Thomas French (St. Petersburg, Florida, USA)
May 27, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Safari in South Africa: Your wildest dream
Of course, when you’re on safari in South Africa it seems a given. But there’s your lion. And your wife. And your pride.
By THOMAS FRENCH
Saint Petersburg Times
Published May 27, 2007
GREATER KRUGER NATIONAL PARK, SOUTH AFRICA
Your lion is bellowing from somewhere beyond the next acacia ridge. His call, a full-bodied bass note, hits the base of your spine.
“Arrouggggh.”
The guide, who’s carrying a rifle just in case, stops and turns his ear toward the roaring. You and the other guests hold your breath and listen.
“Arrouggggh.”
Very vocal, your lion. Sounds a bit worked up. Almost cranky. How close is he? Half a mile, a few hundred yards?
“Arrouggggh.”
Okay, so he is not really yours. Inside this sprawling wilderness, he belongs to no one. He is not confined inside an exhibit, does not perform matinees. He is free to do anything a lion chooses to do. Still, you have traveled thousands of miles to find him. You have decided to put aside the fact that he could eat you, if he deemed you worth eating.
You are involved.
Just before dawn, you and your new wife awake in your tent in a camp run by Transfrontiers, a company that offers walking safaris to tourists from around the world. Two other couples, both from Norway, join you in the darkness. Together you listen to the squawking of birds, sip coffee, fortify yourselves for the long march ahead by nibbling on rusks: twice-baked, misshapen biscuits that resemble primordial scones.
For months you have been anticipating, and dreading, this trek. You’re on the cusp of 50 and, let’s be candid, not in the best of shape. Your teenage sons speak to you as if you’re already installed in the nursing home; your decrepitude has become the punch line of their every joke. Then there’s the wife, younger and tougher than you, who loves pit bulls and firearms and who, whenever you show the slightest sign of weakness, fixes you with a cyborg stare.
“Africa, ” she keeps saying, “is not for sissies.”
You wonder what that means. What if you can’t cut it? What if something humiliating happens and your bride shares it with your comedian sons, providing them with anecdotes they will ruthlessly pump into legend?
As your group sets out, you shove these doubts aside. Your wife smiles sweetly, perhaps to lull you into a false calm. For the next four hours, you walk single file, following the guide – his name is Andrew – across a lush green riverbed, trudging up a rock-strewn hill, taking care not to step in the giraffe droppings.
Transfrontiers makes no promises about what animals will materialize along these marches. How could they? There are no fences. The wildlife can roam all of Kruger National Park, plus several private game reserves like this one that line its borders. Altogether, the area is roughly the size of New Jersey. The unpredictability of the experience is part of its allure.
Since arriving in camp yesterday afternoon, you have seen zebra, impala, giraffe, a couple hippo, plus a herd of more than 100 Cape buffalo and their calves, camouflaged with surprising ease in a stand of bushes.
Now Andrew points to the top of a nearby tree, where a baboon sits like a sentinel. Andrew ushers you to a termite mound and explains how the colony regulates the internal temperature. He stops to pick up an African millipede, black and twisty, and places it in your wife’s hand, where it promptly makes a mess.
“Careful, ” says the guide. “There’s cyanide in that poop.”
But it’s lions that you long to see, most of all, and Andrew knows it. About an hour into the walk, when the group first hears the roaring beyond the ridge, Andrew leads everyone in that direction, following not just the bass note but paw prints in the dirt.
The group begins to move faster. You are sweating. You are huffing and fighting not to trip on the uneven ground. You remember Andrew’s instructions.
“Whatever happens, do not run, ” he has told you. Animals, he explains, see running as a sign of weakness. To flee is to mark yourself as dinner.
Lions in the wild, he says, are not naturally aggressive toward humans. If you were a giraffe or a buffalo, you would have a problem. But they don’t typically see people as prey, he says.
Now that you’re hurrying on foot toward an actual lion, you are pleased to discover that you are not afraid. No time. Too much wasted energy.
Even though you haven’t yet laid eyes on a single whisker, you imagine what he looks like, how he moves, what it will feel like to draw near him, with no bars between you. And you can’t help wondering:
Even if I haven’t seen the lion, has the lion seen me?
Soon you realize that you are becoming attached to this animal. Somewhere along the trail, you have committed to him.
In front of you, your wife stumbles on the rocks. You watch her go down, almost in slow motion. When you help her up, she is bruised and her pants are torn and blood is pouring down her leg. She won’t make eye contact with you, because she does not want to acknowledge your concern, because that might mean stopping. She doesn’t even want to tell Andrew. And that’s when you understand: She is even more committed to the lion than you are.
