TMC

Pongola, KwaZulu-Natal
January 14, 2019

My most recent trip was to South Africa to visit friends from the camp I work at over the summer. My friends planned for us to visit their aunt’s house in a place called Pongola, about 6 hours east of Johannesburg. People from South Africa call Pongola ‘the bush’; it’s a most relatable term that Americans use would be the countryside. It is made up of mostly sugar cane farms and game reserves. Their aunt works on a game reserve there, where people come and pay to hunt. One of the main marketing points of the reserve is that they carry the Big 5. The Big 5, for those who don’t know, are the five main animals hunters go after when they are on safari; Buffalo, Lion, Leopard, Rhino, and Elephants. The reserve also featured a wide range of African wildlife, including; Hippos, wild Boars, Impalas, crocodiles, zebras, and of course, giraffes.

We departed from Johannesburg around 4 am the morning of the 14th. Our mode of transportation was a ‘Bucky.’ A Bucky is a pickup truck where the bed is covered and has windows. Six of us laid cramped in the bed of the truck with pillows and blankets. We arrived at the reserve just about 10 am. Their aunt had arranged for us to take a game ride to check out the 18,500 hectares of land. Our tour guide Phillip arrived in an oversized jeep with nine seats. The jeep had no roof, no railing, and no sort of cage, and there was nothing between us and the wildlife around us.

I took this picture around an hour in on our first journey into the bush. We had seen buffalo, impala, zebra, and we were even false charged by a rhino. When we began to pull up on this small herd of giraffes, something struck me. Of course, I have seen giraffes in zoos, but there was something about these wild ones that stuck with me. The overall size of these animals is amazing. They are massive creatures that don’t really have any similar or closely related species. They are alone on this world, novel to this continent. Their towering necks and endless legs with gapping strides that make them look like they are moving in slow motion when they run can’t be found anywhere else. It was their individuality on this planet that stuck with me, and seeing so many in the wild roaming freely left me captivated.

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The photo of the giraffe was taken on my Canon EOS Rebel T6 ƒ/81/16055mmISO100, completely unedited.