On safari in Africa – from the comfort of your sofa
Since Corona, many game reserves in South Africa have activated webcams for virtual visitors. On a digital hunt like this, you immediately feel transported to Africa. And one wonders whether such safaris would not be better in the future.
Bathing in front of the webcam: a bull elephant in the Kruger National Park
Quelle: picture alliance / Zoonar
UAt 5.30 in the morning I am in South Africa for an hour. It’s elephant hunting. Just in time for sunrise, at the promising observation post at a waterhole in Tembe Elephant Park. The cicadas are chirping in the bush as fascinatingly loud as ever, an African sound that has been missed for so long.
A few impalas hop by, a half-submerged hippo dozes, blinking its long eyelashes now and then in the rising sun. Only elephants don’t show up. Suddenly there is such a loud crash behind the thorn acacia trees that I wince in surprise, even though I’m actually sitting 9,000 kilometers away in front of the screen at the kitchen counter.
I’m on a digital stalk made possible by live web cams from African game reserves. And yet the unique African feeling sets in immediately, which is otherwise only known from real safaris.
You think you can feel the summer heat, hear the rustling of the savannah grass, watch, listen – and then the herd of elephants comes marching to the waterhole. What a lucky safari! Psst! You almost want to whisper, although the animals are only being observed through a camera lens.
Webcams are located at waterholes in the national park
Since Corona, many game reserves in South Africa have released webcams for virtual visitors free of charge, as a kind of substitute and consolation for missed trips. They stand on posts at waterholes and river banks in the Kruger National Park, in the Addo Elephant National Park or in the Kgalagadi National Park (sanparks.org/webcams).
Of course, some are offline for a while, like the other day, after a few curious monkeys turned the cameras to the sky and elephants simply knocked over the posts. Such animal mishaps are of course also recorded and fun to look at.
at Explore.org you can travel live from waterhole to waterhole on many private game reserves like this morning. With a bit of luck and patience, you can also catch the “big five”, i.e. lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo and rhino; for the impatient there are recordings of the best animal encounters.
On top of that. If you prefer to be out and about with the ranger: the animal channel Wildearth.tv invites early risers to a live safari through the Sabie Sands Game Reserve, a hotspot for leopards. It starts at 5:30 a.m. You then have the feeling of sitting behind the ranger, looking over his shoulder, and you can chat with him all the time, just like on a real safari: “Are these leopard tracks still fresh?”, “What kind of leopard tracks are they? Bird there on the branch?” – Tips can also be transferred.
The virtual safaris are so successful with 366,000 subscribers on YouTube that the animal channel is currently developing its own platform. In August, Wildearth will go to the Masai Mara in Kenya to broadcast the wildebeest migration live from there.
One can ask oneself: Aren’t such sofa safaris the better ones in the future because they are more sustainable? You can still put on a safari hat at home at the kitchen counter.
