Southern Africa: Secretarybirds, Lemurs, and the World’s Rarest License Plate

An excerpt from Peter Alden's memoir: My Wild Life

On one shore excursion, when we noticed a huge polar bear watching us from around a large rock we had to quickly load into our zodiacs.

Around the early 1970s, I began organizing a large number of bird and mammal safaris in Africa. The part of the continent that most intrigued me was the southern region, where bird tours were virtually nonexistent, but the politics of promoting tourism in that area were problematic. The country of South Africa itself was under apartheid, and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was still run by the British. Much of the Western world was turning against these minority governments. My supervisor at the Massachusetts Audubon Society, James Baird, was hesitant about publicizing tours to these countries, not sure of how the news would be received by the Audubon’s relatively enlightened and liberal-leaning membership. Finally, he approved a plan to run one of the first-ever birding trips to South Africa through direct mailing a few hundred of our recent international tour clients. Even with its restricted marketing campaign, our inaugural 45-day grand tour of South Africa and Rhodesia sold out. 

Even with its restricted marketing campaign, our inaugural 45-day grand tour of South Africa and Rhodesia sold out. Starting in South Africa, we were thrilled with the big game and bird life in Kruger National Park—a national park the size of Connecticut—as well as that in the parks of Natal, Zululand, and the Cape Province. Next, we headed north into Rhodesia to visit Victoria Falls and Hwange National Park (formerly Wankie Game Reserve). Much to my relief, the entire adventure worked out beautifully.

Following the success of that first tour of southern Africa, I ran several more: some for

Mass Audubon, some for the Harvard Museum of Natural History, and some for Lindblad Travel. We added the countries of Namibia and Botswana to the itinerary as well.

As on the first trip there, I would take each group to visit Kruger National Park, with its astounding abundance of herbivores, carnivores, and birds. It’s always a thrill to see how amazed people are at their first glimpse of rare creatures like lions, elephants, and rhinos. The terrain in Kruger is wide open and the animals here have not been hunted for a century, so they graze and wander comfortably, without fear, and are easy to spot. Among the interesting birds roaming through these grasslands is the Southern Ground-Hornbill, named for its ground-loving habit even though it can fly.

The tall Secretarybird can also be seen, with its long legs and long neck, plus its black crest with feathers resembling quills. Both species walk along through the grass, hoping to run into something edible: snakes, lizards, large insects, eggs in a ground nest. After watching birds nearly until sundown, we’d often have to rush to get back to our lodge before dark, since traveling within the park at night was strictly forbidden as well as dangerous.

After visiting Kruger National Park, we’d usually fly back to Johannesburg for a night and then the next day embark on a spectacular journey via Blue Train through the Orange Free State to Cape Town Province. The port city of Cape Town is spectacularly sited on South Africa’s southwest coast, at the foot of Table Mountain. You can take cable cars up the mountain for breathtaking views over the countryside. The gorgeous Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, with its array of interesting flowers and birds, is another must. This region is home to the most diverse floral kingdom in the world—even more species than in the Andes, the Amazon Basin, or the Himalayas—with more than 12,000 endemic plants. (Sadly, all 12,000 of them may disappear if the world doesn’t soon unite to stop climate change. The deserts are creeping south here, and plants are disappearing at an alarming speed. To the south is nothing but ocean.)

In the 1970s, it was already possible to fly from Johannesburg to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to visit Victoria Falls. One of the world’s largest waterfalls, it appears as a curtain of water falling over the Zambezi River. Not far from Victoria Falls is what was then the Wankie Game Reserve (now called Hwange National Park). With comfortable lodges and easily accessible watering holes, it’s a great place to view large game.

From there, it’s easy to travel by land into Botswana, a relatively affluent country by African standards due to its rich mineral stores, its low population, and its tourist economy. There are numerous parks and lodges, and you can see elephants in the grasslands and hippos in the rivers. This is one area where we were allowed to go out on foot. Being on foot is highly preferable for bird watchers to being in a motor vehicle.

One afternoon we were tromping along near the edge of a forest when we heard a loud trumpeting. A male African elephant, apparently annoyed by our presence, started charging our group. I’d mounted a telescope on a tripod, and I stood my ground hoping I could distract the elephant while the rest of my group, some of whom were slow and elderly, attempted to retreat. I held my telescope high, trying to intimidate the elephant. Finally, he stopped, swished his trunk, blew out some dusty air, trumpeted again, and gave me what I can only describe as a little wink, as if to acknowledge how fortunate I was that he’d had a change of heart. Then he turned around and retreated back into the forest.

We would sometimes go out on the Okavango Delta on little boats called mokoros to look for Pel’s Fishing-Owls, which perch on branches that stretch over the water. And in Namibia, we’d go to Etosha National Park, within which lies the Etosha Pan, a vast hollow where salt remains after water evaporates—which when wet is a habitat for flamingos.

 

Cruising South Africa, the Indian Ocean, and Tristan da Cunha

Following the many land adventures to Southern Africa, I served as a naturalist on cruises around the Indian Ocean and beyond, which provided visits to the fascinating island of Madagascar. Due to having separated from Africa about 165 million years ago, Madagascar's isolation has led to a vast array of unique creatures, including lemurs, the elusive Aye-aye, and brightly colored frogs, chameleons and geckos. We’d stop at Nosy Be, a mesmerizing island off the northwest coast of Madagascar with lemurs and endemic birds. Knowing that travelers value encounters with rare mammals, we’d hand out bananas to feed to the black lemurs, a practice permitted there but one I would not repeat elsewhere. Sometimes the lemurs ate so many that by the time we left Nosy Be they were all lounging around with distended bellies. On another journey, off the southeast coast of Madagascar, I once spotted the largest pod of humpback whales I’ve ever seen. This sighting was forwarded to a whale researcher friend, Roger Payne.

I worked on one cruise that started in the African port city of Mombasa and cruised around the Indian Ocean to Cape Town, then headed west toward Rio de Janeiro, stopping along the way at the British colony of Tristan da Cunha. Called “Tristan” for short, it has a large volcanic mountain at its center and is perhaps the most interesting of these area islands.

As we arrived at Tristan da Cunha on one visit, the swells were very high. Water was sloshing up and down, and there was no dock on the island; we had to load passengers into smaller boats. I jumped into the first boat so that I could help others board. Several of them fell as they tried to clamber in, and the officers began to worry about injuries, especially with no chance of x-rays or medical help available beyond what our cruise ship could offer.

After our first small boat made it ashore, the captain decided it was too dangerous and declared that the rest of the passengers would have to stay on the cruise ship. But he also felt that the seas were too rough for the boat to bring those of us who had reached the island back to the ship! As a result, I was stranded on Tristan da Cunha all day with just a handful of other travelers. The governor general joined us for lunch. Back on the cruise ship, the Brits fumed over the change in plans, since they were more interested in visiting Tristan than Antarctica. 

One serendipitous thing happened as a result of that circumstance, though. I’d recently met a license plate collector working adjacent to my office in Cambridge who’d told me that Tristan da Cunha plates were considered by collectors to be the rarest in the world. He wanted to know if I could snag one for him while I was there. Well, I said, I certainly didn’t plan to buy and register a vehicle, but perhaps I could find a way. On the cruise ship, I slipped a pair of pliers into my pocket. Stranded that day with no clients to take bird watching, I wandered around the outskirts of town until there in the weeds I spotted an abandoned Land Rover. With the pliers, I quickly freed the license plate from the vehicle and stuck it in the back of my shirt. I was mildly remorseful about stealing, but it really did not look to me as if that car was even registered, and upon arriving back home, I soon made one man the happiest license plate collector in all of America.