Deep in the Bush and Out of the Car

 This story first appeared in the Sunday Times Travel Weekly

Seven of us are moving through the bush as quietly as we can.  No one speaks.  We’re following two experienced guides in search of an elephant.  The guides alternate their attention between the spoor and the bush around them.  The elephant has huffed loudly somewhere not too far away.  It is hidden by trees but its loud exhalation is unmistakable.  The wind is not in our favour.  It has caught our scent so we move quickly at a right-angle to our previous direction to get downwind.

Suddenly the elephant is there.   Slightly below us on the slope I see its huge grey back in the greenery.  For a few minutes we stand, spectators gaping at the impressive lone bull as he tears branches and strips leaves.  We take photographs and smile silently at each other with the satisfaction of tourists who have reached the sight they came to see:  an elephant putting on his benign show.

We are in the Makuya Game Reserve, a concession bordering on northern part of the Kruger National Park where we will be deeply immersed in the bush for five days.  Our group will carry all the necessary food and equipment necessary to support itself.

Having dumped our heavy packs at the chosen camping spot on the banks of the Luvuvhu River, we have headed off with day packs to explore.  Our guides, Johna and Barend, patiently impart their deep knowledge of the birds, trees and animals.  Animal tracks are read in great detail:  this leopard is relaxed, this is a large male hyena, those tracks were made by a frog.

The elephant turns and looks in our direction, standing for a moment, watchful.  A blast of air rushes from his trunk and he turns to face us with ears fully spread.  Tension ripples quietly through the group.  He moves quickly up the hill towards us and the guides, rifles at the ready, are waving us to get behind them.  Then they shepherd us towards a large baobab tree.  The bull elephant pauses for a second, shakes his head, then blows loudly again and rushes at us, his massive feet drumming the sand and if I’d paid attention I would probably have felt the vibrations of his bulk under my boots.  The elephant stops dead, eyeing us, his ears still spread, trunk in the air trying for our scent. 

His hesitation gives the guides time to wave us behind the baobab before the animal charges us again.  This time he stops less than ten metres from the rifles.  He moves around to our left and we stumble further around the baobab.  I’m alive with adrenaline and in concentrating on the elephant’s next move I barely notice that my heart is throbbing hard in my chest.  For several long seconds we stand eyeing each other:  a small frightened group of humans and the largest animal on land.  Then he turns and is gone into the bush.

In the burst of excited whispers we realise that we are no longer tourists but part of the scene.  We too are surviving here and the knowledge of our guides is critical for our survival.  Game viewing from a vehicle provides a barrier from the dangers of the bush.  On foot, the only protection is experience and a cool head. 

As the days progress I become more aware of my surroundings as the skills and experience of our guides is slowly and patiently imparted.  They teach us the names of the birds, the grasses.  We learn about animal behaviour and what they eat and what to rub on a wound or what leaves to eat for a stomach complaint.  Smell this wild sage, feel that texture, lick this berry.  As time passes, I become more in tune with the bush though I realise how little I know and how much I don’t notice when I’m looking at it from my car window.  I’m like a child on his first day at school:  excited, in awe, sometimes afraid, yet very alive and learning all the time.

A campfire is built as the horizon rises to hide the sun which, for a while, leaves its rich orange after-glow.  After dinner we sit watching the flames and talking about the day.  Above our heads the stars begin to shine in the dark blueness of early night and someone starts explaining how to find south using the Southern Cross.  “Take the long axis of the cross.  Extend it with an imaginary line.  Then bisect the pointers towards the cross with another imaginary line.  Where the two lines meet, trace another line to the horizon.  That’s south.”  I’ve known this since I was a child, and I know where Orion is in the sky.  Tonight I am shown Scorpio for the first time. 

At 4am I’m woken by Norman for my hour on watch.  “It’s quiet out there.  Nothing happening tonight,” he tells me and hands me Johna’s powerful torch.  Still fuzzy with sleep, I leave my sleeping bag in the sand and head to the watch-fire.  It’s a black night and the star-scape is vast and bright in the sky above me, the broad sweep of the Milky Way a highway into the universe.  Scorpio has moved with the earth’s rotation. 

Periodically I scan the darkness with the torch.  I’m searching for predators, hippos , anything that could pose a threat to my friends who are asleep just beyond light cast by the fire.  Norman is right.  There’s nothing out there except the single visible eye of a crocodile.  It lies in the water a little way from where we swam in the shallows that afternoon.

I gaze at the flames, push a log further into the centre to keep the fire flickering.  It’s comforting and companionable.  Behind me someone is snoring.  I sweep the sharp beam across the night and stop at a pair of eyes.  A stab of excitement shakes the sleepiness from my head.  I hold the torch steady on the eyes.  They disappear for a second as the animal turns away. Then I see it side on.  It’s a cat and it’s standing next to a large fallen tree.  I don’t remember how far the tree is from the camp fire and at first I can’t judge the size of it but as soon as it moves I realise from the slow languid strides that it is a big animal. 

I wake Johna, keeping the light on the animal as he sits up in his sleeping bag and focusses his binoculars. “It’s a leopard!” he whispers.  “And it’s a big one.”  After a brief look, generously, he hands me the binoculars so that I can watch it.  The leopard is relaxed even though it is only thirty-five metres from our sleeping bags.  It jumps up onto the fallen tree, stretches itself, claws the wood then moves across the sand to the high bank and disappears into the bush.

Driving back to Johannesburg in a dusty old Land Rover one of the guys says:  “After this, I’ll never want to do a vehicle-based safari again.”  It’s hard to disagree.  For five days we felt not like tourists, but part of life in the bush.