Johannesburg - The open all-terrain vehicle is driving through the Kapama Game Reserve on an evening game-viewing excursion.
The ride is a preliminary to an extended safari that will get under way the next day in neighbouring Kruger National Park.
Those coming to visit this bushland region are here to see the “Big Five” game animals of Africa: elephant, rhinoceros, buffalo, lion and leopard.
With the light already getting dim, the vehicle stops at a pond. On the other side there is the silhouette - of a massive black torso, a horn atop the head: a rhinoceros! It is not just the animal's unlikely grace that makes this meeting so memorable.
It is also the thought that in maybe 20 years' time this will no longer be possible.
A photo posted by Kapama Private Game Reserve (@kapamareserve) on Mar 27, 2016 at 12:55am PDT
The rhinoceros is under attack. In Asia, there are widespread superstitions that drive a trade in powdered rhino horn, while in Africa many people are poor, without prospects and willing to poach.
Tragedy is the result. Criminals hire the poachers to hunt the rhinos and cut off their horns, coveted booty which is then smuggled to Vietnam, where wealthy clients will pay up to $60 000 (about R720 000) for a kilogram of the substance.
They believe that the ground horn can heal illnesses or assist male sexual potency.
For the first time in a decade, the number of poached rhinos in South Africa did not rise last year. This sounds like good news. But at 1 175 killed, it was still an unacceptably high figure, says Arnulf Koehncke, World Wildlife Fund expert on species conservation.
The rhino may soon be extinct at that rate. In all of Africa the number of white rhinos and black rhinos is estimated at around 25 000.
At dawn, when the first vehicles begin heading out on safaris in Kruger Park, the poachers have long since withdrawn into hiding.
A photo posted by Kapama Private Game Reserve (@kapamareserve) on Mar 23, 2016 at 4:03am PDT
The tourists will be spending the next 11 hours exploring the park and need have no fear of the poachers. In the daytime as least, legality prevails in this natural paradise.
The guide and driver, John Mthwethwa, points out the first animal before the vehicle has even reached the park entrance. In the high grass just off the roadside, a lion and lioness are resting, and John quickly gives some clear-cut instructions.
“Don't stand up. Don't stick your legs or feet outside the car. The animals don't like this. Some of them might then get really angry,” he warns.
Inside the park's boundaries, nothing much happens for the next couple of hours. The safari passengers have to be patient.
But then at some point an elephant appears on the side of the road - a further representative of the “Big Five” group.
John steers the vehicle for hours along lonely stretches of road through the bushland, and it begins to dawn on the passenger just how huge Kruger Park is - roughly 350 kilometres from north to south and a good 50 kilometres wide.
Along the way the safari tourist see a great many animals - zebras, giraffes, baboons, antelopes, hippopotamus with turtles riding atop their backs. And a great many elephants.
The elephant is also threatened, its ivory still coveted.
Kruger Park wants to combat the ivory trade through safari tourism.
That the park's fauna merit protection is evident to any visitor who has gone on a safari. Just seeing the elephant, the rhino or the lion is better than any theoretical discussion of saving wildlife.
Arnulf Koehncke, a World Wildlife Fun expert on species preservation, notes, “Safari tourism is an important strategy to get people enthusiastic about the great variety in the animal world and about protecting nature.”
On this particular safari, the leopard is the one animal among the “big five” that does not let itself be seen. If a visitor is fair about it, then he might even hope that the big cats continue to avoid any contact with us rapacious humans.
DPA