BREAKING #316 | TRAVEL DIARY

‘Which one is the real world?’

Column

May 2026

is a writer, art historian, and founder of See All This art magazine. Since 2020, she writes a weekly column for the BREAKING-the-week art newsletter.

Column

May 2026

We are leaving Sanbona Wildlife Reserve* in the Karoo. I am writing in the car as we drive back to Cape Town. Estimated arrival time: 5.30 pm – just before dark. ‘Back to the real world,’ says Anke as the gate closes behind us, ‘or is the world we are leaving actually the real one?’

To share the same space as wild animals for three days is an experience. I know elephants from children’s books, lions from Artis, water birds from travel guides, and cheetahs from nature documentaries, with swelling music for the moment the attack begins and David Attenborough’s lyrical voice-over.

It takes something to shake off that unnatural way of experiencing nature – not to see a picture, but to wake up to the fact that in this realm danger threatens everything and everyone, that everything and everyone is on the lookout, uses camouflage, and can be caught in the act.

‘One mistake and you pay the price,’ says ranger Adrian Strydom. This threat is the necessity of this paradise, in which what surprises me most is the silence and the suppleness. The way elephants glide past without a sound, and how motionless the cheetah watches its prey, the antelope. How sovereign this world is, and how wildly ingenious and exuberant.

Is this the real world? I do not know. Nature is always itself. And here it exceeds the human hand. ‘Nature forgives quickly,’ says ranger Chris Betterworth. Estranging, though, remain we humans, driven through the land in Toyota Land Cruisers, while that dignified silence is disturbed by the pump of a swimming pool on the terrace.

Last night I lay awake listening for something outside to call, shriek or rustle, but heard the great nothing. And yet I knew for certain that many animals were awake on this expanse of 620 square kilometres. Were they, like me, holding their breath, waiting for a call, a note of birdsong, or my laughter? Who is watching and listening to whom?

— Nicole Ex
editor-in-chief

* Sanbona Wildlife Reserve lies at the foot of the Warmwaterberg Mountains in the Little Karoo, around three and a half hours’ drive from Cape Town. It is one of South Africa’s largest privately owned game reserves and is run by a non-profit organisation that places conservation at its core.

Watch videos, browse photographs and read more stories from Nicole Ex and Anke Riesenkamp’s journey in the Travel Diary.