May 14: Happy Mother’s Day!

First and foremost, happy mother’s day to all you mothers out there!

Second, today was a rather grueling long haul day driving from Mountain Zebra National Park 9 hours (argh) northeast up to Golden Gate Highlands National Park. As depicted in the map above, my original plan was to go to Mokala National Park for a couple of nights on the way to Golden Gate, but since I spent a few more days in Cape Town than originally expected, I had to cut out Mokala – bummer. Anyways, I am going to save my overview of this Park until tomorrow after I have seen the Park and am able to share photos and stories, etc. For now, let me share a few observations, photos and sounds of the day.

Shortly after leaving Mountain Zebra National Park heading in a northeast direction I left the Eastern Cape Province and entered the Freestate Province and started encountering immense cattle and sheep ranches – albeit with very few head of livestock. Nothing like the intensive livestock densities we see on similar productive grasslands in the states. Based on the fencing, these ranches must be ’10s’ of thousands of acres each, if not more – and I can ony imaging how these vast land holdings were acquired from the indigenous peoples back during the great trek north from Cape Town by the pioneer white dutch-descendent “voortrekkers” as they were called, or the Brittish settlers who came along behind them. The landscape was nothing spectacular, just vast grass-covered plains and scattered hills:

As I headed northeast further into the Free State, land productivity apparently increased and I started seeing vast fields of mostly corn, but some sorghum (I think) as well, and increasing homesites. I could have easily been driving through Iowa had I not seen the mountains in the distance:

OK, enough of the somewhat boring landscape from today. The species of the species of the day is the Springbok which I have seen a plenty. Despite their abundance and ubiquity in southern Africa they are nonetheless a very cool species – and beautiful too! As you can see from the picture I took below, they in some ways resemble our North American pronghorn antelope. Like the pronghorn, the springbok is also an antelope of the semi-desert environment and can survive for very long periods without drinking any water. Instead, it can derive much of its water needs from the food it eats when surface water is not available. Consequently, it occupies habitats that are much too dry for many of the other antelope species that we will encounter. This species likes open expanses of grassland and perhaps some scattered shrubs, but you don’t find them when the shrub cover gets too great or in woodlands because they would too easily fall prey to leapords and lions. Instead, a major predator they have to be on the look for in their preferred open country is the cheetah – the fast land animal on Earth. I often see springbok in small groups of bachelors but other times I see large herds of 20-50 or more containing adults and young. The young ones especially love to “play” by chasing each other around, and both the young and adults like to “pronk”, or run and jump in the air with arched back and stiff legs. They are really fun to watch!

OK, here is the mystery sound for today that I just recorded while lying in my roof-top bed in the public campsite at Golden Gate Highlands National Park. Can you guess what it is?

Well, if you guessed Coyote you are not far from the mark. This is the call of the Black-backed jackal, which is close to being the ecological counterpart of the Coyote here in Africa. Here is a picture I stole from the internet so that you can see what the critter looks like:

Until next time, sleep tight and don’t let the jackals bite!