Andrew notices the blood anyway and makes her stop long enough for him to bandage the wound. It’s deep; it probably needs stitches. She doesn’t care. Andrew looks at the bright red rivulets running toward her toes. He grins.
“You know, ” he says, “the blood might help us.”
Your wife allows herself a tiny smile. But only for a second.
Her lion is waiting.
You don’t find him that morning, and you don’t find him on the four-hour afternoon walk, either. Doesn’t matter. Because you see more baboon, and an eagle, and a massive crocodile sunning itself on the bank of an island in the middle of a dam.
Just before sunset, the group climbs to the top of a hill to rendezvous with one of the other guides, Isaack, who has brought a Land Rover to carry everyone back to camp. But first you drink some water and gaze out across the countryside stretching forever in every direction. In the distance, storm clouds flash from the inside with jagged lightning strikes. Underneath the clouds, rain sweeps across the bush like a curtain.
Your eyes search for the lights of safari vehicles, for any sign of other human beings. A copper mining operation glows to the northeast, miles and miles away – Andrew shakes his head, just looking at it – but nothing else.
The land is dark.
Back in camp, a crew of Shangaan women cook dinner over an open fire. Last night it was peri-peri chicken. Tonight it’s some kind of pork. You don’t ask too many questions. You’ve walked for eight hours that day. You devour whatever they put in front of you.
After dinner, the guides take you out in the Land Rover. You see a young leopard, gliding from bush to bush, dropping into a crouch to watch you with yellow eyes.
Then he disappears.
The next morning, Isaack takes the Land Rover and goes out scouting ahead of the group, searching for tracks, anything interesting.
Your wife is back in camp, resting her banged-up leg. You and a couple other guests are out on another hike with Andrew. This is your last morning in the bush. This afternoon, you go back to the world.
Twenty minutes into the walk, Andrew’s radio crackles. It’s Isaack. His voice is steady but urgent. He is coming to pick up the group. He has found the trail of another lion.
The guides, it turns out, know this lion well. They call him Pretty Boy.
He is ambitious, this lion. Isaack reports that Pretty Boy has attacked a buffalo, a big bull. The guides are impressed; usually, they say, it takes several lions to bring down an adult buffalo. Pretty Boy tackled it solo.
Isaack leads you to the scene. The Land Rover pulls up beside a patch of blood-covered grass between several thornbushes. Branches are broken. The grass still holds the impressions of the lion’s and the buffalo’s movements.
The guides reconstruct the attack. They show you where Pretty Boy jumped on his prey, where the buffalo fell, got up, staggered away. Judging by the amount of blood, the buffalo is near death. Pretty Boy, the guides predict, will finish him off tonight.
The lion’s trail is relatively easy to follow. The group climbs back into the Land Rover, and Andrew and Isaack take everyone up another hill and through more bush, their eyes scanning.
You’re seated in the back row, thinking about the dying buffalo and the way his blood glazed each blade of grass. You look to the left, and suddenly you see Pretty Boy walking casually perhaps 15 feet away. He’s so close, you can see his shoulder muscles shifting with every step. His eyes sweep across you and everyone else in the Land Rover.
By the time you are breathing again, Andrew turns the vehicle around. You follow Pretty Boy as he finds a shady patch, under a tree, and lies down. Inside the vehicle, cameras click. A guest stands up, trying for a better angle.
“Please stay in your seat, ” says Andrew.
You study this animal. He’s bigger than you expected. His mane is thick and brown and so well-kept it almost looks like he combed it that morning. His eyes close halfway, then open again.
The Land Rover hurries back to camp to retrieve your wife. If you get to see the lion and she does not, you will pay.
You find her in the tent, reading. At the mention of the word “lion, ” her injured leg is forgotten. She grabs her camera and half-runs to the vehicle.
Pretty Boy is in the same place as before, except now he has moved out from under the branches, to a spot with more sun.
Isaack parks the Land Rover, allowing everyone to enjoy their lion. For the next 10 minutes or so – you’re losing track of time – you see your wife transfixed in a way you have never observed before. She aims her lens, concentrating so hard and so quietly you can almost hear her heart beating.
Pretty Boy does not care how long she or the rest of the group watches him, how many frames they capture of him. He is utterly unconcerned. Still curled on the ground, his face dappled with sun and shadow, he keeps yawning.
You are involved with the lion. The lion is not involved with you.
For the moment, he chooses to look away.