A Walk on the Veld Side

The 14,000 square hectare private wildlife reserve is tucked away along a quiet, scenic route; it’s so inconspicuous that a minute’s inattention may make you miss it completely. Later, the traveller learns to identify it by the Hangklip or Hanging Rock, which follows the Combi — the only vehicle that can take the tantrums of the unpredictable terrain — everywhere. One immediately christens it King Kong; to wonderstruck eyes, the resemblance to the celluloid giant is inescapable.

Once in Entabeni — the ‘Place of the Mountain’ in Afrikaans — on the banks of the Limpopo river, which runs through the heart of South Africa, some more words enter the conversation: ‘bush’, ‘game’, the ‘Big Five’. Entabeni shares almost all features with other game reserves at the foothills of the Waterberg range of mountains except for the game. Owned by millionaires Peet and Mart Cilliers, Entabeni is famous as the home to the Big Five: lion, rhinoceros, elephant, hippopotamus and hyena.

With poaching long banned, what has also become history are the bomas, where animals were once lynched for food or skin. While the Eugene Marais museum in Entabeni does a great job of taking the tourist back to the bushman days, the new face of the bomas today are the lodges that South Africa’s game reserves use to host tourists.

Most holidays tempt one into considering a lifetime of leisure. At Entabeni, too, one feels like giving it all up, but only for a ranger’s life. Chances are, the man who drives you up the mountains in his landrover for a Game Drive will shift paradigms with his stories. One story, as ranger Martin Yves narrates with much passion, is about Entabeni’s elephants. Six years ago, when he and his associates were fencing the reserve, they electrified it as well, certain that 6,000 watts would keep the most determined elephant away. But the tuskers began bringing down trees near the fence so that they would crash into the barricades. Martin and Gang replied by felling all the trees around the fence. The pachyderms retaliated by winding their trunks around their babies and dropping them on the fences — home free!

Another animal that Entabeni treasures is the rhinoceros. But the game reserve can’t match the rhino count in Lapalala, another reserve within driving distance of Entabeni. Made famous by artist-conservationist Clive Walker (whose Siberian tiger prints, inspired by the world renowned wildlife painter David Shephard’s Indian tiger) sell for thousands of rands, Lapalala is into game control these days. While culling has conservationists up in arms elsewhere, it’s an acceptable measure here.

Ask the rangers. They follow the game closely and logistics comes naturally to them. So Entabeni is planning to introduce two more male lions into the only existing pride, which currently faces the prospect of weak-gened future generations. Inbreeding is a strict no-no; even culling is preferable to that. So it’s not just chicken and fish that welcome you at dinnertime. Ostrich meat, ox-tail, impala chops are just a few delicacies on the tables of the Entabeni lodges.

If mealtimes are an experience, what does one call a game drive? The lions, of course, are the cynosure of all eyes. An electric fence separates their 1,000 sq hectare-habitat from the outside world. Opening and closing the main gate — famous as the Lion Gate — is what rangers have made the focal point of many a jungle time story. Jokes apart, one can see the predators pass by the gate in the middle of the night… walking lazily, they just manage to find the energy to get up, walk a few metres, then lie down again. Their graceful yawn apart, it’s nothing short of eerie.

The bushveld of Entabeni, its ravineside and hillside is also home to many a species of antelope — impalas, blesbok, springbok and kudus. A good game drive through Entabeni, a bird watcher’s paradise in spring, also reveals the elephant-skulled rockdassie, baboons, warthogs, giraffes, zebras, ostrich and scores of kinds of reptiles.

Next on the agenda should be a sighting of the bushveld from the moon…