooze, scratch fleabites, and look and listen for potential prey. Impala is their favourite dish. Because of their ability to work together in a coordinated fashion, painted dogs have a hunting success rate of 60-90 percent, which is much higher than the big cats and other predators. They chase the prey until the prey becomes exhausted and then they close in for the kill. They kill by disemboweling which apparently results in a quicker death than suffocation, which is the way cats do it.
Painted dogs also spend their down time bonding with each other. One of the ways they do this is to make themselves smell alike. They poop, pee and rub their anal glands on the ground in the same patch – and then they roll in it. It seems like they enjoy this “smell bath” immensely.
The end of the day
At the end of the day, the setting sun lends a warm glow to the landscape. In the dusk, we see the silhouette of a hippo walk by.
We eat, we talk, we wash, we brush our teeth and then we go to bed. Our last night at Mana Pools is all but silent. We have to get up early next day to break camp and leave by 5:30 am, but the animals’ active nightlife keeps me awake much of the time.
After dark, lions roar many times – a couple of times unnervingly close. Elephants trumpet twice, baboons bark an alarm, hyenas whoop and some kind of grazing animal passes so close by my tent that I can hear its teeth or tongue ripping the grass up. Hippos lie in the water and grunt at each other and different kinds of owls and owlets hoot in the night.
On our walking safaris, we see things big and small. On the small scale, we see holes made by antlions. These critters are neither ants nor lions but insects that prey on other insects, particularly ants. The larvae burrow backwards down into loose sand, leaving conical pits in their wake. Here they lie in wait.
When an ant comes along, it slips on the slopes of loose sand and has difficulty escaping. From its place of hiding, the antlion emerges and flicks sand over the ant to make escape even harder. With its pincers, the antlion then grabs the hapless ant and sucks the juicy insides out of its prey.
Throughout the several stages of its life, the antlion only poops once. That’s right – just one bowel movement in its total lifespan of larva, pupa and adult! How scientists discover these odd but interesting facts never ceases to amaze me.
The mighty baobab tree
Besides seeing interesting holes in the ground, we also see interesting vegetation. My favourite is the baobab tree, the largest succulent in the world. One African legend has it that when the being that was the god at that time gave the animals plants, the hyena was given a baobab tree.
The hyena was grumpy about this choice and complained. Well, it is not good policy to complain to a god, so the god in its wrath pulled the baobab up by its roots and planted it upside down. That is why the baobab looks the way it does now.
The iconic baobabs can grow very old (up to 2500 years has been reported) and enormous. During their lifetime, their bark, seeds, flowers, fruits, fibres, leaves and roots can provide nourishment, moisture, pollen and fibre to animals and humans. Elephants gouge the trunks to obtain water from the bark and heartwood.
Baobabs can survive an amazing amount of destruction by elephants. The trees just continue to grow into weird shapes. Holes in baobab trees provide protection for animals and create reservoirs for water. They can provide room for grain storage, burials, hiding, imprisonment or even living.
Mana Pools is a great place to go for a walk, and we do so for several hours every day, usually taking off in the early, cool morning and walking until lunch, by which time it is rather hot. We normally drive to our destination, then leave the car and walk from there.
Our guide, Mike Scott, instructs us to walk in a single file and to be quiet. We are not immediate experts at either of these behaviours. We are all curious and not only wonder but wander, sometimes in different directions.
After a while, we get the hang of it and take turns at being at the front of the line, just behind Mike and his excellent tracker (and cook), Bernard.
One of the joys of walking is having the feeling that you are a part of the landscape, not just an onlooker. You can leave the track, feel the ground under your feet, touch the plants, hear the sounds and see the minutiae, such as bones, footprints and insects. Besides, it is nice to get exercise.
A large hole in the ground grabs our interest. Bernard inspects it more closely before letting us approach. It could be a leopard den, and who wants to stand face to face with a tangle of claws, fur and fangs? Apparently, though, the hole leads to a burrow that is empty, so Bernard signals that we may gather round for a closer look.
