May 11: Karoo National Park

As mentioned previously, my first National Park after leaving Cape Town is Karoo National Park, located just west of the town of Beaufort West. Karoo NP (297 sq. mi.), established in 1979, is part of the Great Karoo ecosystem, the largest distinct ecosystem in South Africa. It is a vast and unforgiving landscape, yet still home to a fascinating diversity of life, all having adapted to survive in harsh semi-desert conditions. Unfortunately, most of the wildlife that once roamed the Karoo have been eradicated, but the Park is a relatively small area where this unique environment and its animals are protected and persist. This semi-desert area is a sanctuary for herds of springbok, oryx (gemsbok), mountain zebra, buffalo, red hartebeest, black rhinoceros, eland, kudu, klipspringer, bat-eared foxes, black-backed jackal, ostriches, and lions – I saw most of these species today on my drive. It also has the greatest number of tortoise species of any park in the world – five in total! Most of vegetation consists of montane grasslands at the highest elevations where is gets the most precipitation, grading into grassy shrublands and dwarf shrublands at the lower elevations where the precipitation is very low and uncertain, and the occasional riparian thicket along the drainage bottoms – think Sonoran Desert of the American Southwest minus the saguaro cacti and you get a pretty good picture of the environment, as the following pictures try to depict:

My campsite is the public rest camp in the Park. As campsites go, it’s nothing to rave about. I have a small patch of ground surrounded on three sides by thornbushes, but very much within earshot of the other campsites. Modern showers, laundry, kitchen, power hookups, water spickets at every site, etc.. You get the picture. A fairly modern, full amenites campsite. Not the kind of “bush” camping I prefer, but there is no “wild” camping in the South African parks. As an aside, I had some free time this afternoon at my campsite, so I took the opportunity to make a video of the Green Dragon in all its glory . You can check out the vehicle page on this site if you want to see the Dragon in full regalia.

I took a “game” drive today (note, even though it is not really about seeing “game”, which technically refers to hunted species, the locals still refer to these wildlife drives as game drives, so I will go local too) and didn’t see a sole (human, that is) for 5 hours, and then saw maybe 5 vehicles during my last couple of hours. That made for an awesome wildlife viewing exerience that I won’t always have at other more popular safari parks. I saw lots of cool species, including two different species of zebra (mountain zebra and plains zebra) and several different antelope species (gemsbok, springbok, red hartebeest, lesser kudu, mountain reedbuck, and klipspringer) and a dozen or so new bird species. Here are some not-so-great photos I took today of some of these species (note, I have a crappy little camera without a big telephoto lens, so it’s hard for me to get good close-up pictures in focus):

My favorite was a stop at a small out-of-the-way little water hole down a 4×4 road, where I sat for perhaps an hour and watched one new bird species after another come to the hole for a drink. Even had a close up of a small grey mongoose on the prowl at the water hole. My camera is not sufficient for photographing birds (except for the occasional ostrich), so I have no bird pictures of my own to share. For you wildlifers out there, especially those that like to list species seen, I created a wildlife species page on this site where I will keep a running list of species seen on this trip. However, for the broader audience, I am going to simply highlight a single cool species I see each day I am in the field.

My species of the day is the Ludwig’s Bustard. This a large cursorial bird adapted for running more than flying. Think chicken-size bird but very long legs and long neck, which they use to run down and catch lizzards, small snakes, rodents and insects of all types. The males also have a throat pouch that they inflate in a spectacular display while strutting around amidst other males in what is called a Lek, all to attract females for the prize of mating. I saw pair of these magnificant birds but wasn’t able to get a photo so I am shamelessly going to borrow a photo off the internet for your benefit: