Читать книгу Your Kruger National Park Guide - With Stories - Frans Rautenbach - Страница 13

Principle Two: Water is life

The Lowveld of Mpumalanga and Limpopo is distinguished by a number of essential characteristics:

»It is a region with low rainfall.

»It has a hot climate.

»The area is adjacent to the escarpment and the Transvaal Drakensberg, which gets much more rain, and from which streams flow down to the sea, combining to form brooks that in time become rivers.

»It is a low-lying area of the country, which means the rivers sooner or later find their way there.

The game reserve is basically a dry, hot territory with a few large rivers running through it. And animals need water.

Some of the rivers are perennial, others not. But even those that don’t flow throughout the year mostly have water holes or other standing water. And there are also quite a number of watering holes and drinking dams in places other than rivers where animals come to drink.

It stands to reason that, if you want to see plenty of game, you must visit water holes and follow big rivers. The game is not necessarily right next to the rivers, but generally within walking distance of the water. That applies to herbivores like antelope, and also to the predators that hunt them. Many kinds of animals are absolutely dependent on water, like hippopotami, crocodiles and of course fish. These in turn attract certain kinds of animals and birds such as otters and fish eagles.

The most important of the rivers are, more or less in sequence from the far south to the furthest north:

»The Crocodile

»The Sabie

»The Timbavati (seasonal)

»The Sweni / N’wanetsi river complex

»The Olifants

»The Letaba

»The Shingwedzi (seasonal)

»The Levubu (seasonal)

The greatest of these is the Sabie. Not only in terms of water volume, but also in terms of the variety of its fauna and flora (biodiversity). There is just about nothing you can see in the game reserve that you cannot see along or in the Sabie River.

The mere reading of the list of big rivers shows another thing: It explains why so many – especially older – rest camps are situated where they are. They lie on the banks of the big rivers, which also explains why so many of these camps are so popular: because there is so much game.

Later we’ll look at the routes you can plan for game watching. It’s no surprise they include many miles along the great rivers.

The main routes also run past many other water sources: wind pumps, boreholes, pans, streams, water holes… Watch the vegetation, nearby and afar. Keep an eye out for a green seam weaving through the grey on the horizon. It’s probably a river. Look for trees and plants that betray water sources: ilala palms, yellow fever trees, huilboerboon trees, reeds. Stop by the water holes along the way, or on the banks of a full river.

Find water. Water literally is life.