When it arose in Africa, the national park movement in Africa departed radically from the American and European model. It did so by transposing the terms in the traditional equation where landscape ranked first and animal life second.
In Africa, the one continent where wildlife had been the least hunted or hounded toward extinction, great intact herds of animals on vast swaths of land became the primary draw. Were there no towering mountains, deep canyons or high waterfalls to serve as backdrops tothe animal hordes? Who cared? The fascination exerted by bellowing, bounding, odiferous lions, rhinos, elephants, elands, springboks, leopards, wildebeest, dogs, buffalo, giraffes, and hyenas was far stronger among travelers than any thirst for grand scenery. The African parks would present wildlife ahead of vistas and never give the order of importance a second thought.
The world agrees. When travelers think of African national parks, the images most conjure are of wide, acacia-dotted plains, populated by prides, bands and herds of animals. From Kruger in South Africa to Katavi in Tanzania, animal-oriented parks dominate popular thought.
But Africa is a big continent, second in size only to Asia. You could fit North America and Western Europe into it and have a Texas to spare. So Africa is not all high plains or Saharan desert. There are also the unexpectedly dramatic mountains of Ethiopia, Lesotho and Morocco, and the giant lakes of the Great Rift Valley. The grandeur of the continent’snational parks isn’t expressed only in terms of wildlife. Some places, like the Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa, are ones where the raw beauty of the land is changes the African equation back to scenic beauty, followed by animals, as the order of attraction.
South Africa’s uKhahlamba-Drakensberg (uKhahlamba is Zulu for “barrier of spears” and Drakensberg is Afrikaans for “dragon mountain”) and Royal Natal national parks are located at the western edge of Natal, an eastern province whose coastline lies along the Indian Ocean. Ukhahlamba-Drakensberg, the larger park, stretches out along a border with the mountain kingdom of Lesotho, and covers an area of 243,000 hectares (940 square miles). Its attractions include tall, often serrated peaks (some more than 3,000 meters/9,800 feet high) with alpine characteristics, including snow in winter, roiling thunderstorms in summer, high mountain meadows and sharp, chiseled relief in some places that invite serious climbers.
The region is also part of southern Africa’s continental divide, with some rivers that originate in the park flowing east to the Indian Ocean and others west to the Atlantic. Given its altitude, uKhahlamba-Drakensberg is a well-watered place, a feature that draws trout fishermen from all over the world.
It also is the site of some 35,000 rock art paintings created by the San Bushman people over a 4,000-year period – a distinction that earned the park a World Heritage Site designation in 2000. Wildlife here includes eland, black eagles and bearded vultures, along with smaller deer.
The much smaller Royal Natal Park (8,000 hectares/31 square miles), to the northwest of uKhahlamba-Drakensberg, makes up in concentrated scenery what it lacks in size. There are two outstanding features here: “The Amphitheatre” is a four-mile long rock wall more than 500 meters (1,600 feet) high whose uppermost point, Mont-aux-Sources reaches 3,282 meters (10,800 feet). From The Amphitheater, the seasonal Tugela Falls tumbles 948 meters (3,110 feet), making it the second highest waterfall on earth. Wildlife includes eland, wildebeest and baboons, as well as black eagles and bearded vultures.
Both parks are connected by paved two-lane roads and served by an abundance of hotels, resorts, B&Bs and towns providing traveler services.
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