The Big Five

Our trip to South Africa in late October and early November of this year was our fourth African big game safari experience. We visited the Victoria Falls area in 2015; followed that up with two weeks in Kenya and Tanzania in 2018; and then spent a week plus in Uganda a couple of years ago. On each of our African safari trips, we have always endeavored to see Africa's Big Five wholly within each vacation. I don't think that is unusual, necessarily. It's pretty much a rite of passage at one time or another for all safari-goers to find the Big Five.

Not familiar with the Big Five? Well perhaps a little explanation is in order. 

Big Five. Mammals. Elephant, hippo, rhinoceros, giraffe and some other large animal, maybe? They seem like they might be the largest four plus one creatures out there in the African bush, right? But that's not the Big Five. It's not the largest five animals on the continent. And if it were, the African buffalo would probably round out that group, assuming you were not inclined to add two separate species of rhinoceros in white and black varieties. 

The Big Five is not a size thing. It's a nomenclature that stems from colonial times to identify the five toughest creatures to kill on foot. And the elephant, the rhinoceros and, yes, the African buffalo are on the list along with the lion and the leopard. We were not in Africa to kill anything, on foot or in any sort of vehicle. We never would or will be. The only shooting of animals we'd be doing would be with a camera. 

Lions (top) and African buffalo (bottom).

We have already seen the Big Five on a single trip before. Not near Vic Falls or in Uganda. But between Kenya and Tanzania five years or so ago, we managed to get good sightings of all animals that make out this sought-after group. On that trip, we were told that the true Big Five includes only the black rhinoceros so it took us all the way to our last stop at Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania to declare our quest fully complete. But in preparing to write this post, I found no such specificity in the rhino's inclusion on this list. So on this trip, we'd be good with either white or black. 

Despite having already seen the Big Five on a single trip, we still wanted it again. We probably always will.

We could hardly have picked a better country than South Africa to do it. That country is so committed to the Big Five that they have a picture of one of each of the Five on their five banknotes. They also have the largest population of rhinos by far in the world and also boast robust populations of lions, leopards and elephants. Take that "robust" statement with a huge grain of salt. All of these animals are endangered. Nonetheless, we liked our chances, particularly considering Kruger National Park, where we would be spending four full days, is well stocked (again, relatively) with these creatures. 

And sure, South Africa also has plentiful African buffalo, but then again, we are pretty much talking about cattle here.

It took us about an hour in Kruger before we came across the first of the Big Five. And sure, it was of course a buffalo. Probably or pretty much definitely the least exciting of the Five. Good sighting? Sure. We'll take any wildlife sighting that soon after entering any Park. But it's a buffalo.

It got better. Quickly. Less than 15 minutes later, we'd seen some elephants and what we thought were two lions off to the right of our vehicle. This Kruger thing was shaping up to be a great experience in the first 75 minutes. We couldn't have hoped for any better start. It looked like we were well on our way to a complete Big Five experience like in a couple of hours maybe. All we needed was a leopard and maybe one or two (although really just one) rhinoceros and we'd be done before lunch on the first day.

And those two lions off to the right? Well, there were two lions, a male and female possibly mated or about to be mated. We watched them walk off into the distance and into hiding for a few minutes before realizing there was a second male mere feet from our vehicle and completely camouflaged against the brush. We never even noticed a 400 pound or so cat about 12 feet from the left side of the car. Difficult to hunt on foot? Umm...yeah they would be when you can't even see them. Good thing we were in a car.

So what did the next hour hold for us? Well, let's just say we had to live with buffalo, elephants and lions for days. Yes, days.

First elephant in Kruger (top) and those first two lions (bottom).

But the first couple of hours in a Park coming across elephants, lions and buffalo is not nothing.

