A Loop around Southern Africa – Day 8: The yawning hippos of iSimangaliso

We woke up a little after six in the morning to catch our six-thirty safari tour of iSimangaliso. Having returned from our night safari at ten o’clock, I felt too tired to make conversation with the driver for the first hour, so I was exceedingly glad for Joel’s outgoing personality. What we saw on our safari was much less impressive than the previous night’s yield: a few red duikers, some gnus, warthogs, hippos, lots of monkeys, and various birds. However, we explained to our guide at the very beginning that we were interested in strange little critters, so we were not disappointed, and he did not feel under pressure as the morning slipped by and we came across no big cats or elephants.

Indeed, the animal that received most attention from us was the humble dung beetle. We were shocked to find these giants zooming around the wetlands like heavily armed helicopters, threatening our heads as we rode in the opposite direction. Our guide, who told us he had a small scar on his forehead from once getting hit by a flying dung beetle, stopped the car at one point to lift a dung beetle from a pile of elephant poop and handed it to us. Joel, who is an entomologist, was delighted. He accidentally dropped the dung beetle next to Tiana, which elicited an absolutely bloodcurdling scream from her.

We made a longer stop to drink tea and eat muffins by the picnic area of Mission Rocks Beach, where our guide continued feeding our interest in local arthropods. He showed us a colony of weaver ants, which use silk produced by their grubs to stick leaves together into big wads while they are still growing on branches. In return for granting them an abode, the ant colony protects its tree from grazers with painful bites. The guide also uncovered two millipedes – one of them bright red – and excavated an antlion. Much to my surprise, it looked nothing like an ant or lion but more like a broken accordion. All the while, in the distance, we could see splashes made by migrating whales.

We had an hour after we returned to our hotel to pack our things and drive to the nearby jetty, where we were picked up for a two-hour boat tour of the lake. At first, we did not see anything too compelling, just a few silhouetted hippo heads bobbing above the water every now and then. As we carried on, however, we began to spot sunning crocodiles and bright yellow weaver birds flitting through the reeds to build their nests. We ended up seeing quite a few different species of birds, including malachite kingfishers, white-breasted cormorants, African darters, and fish eagles. As we returned, one pod of hippos decided to climb out of the water, which was the most action I had ever seen from these creatures. They clearly thought this activity very strenuous, as they accompanied it with a lot of yawns and stopped every few steps.

When we returned to the jetty, Tiana found a man in a Rastafarian hat selling carved monkey orange peels. On our drive through iSimangaliso, I had pointed out an orange that a vervet monkey we scared away had been eating, and the guide got out of the car to pick it up and show it to us. This did not please the monkeys, who bore their fangs and rushed at our guide making loud clicking noises, but the guide was convinced they were reacting to the picture of a leopard on the side of the car. Eventually, the guide got the idea and tossed the peeled orange back to the monkeys. Inspired by the fruit’s sweet, vanilla-like scent, Tiana took it in her head that she had to procure it, and she managed to persuade the man in the Rastafarian hat to find her one after she had bought a hollowed one carved with little guinea fowl.

Finding a monkey orange was not the only unscripted event of the day. While waiting for our takeaway meal at a fish and chips store in Saint Lucia, Tiana and Brent wandered off to a nearby fishing tackle shop. Tiana was asking very earnest questions about the kinds of fish one might catch at this time of the year as Brent loitered around so suspiciously that the store owner turned on his security cameras, believing them to be running some kind of a heist.

For the record, we looked forward to eating our monkey orange the entire night and finally opened it at our hotel in Amsterdam. Joel and Brent were researching whether the fruit was poisonous, but the information they found was so confused and contradictory that Tiana and I ended up just shovelling a big spoonful of the brown goop in our mouths. It tasted fermented and altogether quite terrible. We could not be more disappointed, as we had spent a long time in the car just sniffing the aromatic shell and thinking how delicious the fruit inside would taste.