Over the following three days I became familiar with the feeling of awe and a suppressed excitement. Words of hyperbole lost their impact and were found inadequate. How do you describe the grace of cantering giraffe? The fearsome standoff with a white Rhinoceros as we tracked it to the watering hole? When a 2000 pound creature lifts itself off the ground and stamps the dust, you feel it viscerally. Nothing captures the crack of a tree beneath the testosterone powered trunk of a bull elephant in musk (heat). To be sitting on Fig Dam in the yellow light of a pre-breakfast drive, listening to the trumpets that tell you the elephant is close, and to see the leaves shudder and a sizable tree snapped in half forcing your eyes to adjust and realize that right there, above eye level, but twenty feet away, is the irritable animal in search of a mate. His sensitive snout that he uses for smelling, rips at the bark, then he lumbers closer, and passes, dripping urine, and leaking from his temporal lobe. These are the perks of the private reserve. Every day feeling like nothing could surpass what had been experienced and then being surprised again.
A convenient three-hour-drive from greater Johannesburg, Ka’Ingo has the added bonus of being in a Malaria free zone. One can reach it by private plane, helicopter, or a driver will meet you with drinks, local snacks of droewors(dried sausage) and biltong (dried meat). We opted for the drive and were glad of it. It gave us the opportunity to learn of the local history and for the manager of the reserve, Nick, to educate us in the ways of the bush. We were headed into the Limpopo bushveld, sourbush territory – hardy plants, long grasses – the natural environment of the animals we were about to see. The road to the Waterberg area had developed centuries earlier first by animals on their annual migration, then by local tribes, and finally by the Voortrekkers (early settlers) in their quest to escape the British. One group of settlers, The Jerusalem Gangers, came north in search of Israel and when they found a river, figured it was the Nile so named the river De Nyl Zen Oog. (The eye of the Nile). The flat ‘koppies’ – oblong shaped mountains with slanted sides – were figured to be the remnants of the pyramids. There is still a town called Nylspruit (source of the Nile), though the river has been renamed: Mogalakwena.
Stories like these were peppered throughout our bush drives. The trackers were knowledgeable and entertaining, and the drives included simple sights of beauty. A lunch on a river bank called, The Beach, where almost endangered Black Stalks nested high on craggy cliff walls that looked like art sculptures and showed the sediment that river erosion exposed at the dawn of man. Wild Fig trees forcing life out of nothing, flared green against the honey strata. We were lucky enough to see Starling-coloured Stalks taking flight with their orange beaks fluorescent against the African sky. Another walk through the bush, tramping a path littered with lion paw prints and hooves of antelope, involving a climb down a ladder, revealed Bushmen paintings (actually Koi or San paintings)and more spectacular views. One night drive began with a stop at Lily Dam where the moon rode the sky and the sun kissed the sourbush crimson as Mousebirds with their long tales, Hoopoo birds stamped black white and crimson and the Hadida with its huge gray wing span peppered the luminous sky.
The relatively small reserve offers a wide variety of game for a very short time investment. In a world that is increasingly small and encroaching, Ka’Ingo offered a glimpse into an environment that cannot be easily manufactured. The pristine air, the expanse of land with nothing of the industrialized world, the untouched beauty of wild animals in their natural habitat; the experience is one that will forever linger and is the perfect combination of relaxation, indulgence, stimulation and the thrill of the wild up close.
“Truly a Special Experience for a Special Person”
