More of South Africa. It was winter with typically pleasant days reaching around twenty-four degrees, but the nights were cold.
On our first morning, we were woken at five. By six, and after introductions all round, we climbed aboard our open four wheel drive with four other passengers. Solly was our driver. His tracker Lubanzi sat on a small seat over the front bumper bar. It was icy cold, but the lodge had provided us with a warm lap rug and hot water bottle each. We set out into the brown low bush. We had read that in winter it is easier to see the animals, while summer is a time of lush greenness, and camouflage.
Within twenty minutes of setting out, tracker Lubanzi spotted a giraffe. A beautiful, elegant and magnificent wild thing. We stopped and watched it watching us.
Prior to this, I had been delighting in the dialogue between Solly and Lubanzi, their language like music to my ears. Solly chattered almost non-stop, his tracker more intent on spotting indicators of recent activity, or the animals themselves, but replying in short lilting phrases when necessary. Leigh and I were sitting in the seat behind Solly and so I was able to fire questions his way. His knowledge was astounding. He had been driving this country for twenty years. There were tracks everywhere – branching, curving, criss-crossing – just a maze. In three days of safari, for six hours a day, we never saw the same country twice.
I asked him how he knew this vast area so well.
‘Every tree has a name,’ he said.
Most of the bush was low, but here and there were significant trees, and Solly had alluded to each one having a character. I have a video of our group, with vehicle stationary, watching our first giraffe. I would love to put it up on Facebook but it’s a bit long. Solly was telling us about this individual.
‘It’s a female,’ he said. ‘See the fluffy on top of the head. The male are born with the fluffy, but they intend to be losing that while they start fighting. We call that necking. They scratch that bit by bit and they become bald, and their hair is not growing back.’
Their way of expressing themselves in our English language is something you could write music to.
On this, our first day, as the sun rose, the temperature lifted. By eight AM we had discarded our lap rugs. I was beginning to feel relaxed.
The tracks were rough so we had one hand constantly on the arm rests to save being thrown around. Being out in the bush off the beaten track had me smiling from the inside out.
We came across a small family of elephants, not perturbed by us. Again Solly stopped the vehicle while we watched. A frisky baby came charging towards us – short, stumpy steps at a pace, trunk in the air, ears flapping. He stopped two metres short of the vehicle – inherent in him, the charging at something he considered threatening, with a confidence born of having his protective parents nearby. This was a little hair-raising – a group of elephants, in the wild, milling around us.
Then Solly started the car and drove at some speed through the herd. When we were clear of them, he said
‘He had a problem,’ referring to the male whom he knew well enough to sense that he was becoming agitated with us. I asked him about the loaded 357 Brno gun straddled across the dashboard of the vehicle.
‘Have you ever had to use that gun, Solly?’
‘No, nothing for twenty years,’ he told me. He had learned to read the moods and moves of the wild ones, and how to keep his passengers safe.
He had brought Thermoses of hot water to make tea and coffee, and at sun-up we stopped for a warm drink and some yummy fruit slice. It was a chance for the six of us to become acquainted, and to ply Solly with more questions.
We returned to the lodge around 9 AM, and with an appetite that had been growing in me since eight, we were presented with a full breakfast. We returned to our luxurious rondavel, opened the French doors to our deck and basked in the glorious sunshine as our eyes grew accustomed to things moving in the bush. A troop of baboons approached, moving cautiously along the river bank. They were aware of us, and it seemed there was a philosophy amongst them, of – don’t run when there’s danger afoot. As the last one passed, they all took off at a lope, into the safety of their environment that we were sharing.
A little later, more movement in the bush nearby. An elephant emerged, followed by another. Out into the open, between us and the river, a herd of about thirty plodded and nodded by, never faltering, with a purpose known only to them.
We slept a little and just before three PM headed for the lodge to be ready for another excursion at three. Again there were neatly folded rugs on our seats. Solly and Lubanzi were again our guides, and would be for the next two days. In their language they chatted intermittently to each other. It could have been about wife and kids, building a new chook pen, but more likely it felt about their work – finding the animals, relating what they had heard from other guides during the day. There was a desire in them to please us, and for us to see as many animals as possible.
That evening we saw a white rhino – a shy fella, who stood and watched us through his beady little eyes – just a few metres away. I must say there was a little adrenalin rush, knowing how quickly they can move, how powerful they are, and how they can tip a vehicle over with ease. But the animals here are so accustomed to vehicles and people, they generally have no issue, and we have to trust the guides to read their moods and body language.
The lions were majestic in their way, and fairly placid. You can sense their wildness. They are in no way domesticated or tame. All the animals in Kruger are left to nature, to fend for themselves, to do their hunting, killing, eating, sleeping, mating, as Nature intended.
As the sun went down, we stopped, headed out into the bush – each of us in a different direction for a wee. I must say I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, wondering how close and camouflaged a nearby lion might be.
Solly poured us each a wine, and we sipped and talked amongst ourselves as he and his tracker prepared a little cooked meal for us on a small gas cooker on the ground. Home-cooked sausages with crusty bread as an appetizer before we returned to the lodge for dinner. The evening light, the silence, the vastness and feeling of isolation washed over me in a ‘pinch me’ moment.
By 5.30 the cold was starting to come in. We wrapped ourselves in our blankets, right up around our heads and faces, and became silent with preserving body heat. There were more animals in the night than the day. We never would have seen most of them but were impressed with our guides’ abilities to spot them.
It was nearly seven by the time we arrived back at the lodge – freezing cold, and looking forward to what we knew would be a magnificent meal. We were greeted as usual by two of the staff. With beaming smiles, they offered us warm damp towels and a spicy mead type drink.
We went to our rondavel and changed for dinner – in the restaurant out on the deck, beside the river, but with gas heaters all around.
The next two days were pretty much a repeat of this day, except that we travelled different terrain and saw different animals.
The experience to me was like being in a living, breathing, abundant, huge cocoon – with a mountain range cradling the whole.
Where to next? We have plans for more great adventures but in the meantime, loving our country as always. This coming long week-end, we will head for my hills country, and as an extended family, set camp for three days of outdoor living, in our gorgeous Barossa bushland with our own wild-life – kangaroos, echidnas, a koala or two, and a multitude of birds.
We will cook on the camp-fire, go for walks, talk to everyone, catching up on news. Into the evenings, we will eat, drink, laugh and dance, as is our way. By ten we’ll all be in our beds, and wake next morning to a few coals that will roar into life with a little stoking. Eggs and bacon will be cooked, coffee made, dishes done from the night before.
Life is good. My little poets’ group met a couple of days ago. As we always do, we shared our work with each other and it felt good. It always does, to be with kindred spirits, and share our medium, and what is deep within us.
I will close now. Time to sit with my man, have a drink and a time of talking. Then cooking. He is great at that.
Till next time,
Warmly,
Sue
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