What happened next?


Ian, 12 April

A new phenomenon from last night was the clicking of the bell frogs: each one has the wooden sound of a repeated note on a xylophone. No idea at all who they were christened: it's very incongruous. We also had a hyena visit us just before we turned in, which Alan caught in his spotlight very close to our pitch, and hippopotamus rummaging by the tents throughout the night. Apart from their usual grunting one by us made a very load munching sound as it grazed around the tent and a suprising flamboyant spraying noise when it defecated.

Our game drive this morning began well with an immediate sighting of a side-striped jackal. After that it seemed that we drove for ages without seeing anything, with hardly any birds apart from a brown snake eagle. I could sense that Alan, through professional pride, wanted to track down more cats to see. Really, I wasn't at all bothered about it, but it almost became something that we had to get out of the way so we could all fully relax. I don't have the common obsession with the cats; maybe it's because it's our first safari. It strikes me as weird that the most common time to visit Africa is in the dry season, when there is less diversity of wildlife, particularly birdlife, and the lushness that I'm enjoying so much has given way to a more arid climate. Of course people come then because the big animals, notably the cats (or wild dogs for the cognoscenti), have to go to the few waterholes that endure the heat, and so they are easier to find.

Well, with the help from a guy driving a lodge bus, we did find a pride of 9 lionesses and drove very close to them, where we hung out for a while. It was cool, though I'd maintain that the ubiquitous Prada-esque impala are more beautiful. Then, with the help of our South African party, who had also driven down from Savute, we also found a couple of males lying lazily in the sun. We parked next to them beside a couple of Defenders-ful of Germans. Incredibly, as the Germans didn't seem to have the patience to wait for the lions to move into more photogenic postures they blared music at them to provoke them to movement. When light calypso didn't work they escalated to dramatic opera, and even shouted at the lions. It would have been such a great Dahl-esque moment if the lions could have eaten them. Here's one of the lions:



I include this snap so that you can see what we was only a few hundred yards of open plain away from us when the following conversation occurred as we drove towards a muddy stream:

Me: "Are you sure we can get across that?" (polite sceptical tone)
Alan: "Yes".

Here's the What happened next photo:



After a forlorn attempt to push us out (thanks to Rohan for zip-off legs), I hopped on the roof of the Land Rover, and flagged down another lodge bus. Apparently we were unlucky, as this was only the 3rd time in 10 years that Alan has got stuck. But it was a highlight for the girls.

Posted: Tue - April 12, 2005 at 06:11 PM              

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