Eyes Wide Open

Imagine a safari where you witness the fascinating behaviour of creatures you’ve never seen before. As a bonus, you can go any time of day and you don’t have to race to the next sighting. Expect all this and more on a micro safari.

- Joël Roerig

Placid creatures munch away while industrious shepherds herd them towards the sweetest pastures in a timeless spectacle. It’s not something you expect to encounter in Letaba Rest Camp in Kruger, but the partnership between these grazers and their herders is there for everyone to see, if only you know where to look.

Well almost.

First of all, there are no sheep in Letaba, but there are baby wax scale insects, miniscule creatures resembling precious flowers that suck nitrogenous fluids from leaf veins not far from where their eggs have hatched. Secondly, there are no shepherds, but there are ants that move the nymphal wax scales around to the spots where they’ll produce the most sugary secretions, yummy ant candy. Thirdly, the intricate spectacle is there for everyone to see, but first you need to forget about lions or lilac-breasted rollers and allow your eyes to focus on what’s happening on top of a single mopane leaf.

To be honest, when I set out on my micro safari around Letaba Rest Camp with tracker, guide and author Lee Gutteridge, I had not even seen the white specks in the green ocean of mopane by the chalets. Once Lee opened my eyes to what was right in front of me, I was dumbfounded and awestruck.

“The trick is to start looking for strange colours and peculiar shapes,” said Lee, one of South Africa’s foremost bushveld experts. He lives in Hoedspruit and operates the Nature Guide Training camp in Balule, which is part of greater Kruger. “When I look at a leaf, I expect it to be green. If there is a white or silvery speck visible, I tend to go in and investigate.”