Saturday, July 11, 2015:
Skukuza-Johannesburg-London
Our Sixth Safari Drive:
Waking
up at 5. 30 am has become routine by now and we know the drill. Wake up Call, hasty washing and dressing and
racing off to Lodge Lobby for milky coffee and rusks, a quick clamber into the
cruiser—and off we go!
This morning, our tracker Dee is a
Man On A Mission—he is determined to show us rhinos (live ones—not the dead poached
variety that we have seen on two occasions being scavenged on). We are
ebullient in spirits. We are keen to tick off all five of the Big Five from our
To See List!
The morning is glorious as all
mornings in the Bush are. We set out in darkness, but within a half hour, color
tinges the eastern horizon and we stop to take pictures of the lovely Bush
sunrises—each slightly different from the one that went before. Fierce debate
follows: are sunrises or sunsets prettier in the Bush? We agree that sunrises
are better in the morning, sunsets better in the evening! You see—we are a
wisecracking group!
But while we joke and quip, Dee is
hard at work. Ever the vigilant tracker, he stops frequently to examine poop on
the side of the road. And footprints. Where our eyes see the merging of many,
he is able to distinguish one set from the next. He informs us that a leopard
went past a few hours ago. Or that hippos ambled along in a certain patch
before disappearing into the undergrowth. By this stage in the game (pun
unintended!), we have become familiar with and freely use terms like “fresh
catch”, “fresh kill”, “fresh prints”, “fresh dung”. Dee explains that hippos tend to use man-made
asphalt and mud roads in the Bush but that they skitter off at the slightest
sign of humans approaching as they now associate vehicles with poachers who
carry AK 47s—dangerous Kalishnikovs that aim to kill. Rhino horn now fetches
$60,000 per kilo in the international market—and each horn on an average weighs
4-5 kgs. Which is why rhinos’ heads are always weighed down! Attempting to end
poaching, South Africa and Kruger National Park have banned the use of
walkie-talkies and other forms of GPS signaling to alert trackers to rhino
sightings—as these messages are intercepted by poachers who then arrive at the
scene, do the dirty deed and make off with the booty. It is simply disgusting.
Whereas the rhino population in Kruger used to be several thousands, it is
estimated that today there are no more than 6,000 in the wild. We are
horrified. These statistics make the sighting of rhinos a very rare occurrence
today and although Dee is optimistic that he will not send us home disappointed
(today is our last day in the Bush!), we are beginning to lose hope.
And then there they are! We come
upon them so suddenly that they seem like a mirage—a mother rhino with her
young one. In other words, we see not just that rarity—one rhino—but two! Our
excitement knows no bounds. They are a shy couple and they hide for cover
behind a bush. Fortunately, the bush is stripped of its usual summer foliage
and this winter sighting makes it easy for us to zoom in with our cameras and
take pictures. The mother is clearly protective of her baby—she keeps him
determinedly behind her and her girth provides very effective cover. Still, we
are thrilled. Dee is exulting in his seat, his hand thrown high in the air as
he says, “Rhinos, Guys. I give you rhinos!” We showered him with praise. He has
come through splendidly and his sense of fulfillment at tracking rhinos
(through footprints and dung) and finding them knows no bounds. We are now
ready to return to our banal lives back in the States for we have ticked off
the Big Five from our List. The sense of triumph in the car is palpable. Five minutes
later, the mother rhino has bundled off her young and gone far away from the
road leaving us to admire the pictures we took and the video footage we shot.
The rest of our drive is pretty
uneventful by comparison. We see them all: elephants, hippos, giraffes, zebras
and, of course, the lesser desirable ones such as kudu, bush buck, water buck
and countless impala. We stop for morning coffee as the picnic table is deftly
set up. We nibble on rusks and sip our warming coffee as we photograph the
sunrise.
And then just when it seems as if nothing
can get better for us, Dee receives word about the sighting of a leopard really
close to our Lodge. He bundles us all back in the cruiser and the chase begins,
in earnest. Messages fly fast and furious on the radio systems and within
fifteen minutes, Dee is at the scene. Imagine if you can what sort of mood and
sentiment existed in our vehicle as we slowly went “off road” (permissible
within Hamiltons’ concession) and skirted slowly around the most gorgeous leopard—a young chap
nicknamed Wabaeeza or The Naughty One by the local population of Kruger. Dee
stops merely three feet away from the animal who crouches in the shrubbery. He
is hungry. He has reportedly been stalking impala in the area and has been unsuccessful.
We are afraid he will mistake us for his next meal. Dee is confident he will
behave. He informs us that trackers at Kruger have worked for months to get
Wabaeeza accustomed to the sound of vehicles and their revving and their close
approach and stopping. He is now conditioned enough not to get agitated, to
attack or to slink off into the undergrowth when cruisers approach. Ralph,
Hamiltons’ other tracker, is also on the scene in a vehicle with his charges.
