It’s Full of Stars

Going to a game park for a conference involving specialists in Africa seems like a natural, but the meeting I just attended was the first that I’ve been to in such a location. It wasn’t easy to get there, a six-hour drive across most of KwaZulu-Natal, but it was worth it, I thought. I’d recommend the park to anyone spending time in South Africa, though if you have a limited amount of time, Kruger National Park or the Okavango in Botswana are the holy grails of game viewing.

Ithala doesn’t have lions, so the camps don’t need to be fenced off the way that they are in Kruger. This also means guests can do a good deal of walking on their own near the camps and at designated places in the park, which is something I’m always keen to do. (Though I haven’t always been so smart about it: some years ago I went off on my own in an area where there were both lions and hippos and nearly got into serious trouble on both counts.) The park has a nice range of animals, and we were fortunate enough to see a good many of them.

For me the animals were secondary to the night sky, however. In mountainous or desert regions of the United States, you can still get very good views of the stars at night, but I have to say there’s nothing in the U.S. like the sky we saw in Ithala, in my experience. There are no lights besides the muted camp lights for many, many miles around the park, nothing at all. The camp is at elevation, and in the winter, the air around it is mostly clear, though occasionally the smell and sight of distant grass fires presents itself. Looking up at the Milky Way, undisguised by anything, with bushbabies making weird cries all around you in the trees, fills you with a kind of skin-prickling awe. I think I could have that sensation every single night and it would never get old or banal.

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