On the watchability scale of African animals, for me nothing comes close to the fascination I have with elephants. It's the intelligence and social structure that keeps my attention. When you come across a herd of elephants, you are acknowledged and sometimes put on notice either visually with a hard stare or audibly with a "keep away" noise. There is no other animal out there that looks through the open sides of the safari vehicle and into your eyes and your soul the way an adult elephant does. We are not important to any other species. Elephants know the danger and why we are dangerous. Not lions. Not leopards. Not anything else. Just the elephants.

Sometimes our watching and appreciating takes a long time and I will say we got precious few moments of insight into elephant interpersonal relationships on our four days in Kruger. But we did get a look at the unbridled joy that is a herd of elephants heading out of the bush and sprinting for a lake representing both a long cool drink and a shower at the same time. We also got a look at two younger elephants play-fighting which looked like it was going to end in the larger of the two sitting on the smaller. That would not be a good situation. Elephants weigh a lot.

But just like elephants do, mom (or one of the moms) was watching intently and that act of sitting was interrupted and very effectively stopped by a loud and brusque trumpet from a nearby adult. No sitting on each other. Don't you know that you are endangered as a species? 

There are a lot of elephants in Kruger. Too many, in fact to preserve the land. The South Africans have tried sending some of them to neighboring Mozambique but they keep coming back to Kruger. Too many elephants in this day and age in a particular spot isn't good. It will mean trouble with humans or trouble with the environment and the only real way to solve that is to start killing elephants. Not a comforting thought. 

The middle photo of this sequence is my favorite elephant picture of this trip. I think it's the sky and the elephant on the left.

If it seems like Kruger delivered on the elephants (and it did; it really did!), the lion sightings were even better. While we missed lions entirely on day four, we got at least one on all the other three days. Day two was the best, with four separate lion sightings, including the end of a kill scene and two separate sightings of different white (albino) lions. And two of the sightings were extended. Like at least 20-30 minutes each. And they were only that short because we decided to leave.

I cannot understate the value of these sighting. We have never had a lion day like day two in Kruger and we'd never seen white lions in the wild before anywhere. One of the two white lions was a full grown male named Casper (like the ghost...) who was in pursuit of a mate at about the pace that I would expect a full grown male lion to act. Meaning slowly. Super slowly. A lion's life is a lazy one most of the time. And that is particularly true of male lions. They only really exert themselves when they are hunting and the males usually leave that to the lionesses anyway. The reason why we left the presumed and future mating scene is because we weren't convinced anything was going to happen. It looked promising for a while before both lions just laid down and looked at each other for a while.

Casper (the friendly lion?) on the move and with presumed love interest.

And the kill scene? 

We have never seen the end of a hunt by a pack of lions. It's still on our list, despite all reports that we've had that the actual witnessing (including hearing) a kill can be super upsetting. For 2025, we'd have to be satisfied with the end of the feast on a hunted male kudu. We got to the kill site about as late as we could have, with a group of lions lolling around fat and happy after eating their fill and watching a (second) albino lion still working on the remains of the kudu. 

I cannot imagine how brutal a pack of lions taking down an animal can be live. At least the cats kill their prey once they have a hold of it unlike painted dogs and hyenas which will start eating their kill before it's even killed. Maybe one day. 

So of the first-hour-in-Kruger-Big-Five list, that leaves the African buffalo. Definitely not as sexy or exciting as either elephants or lions. They are literally like large cows moving in herd from one place to another to graze. 

That is, unless they get a little testy. African buffalo are killers. No, I don't mean they hunt things down and eat them. I just mean that they are unpredictable and protective of their young (and adults) and can get mean. And when they do that, they start swinging their heads at whatever they want to drive away with the sinister intent of getting those lethal and sharp curved horns into whatever is opposing them. I would not want to be on foot near these creatures when that sort of action starts happening.

The thrill I got out of African buffalo on this trip was witnessing some play fighting between some young bulls. We watched two or three males get their heads and shoulders low to the ground and start engaging another male in the start of a struggle. Their horns start in these thick caps on top of their heads which they use to start to tussle with their rivals. They then hook their horns with their opponent and push and twist. You can see the immense strength in these creatures in their thick neck muscles while they are locked into another bull's headgear.

