Entabeni: The Way of the Bush

When my father invited me to join his University of Connecticut African Field Ecology class on a trip to Entabeni Nature Reserve in South Africa, I couldn’t say “Yes!” fast enough. He’s been leading field classes to South Africa for several years, fulfilling his childhood dream to see Africa’s largest mammals and this year, a spot opened up for me to join him.

I flew out from Santiago, passed through Brazil, and arrived in Johannesburg roughly 10 hours before the group of thirteen students and my dad joined me at a hostel near the airport. This was my first trip out of the Americas and into Africa, flying to the other side of the pond, Southern Hemisphere-style. I’d been trying to get up to speed on the region, from daily readings of the Mail and Guardian newspaper to watching any films about South African history, culture or science that I could get my hands on.

Though I was arriving at 7am and would have to wait all day for the rendezvous with the group, I was “fortunate” enough to have South African Airways lose my luggage and buy me some time while speaking with the lost baggage department to figure out how to recuperate it. At least all I had lost was clothes and some non-essentials since I always fly with my photography and computer equipment in carry-on. After a brief conversation with the lost luggage people, they assured me that it was probably just placed in transit to another destination; they would find it within a few hours and then bring it out to my hostel in the afternoon, which they did.

I went to the hostel, ate lunch, and did some research online before laying down for a brief nap. The next moment, I hear my dad’s voice and realize that I’d taken much more than a quick power nap, as my alarm clock had gone off and I hadn’t heard it. I met the students, we ordered pizza and all off to bed for the 8:00 departure the next day.

The van drive to Entabeni Nature Guide Training school took roughly three hours drive time but we included a detour to a mall in Pretoria for people to stock up on batteries, snacks, and any other essential items. The landscape began changing from urban to rural as soon as we left Pretoria, evolving into wild dry stretches of bushvelt. There was also a stop at Kranskop where my dad and I noshed on some obligatory hot weather ice cream.

Soon, we arrived at the entrance gates to the school where we met up with Lee Gutteridge, the man of the hour, the principal instructor of the school, and a legendary great guy all around. The van pulled into the driveway of the small camp, where eight olive-coloured tents are set up in pairs on raised wooden platforms. Small branches about two meters tall act as a flimsy looking fence to keep out the wildlife and a cement and stone platform in the middle of the camp serves as the place to make small bonfires. Tents were assigned and duffel bags and backpacks were stowed away. Chef Peter, aka Cheffy, greeted us with the first of many delicious meals.

With the group gathered around the campfire platform, Lee laid out the rules and the plans, well peppered with a deadpan humour which confused the most gullible of the students. I began to understand how my father and Lee get along so well; their joy in confounding gullible students with their playful sense of humour conveys a key lesson from great instructors: don’t believe everything you hear and learn to think for yourself!

We had a game drive planned for the afternoon, consisting of driving around on old but well-built Toyota Landcruisers that had three large rows of seats for nine passengers behind the driver. The group now included my father’s two doctoral candidate students, as well as one of the three instructors that would rotate in taking us out and teaching. I hopped in the vehicle with Lee and my dad and we set out.

Having read David duChemin’s Safari Monograph e-book before the trip, I fought off the urge to fire away haphazardly when I saw animals that were new to me. It was a challenge but I succeeded; taking only a few badly composed, boring photographs of blue bearded wildebeest hindquarters as they galloped away. It turned out to be one of the most amazing game drives, sighting giraffes, white rhinoceros, zebras, and to top it all off, glorious male lions along with the rest of the pride.

Entabeni and its bushveld environment slowly became a new friend as we discovered and experienced her days and nights, learning about everything from bird calls to geologic formation to reading the tracks and signs of wildlife. Her days gave us sightings of the most incredible wildlife, including ever-comical warthogs, zebras, rhinos, crocodiles, lions, cheetahs, elephants, hippos, antelope of all sizes and species, innumerable birds, and magnificent views of Hanglip Mountain. Her nights gave us astronomy classes under the Southern Cross, radiant scorpions under UV light, suspenseful night game drives, entertaining campfire banter and a whole host of calls from lions, jackals, nightjars, and the occasional wildebeest sounding out his alternate name: gnu.

In the first week, a three-day first aid course instructed by Andrew Miller of Systematic Medical and Response Training certified us all to perform CPR and basic wilderness first aid in case something happened while out. Gory images and video complimented Andrew’s nauseatingly detailed accounts of mishaps involving the bush and its wildlife while accomplishing a didactic message that there are no accidents, only breaches in safety.

The days began with oatmeal porridge at 6:00, although I personally preferred getting up at 5:30 to build a small fire in the chilly mornings for my campmates and to snap any cool sunrise shots. Next, game drives and lectures started out at 6:30, coming back to camp for brunch at 10:30. I had the most incredible sensation that the days were absolutely jam-packed with activity since by noon, it was possible to have seen an assortment of wildlife or learned how to identify a Common Duiker track, leaving a good amount of time to see and experience other things. After the first weeks, it was a contradiction in time, with the days slipping away while at the same time dragging out, hour by hour as we crammed more and more bush experience into our heads.

By the second week, the students began their research on various topics, ranging from giraffe spot identification to checking up on oxpecker nest placements to setting up camera traps on aardvark holes to see who was using them, as well as measuring elephant damage to the flora in their habitat. On a few occasions, I accompanied a film crew from the African Natural History Unit out on drives, including a very lekker* trip to watch the sunrise from atop the upper escarpment of Hanglip Mountain.

Lectures from various experts rounded out the massive amount of information handed out by Lee and his knowledgeable instructors. Jonathan Leeming, aka the Scorpion Guy, gave a talk about scorpions and included a show-and-tell with an option to hold a live scorpion. There was also an excursion out to three different caves, including one with a warthog-sized entrance hole and one with an underground pool for the group to take a quick dip in.

The student group gelled together quite nicely, with almost no conflicts and no overt expressions of culture shock or desperate homesickness. Minimal injuries were sustained including a fall from a tree and a scrape from a rock while caving, but all was well.

I discovered the bushveld bears a resemblance to Patagonia, though by no means in terms of the flora and fauna or climate and weather conditions. My two years in Patagonia infected me with a lifelong chronic illness whose only remedy is to return to the vast yellow pampas and the immense blue skies of the Chilean and Argentinean Patagonia as much as possible. The hard asphalt roads and city noise of the city is no match for a land that lulls you to sleep with jackal songs in the night and the only background noise is the wind rustling up the leaves. Oh bushveld, how I miss thee. A brief self-check of signs and symptoms revealed to me a similar infection from the bushveld, with its amazing biodiversity and indomitable spirit. I would have to come back at least a couple of times in my life, perhaps even having to move there for a time period.