Animals on demand

2006-12-14 09:20

Georgina Guedes

My boyfriend, Ter, and I were in Australia when Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, passed away. Interestingly, the Australians weren't hesitant to speak ill of the dead, and debate raged on the front pages of the daily papers about whether his show had been contributing to conservation efforts or merely molesting animals for the sake of entertainment.

Those who spoke out in support of Irwin pointed out that on an increasingly overpopulated planet, for people to care enough about conservation, it is necessary for wildlife to become entertaining and accessible to them, not merely an abstract concept.

I can't say I agree entirely with this perspective, having had the fortune to grow up in South Africa and to learn that the majesty and beauty of wildlife roaming free is accessible to anyone with just a little patience. But a couple of times on our travels around the world, I would have been pleased to have the desired animal paraded in front of me.

In Laos, we went into a nature reserve where a thought-to-be-extinct species of gibbon had been rediscovered. The reserve was beautiful, and we stayed in tree houses in the highest strangler figs in the jungle, but we didn't see a single gibbon.

We did, however, get to hear them sing their eerie song at sunrise, and staying in the jungle in a tree house was well worth the money we spent that would contribute to the running of the reserve.

In the cloud forest in Ecuador, we had a guide who was willing to bend the rules of low-impact tourism a little, to give us a chance to feast our eyes on a troop of monkeys.

After we had slashed and hacked our way through thorny vines and toxic-barbed bamboo, chocolate fudge mud sucking at our boots and undergrowth snagging at our pant legs at every step, we found ourselves in front of an enormous tree that our guide, Wilmer, assured us was full of howler monkeys.

Wilmer soon grew bored of our squinting up into the branches, agreeing uncertainly that perhaps we could make out the shadowy form of the group's male. He hacked his way over to a nearby cluster of giant bamboo that mingled with the tree's branches, and started shaking it vigorously.

This set the monkeys off howling up a cacophony worthy of their name, and as they leapt about in consternation, we were able to make out their shapes quite clearly.

This was considered a successful wildlife sighting, and Wilmer was so pleased that we didn't have the heart to reprimand him for his callous attitude.

Animals on parade

On the other hand, in the Galapagos Islands, low-impact tourism has been so successful that the promised animals parade nonchalantly past visitors as if they weren't even there.

The Ecuadorian government has long kept careful control over visitors to the islands, and the animals have no fear of humans because they have never had reason to associate them with a threat.

However, compared to the ridiculous profusion of bird life on just about every surface in the Galapagos, trying to spot condors in Colca Canyon in Peru threatened to be something of a letdown.

We bused in early in the morning, and perched ourselves on the edge of a cliff overlooking the second deepest canyon in the world, waiting for these enormous birds to appear. It was quite strange, when looking for a bird renowned for its ability to catch thermals to impossible heights, to be peering downwards.

After an hour and a half of sitting above the canyon, sun beating down on us, we were ready to call it a day. We put away our cameras and dusted ourselves off. As we filed despondently towards the bus, I happened to cast a backwards glance over my shoulder.

There, floating along below us as smoothly and slowly as if they were on rails, were two black and white condors, wings outstretched as if to embrace the entire valley below.

We watched them sail slowly along the canyon wall until they were only specks in the distance. The hour and a half that we had waited evaporated into irrelevance in the face of such an awesome sighting.

Steve Irwin was an entertaining chap, and I do think that he brought an appreciation of wildlife to a large audience, but nothing beats the first-hand experience of a greatly anticipated and long-awaited encounter.

Georgina Guedes is a South African woman travelling the world. She has heard of a thirty-day puma tracking tour into the jungle, but she doesn't have that much patience.

Send your comments to Georgina

Disclaimer: News24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of columnists published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24.

- News24