Mating season for African buffalo occurs in March or April to allow the birth of calves to coincide with the rainy season in sub-Saharan Africa. I'm assuming what we watched in Kruger would be a lot more sustained and violent closer to mating time. This late October sparring was just that...practice. There's no sense really getting into it until there is a reward to be had. 

The windows we have into the lives of these species as trans-Atlantic tourists are so limited. The first time we safari-ed in 2015 we didn't get any lions feasting or any buffaloes struggling. In fact, we didn't see anything really super-compelling about buffalo other than a lot of mean-mugging until this fourth safari trip. It would make way more sense to just head over to Africa for a month or so, go out every day privately with a guide / driver and really focus on behaviors of each animal with extended personal viewings from close up. Of course, we all have that sort of money and time, right? 

But this is a post about the Big Five, not the Big Three, right? Where are the rhinos and leopards? 

Let's rip the Band-Aid off about the rhinos, shall we? No rhinos seen by us in Kruger. We got a story about mating habits of rhinos which apparently involves pooping (on the ground for white rhinos and on the tree trunks for black rhinos) complete with a pile of poop that we found by the side of the road. We also saw some captive rhinos in a game reserve next to a gas station on the return trip from Kruger to Johannesburg (or Joburg / Jozy if you are a little more with it). But rhinos in Kruger? Nope. We looked. We saw poop. We didn't see rhinos.

You can't always get what you want.

The closest we got to a rhinoceros in Kruger. White rhino, apparently. Poop's on the ground.

But we did get a Big Four out of Five.

I would estimate the total amount of leopard-viewing time for us in Kruger National Park in 2025 at about five minutes. No exaggeration. No low-balling. Five minutes total. And that was with two leopards in two separate locations. Both in trees. And both did the same thing as soon as we showed up. They both (one female and one male) looked around, climbed out of their respective tree very quickly and walked away. The female walked directly away from us and was instantly lost in the brush. The male walked to the right and was in sight for maybe a minute after descending. If he had walked away from us, our five minutes might have been four minutes.

There is something indescribably gorgeous about a leopard that is different from any other animal we have ever seen in Africa. Elephants are dusty and have wiry hairs all over their body which are a bit off-putting. Rhinos are dusty and usually have red-billed oxpeckers feeding on an open wound or two. African buffalo are dusty and with wet noses and just look irritable all the time. Lions are dusty and shaggy and unkempt and when feeding, generally covered with a little bit of blood.

Leopards are none of that. Not even dusty. They are gorgeously colored, super-well groomed and the most well-put together animal that you can find in the bush. They are sleek and powerful and just spectacularly perfect every time you see them. Pick any animal you can find in Africa. There's no comparison to the leopard from an appearance standpoint.

Was five minutes enough? Absolutely not. But it got me the picture below. I took a few more of the two leopards that we saw but none of the others are as incredible as the one below. And because we got such an emphemeral look, it's the only one I'm posting. This is my picture of the trip. It's not perfect. There is way too much light in the background. But it's the picture of the trip for me.

Big Five? Not this year. I'm not heartbroken. Kruger was an amazing Park and it made our time in South Africa an incredible safari experience. Wildlife trips are unpredictable. The animals rarely cooperate. You just have to go out every day or as many days as possible and look and hope. No rhinos and no regrets here. 

We got an incredible collection of photographs from Kruger. When I started this post I was working off a series of 79 "best" photos of our Big Five (the poop counts!) from this trip. I managed to whittle that group down to 25. There have been 19 to this point in this post. The other six (all of lions and elephants) are below. 

We didn't see the Big Five this year. Oh well. Who cares? We may never see them all in one trip again. Nature is like that. We'll take what we can and keep going back until we can't for whatever reason again. We've pretty religiously been to Africa on safari every 2-1/2 years. We skipped 2020 and got a five year gap between Kenya / Tanzania and Uganda. I can't imagine we won't be back on the Dark Continent in the winter or spring of 2028.