Almost the whole of this mornings game drive was spent searching for a mother leopard and her two cubs. What a waste of a morning on our final safari day. A slow trudge through the bush ... Not even the thrill of rough 4x4 bush bashing. All we found was the same old boring buffalo herd, minuscule (though colourful) birds that flew away before we even got the chance to focus our cameras. The usual variety of antelope (fodder for the big cats). We at least managed a herd of elephants. But this guide and his tracker were single minded: leopard Cubs or nothing.
Our guide Mat, a rather arrogant white South African (who liked England but didn't like the English people - fancy telling us that when English people were in his vehicle!!!) loved his birds and was pretty single-minded about them.
Our 5 hour R & R period was spent lounging around in 30 degree heat, but even that was marred by bush fire smokey atmosphere and pesky monkeys who pooped all over our verandah. We needed to call housekeeping to clean it up before we could use our lounge beds.
So not the perfect final day we had imagined for ourselves.
And then, unfortunately, it seemed that our evening drive was going to follow a similar pattern. Again we trudged along searching for an elusive leopard. Mat was obviously tense feeling under pressure to provide his passengers some of the Big Five. At least tonight he opted for an easy sensation "fix" by taking us onto Richard Branson's private game reserve: quite some holiday "pad".
There was a handsome "journey" of giraffes (a new collective noun for our vocabulary), and another favourite of mine, some warthogs. They are so funny to watch - they appear to be fierce creatures but are quite skittish and run away as if running on tiptoes, so dainty with their little tails held high.
Branson's reserve also provided another sighting of a pride of lions we have already seen, but rather than just basking in the shade, this time we found them devouring a recent kill.
By the time we finished with them the light was fading fast: a beautiful sunset was rationed only a fleeting photo stop, a glorious hilltop view was shunned so we were beginning to think time had run out for a sundowner, denying us of a final taste of South African hospitality. We ere feeling very deprived.
At dusk we approached a clearing in the bush and there, quietly grazing were three rhinos, one a suckling baby. Mat announces that THIS is our sundowner stop. Wow! We drank our sundowners keeping a wary eye on these grazing monsters.
By the time we finished our drinks it was pitch dark so our return journey to camp was going to be a monotonous trip creeping through the bush with headlights.
But no. All of a sudden Mat veered the vehicle off the track into bushes, at a reasonable speed too. We rocked and crashed through and over bushes, tossing us around as he took on rocks, bushes and holes for about five minutes ... We thought the guide was going berserk. What on earth was he doing, he hadn't even had any alcohol yet here he was, crashing recklessly through fairly dense bushland.
We screeched to a halt in front of a large leopard, a lone male just waking up, stretching and yawning, totally ignoring the 3 vehicles and camera happy tourists surrounding him. What happened next was surreal. We all followed him. When he stopped walking, we stopped the engine. Sometimes he walked on the track, sometimes through the bush. But we clung to him while he trudged, and when he stopped to mark his territory. We were only about 3 metres from him most of the time, but once he did a bit of a U turn, taking us by surprise, and passed the truck within a metre, looking directly into our eyes. It was amazing - very scarey. We all stopped breathing and no one dared take a photo, in dtp fact, taking a photo was the furthest thing from our minds in those incredibly tense seconds.
Wow! What an experience! We just couldn't believe what had happened. Even more amazing is that this beautiful emensly dangerous animal was just ignoring us! They just KNOW we are no threat to them.
Wow! Wow! Wow!
What a finale for our African Safari experiences.
Tomorrow we move on to Victoria Falls for our final days in Africa. Another country (Zambia), another adventure...
No comments:
Post a Comment