Dee warns us not to make a sound—there is pin-drop silence in our cruiser. He
warns us not to move—we are petrified statues! The leopard is still only three
feet away from us on the ground. One more vehicle approaches—driven by Sean,
another Hamiltons’ tracker, who has a couple of visitors in his vehicle.
Wabaeeza is not too perturbed, but he chooses to show off his moves—he gets up
and stretches lazily. Then he takes a stroll right behind our vehicle, much to
our combined fear and delight. A few feet later, he stops again, finds himself
a more comfortable spot and squats down. Dee loses no time. He revs up the
engine of our cruiser and makes a quick half circle around a bush before
bringing us face to face with the leopard, about three feet away from us. Once
again, we cannot believe our luck. We have seen a total of three leopards—that most
elusive of creatures—on this safari and it seems as if our cup runneth over.
There is heightened elation as we
return to Camp for breakfast—beautifully laid out and enticing. We start with
freshly squeezed orange juice. I have fallen hard for the muesli concocted by
Abel. I eat it with mango yoghurt. I cannot get enough of it. When I praise
Abel for his handiwork, he offers to give me the recipe and then sends me home
with a small package of the mixture. I intend to try it out when I get back to
the States.
We are informed that the cooked Breakfast
Special is Scrambled Eggs with Bacon and Roasted Cherry Tomatoes served on
Toast. I opt for it and everyone else does too. It is delicious. There are cold
cuts and croissants, freshly-baked muffins and preserves, fruit and cheese on the
buffet table. We have eaten well and enormously for the past three days and
have been pampered hand and foot by the attentive staff at this five-star
resort. We are loath to return to our packing and the rest of our lives.
But go we must. We return to our
rooms to do last-minute packing because most of us were clever enough to pack the
previous evening. We take last-minute
pictures of the place and its people. We want to etch in our memories this
glorious vacation which we all agree ranks at the very top of the amazing
travels we have done in our lifetime. The staff is present all around to sing
us off—they dance, they clap, they encircle us. Harold, the manager, is the
ring leader. He is a large man with a lovely happy smile. He takes pictures of
us in front of the spreading baobab tree and later presents it in a souvenir folder
to each of us. How marvelous!
Finally, after tipping our staff and
saying goodbye to Dee, who has been a tracker and guide par excellence, our luggage is loaded in the trailer that follows
our cruiser. Kruger and the Lodges have it all done to an art form—five-star
living while retaining the unspoiled natural feeling of being in the wild. With
a last regretful look behind and a final wave at the staff that have assembled
on the porch—in the style of Downtown Abbey but with an African Bush twist--we
are sent off in right royal style. It has been lovely and while some of us say
that it is unlikely we will return as the world is too large and we have much
of it left to explore and discover, others say they will return for they have
had the time of their lives.
Our Seventh and Last Safari Drive:
By this stage in the game, we had
expected to have a few animal sightings on our long drive through the Bush to Skukuza
airport. And indeed we did see plenty—but most were of the pedestrian variety—impala
and kudu and bush buck. Some excitement was generated when we came across zebras
and giraffes. And then in the distance, we paused because we ran into a long
line of Cape Buffalo heading off somewhere to the left of us. Photo ops galore
were presented to us and we clicked quickly or watched their progress through
our binoculars. A little later, our driver pointed out a herd of hippos to us—at
least a dozen of them, lying prostrate in a dry river bed. And then, again
quite suddenly, our driver stopped to point out two more rhinos to us—again, a
mother and baby. Perhaps the same ones we had seen that morning? Possible but
also unlikely as we were a long way away from the site of our morning’s
sighting. How ironic that Dee had to do so much careful and skillful tracking to
find us two rhinos and then, without any such training to credit him, our
driver calmly pointed out two more! One cannot control nature and one cannot
predict what the quality of sightings will be like in the wild. We had met many
visitors who had wonderful stories to tell of animals they had encountered—but almost
invariably, there was something missing. One mother and daughter traveling together
had never managed to find a leopard. Samantha and Becca had seen everything except
a male lion. We had seen it all! How lucky were we!
Departure from Skukuza to Johannesburg
and from Johannesburg to London:
We arrived eventually at Skukuza
airport that serves Kruger National Park. We went through formalities with no hassles
at all and boarded the cutest little toy plane in a toy airport. We picked up
souvenirs from the airport stall and charged our phones at the ultra-modern,
ultra- convenient airport and then we were off. It was a very short flight to Johannesburg
and before we quite knew it, we were in Johannesburg airport looking for our
respective connecting flights. Our friends said goodbye to us after we’d each
purchased Amarula crème liqueurs from the duty free shops and then Llew and I
were off to a pizzeria to enjoy pizzas and lattes before boarding our 8. 10 pm
flight to London.
This time round, we did not get
seats in a row to enable us to stretch out, but we each managed about four hours’
sleep on a red eye flight and looked forward to touching down on the morrow at
Heathrow.
Our African safari had come to an
end. It had been the trip of a lifetime and we had not been disappointed.
Until
tomorrow, when we hope to awake in London, cheerio!
No comments:
Post a Comment