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There are NO fences, so you keep your fuckin'
wits about you when you walk outside at night. You stay in a lovely room
with a bathtub in the room, and a private enclosed toilet, but there ain't
no electricity, so you light hurricane lamps for light at night. The water
is heated by those heaters that heat the water as it runs through them. One
of the first things I saw when we walked in the room was elephant shit right
outside the back window.
The way the schedule works, you get up at 05:15 and grab a cup of coffee,
and get yourself together, and start the first drive of the day. You stay
out till about 10:00 and get back to the camp, and make breakfast. Then
everybody goes back to their rooms, and you read, or sleep, till about 16:00
then you get up and start the second drive. Our guy had a radio, and he
talks to the other rangers, and finds out basically where they saw their
last sightings of different critters. Then when the evening drive is over,
you make dinner over a fire they have built while you were out. Because
Juliette's friends are part of the syndicate, they don't pay the $200.00 a
night that it costs the other guests, but we had to bring our own food. We
brought steaks, and chops, and wine, and lots of good stuff. We were lucky,
in that usually, it's sweltering, just like Texas in August, without air
conditioning, but the last 3 days, it was overcast, and raining lightly.
Made sleeping a lot easier. Anyhoo, the tracker we had was a guy named
Johannes, and he put us in places that you would not believe !!! In
Pilanesberg, I saw Lions, Leopards, and Rhino, but they were all quite far
away.
At Motswari, these are some of the things we saw. The vehicle is a 4 wheel
drive Defender Land Rover, and it has 2 front seats, and 3 tiers of seats
behind that, each one slightly higher than the one in front. It was great
sitting in the back row of seats, 'cause the roads had these large humps and
when you went over them at speed, it would lift your butt right up off the
seat. Johannes keeps a high power rifle in a rack on the dashboard. The last
day, Johannes put us 8 Ft. away from a 40-year-old male bull elephant. He
was enormous !!! The tusks on this guy were about 6 Ft long. I had a set of
binoculars, and I could see the length of his eyelashes, and his pupil
filled the viewfield, we were so close. It's funny, he knew we were there,
but he almost seemed sleepy. On the third day, we were 4 Ft. from a
fullgrown Leopard eating his kill, an unfortunate Impala who wasn't
fast enough. We watched him eat the liver, and drink the blood from the
abdominal cavity. His entire muzzle was dripping with blood. As we were
looking at him, one of the guys dropped a can of film he had shot just to
the side of the Rover. The side the Leopard was on, of course. Ain't no way
anyone was gonna get out and try to pick it up, and we had to drive away,
and wait for the other folks that were guests in the reserve, who wanted to
see the Leopard. Then when they were gone, Johannes had gotten a stick while
we were waiting, and drove back, and he smacked it like he was playin' polo,
till it was far enough away. Then he reversed, and put the vehicle between
us and the Leopard, so he could reach down and pick it up. Then a little
later, we were about 6 Ft. from an entire pride of lions that were hangin'
out at a giraffe they killed 2 days before. That friggin' giraffe stunk man,
I'll tell ya. But the lions were so full, all they could do was lay there
and pant. 'Bout 10 minutes later, the 2 males came walkin' by, and one of
them was 3 Ft away from the front, and the other passed directly under the
very back seat Jules and I were sitting in, in the Land Rover. From the tip
of his nose, to the end of his tail, he was probably 9 Ft, and weighed
somewhere in the vicinity of 5 to 600 pds. He was less than 1 Ft. from me,
and as he went under, he looked up at me. I thought I'd shit myself !!!
Wildlife at Motswari
All of these moments are underscored by an adrenaline rush you wouldn't
believe. Now don't get me wrong, you have to understand the guy that was
drivin' us. Johannes is from Mozambique, and he grew up in the bush. This
guy is amazing, in that he couldn't read a word, but he speaks 5 languages
He knows absolutely what's dangerous, and what's not. For instance, when we
went to find Water Buffalo, he wouldn't go within 30 Ft. of them, and even
he admitted that was pushin' it.
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Another time, the second day, we came upon a
bunch of elephants that were quite young, and this one little guy took
umbrage at our invasion of his space, and trumpeted 4 or 5 times, and took
his little tusks, ('bout a Ft and a ½ long), and tried pushing down a
sapling that was between us and him, showin' us he wasn't nobody to fuck
with !!! He was really funny.
But this man was astounding, in the way he could see shit. During the day,
he would drive along, and be watching the ground and tracking from the
vehicle. When he found what he was looking for, he'd go into the bush off
the road. He didn't ever not find what he was lookin' for. Then at night, we
would drive along at about 15, or 20 MPH, and he would seesaw the spotlight
back and forth, and up and down, in front of us, and suddenly he would stop,
and back up to show us this tiny little fuckin' lizard that was in a tree,
so he could show us what kind of lizard it was. We were all continuously
saying "How The FUCK do you do that ?" He'd just laugh and say "you have to
open your eyes". Hey motherfucker, I ain't blind, and I didn't see shit.
He was a great practical joker as well. He would see a giraffe maybe
150 yds away, and tell us to look in the opposite direction. We all lookin'
our asses off, and then somebody would look the other direction, and see it,
and he would LAUGH to beat the band. We got back at him the last day though.
Jules had bought a little stuffed lion in a curio shop, on the way up there.
He had a sad little face, and she liked it. Anyway, we took it with us, and
when we stopped for the break, one of the girls ran and hung it in a tree,
'bout 4 Ft. off the ground, then we all got back in the land rover, and he
started to drive away, we went "wait, wait, there's lion back over there in
the bush. He backed up and saw it, and said the Mozambique equivalent of "Oh
Shit", and laughed his ass off.
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One night after the game drive, we were fixin' dinner over the outdoor fire,
and Jules said I got to play for my dinner, so I got the guitar out I
brought, and commenced to sing and play a few tunes. All of a sudden, one of
the guys got up, says he thinks he saw something move, and shined his
flashlight out to the bush, 'bout 10 yds away. Now I've had some strange
audiences man, but it was the first time I ever had a 250 pound Spotted
Hyena sitting maybe 12 Ft away from us, at most. It is said these creatures
have 4,500 psi of jaw pressure. We just whispered, "Don't nobody move a
muscle". He looked at us for a while, and I guess he decided we weren't
edible, so he walked back into the bush. Johannes had already gone to sleep,
and we were scared shitless.
The next day, we stopped the Land Rover at one point, and we were going to
walk in the bush for a ½ hour or so. To walk away from the Rover, out there,
words are almost not enough to describe the feelings of complete, and total
inadequacy one has. We had stopped at a clearing where the reserve does a
Braai, (pronounced brye), (That's what we call a barbecue), for their
guests. As I got out, I saw a butter knife in the dirt that someone had
left. So I put it up my sleeve, and we started walking, with Johannes
carrying his rifle. He told us to stay in single file, and if we see lion,
or any other predator, to stand very still, and under no circumstances to
run. He said if you do that, it will be better if I shoot you, rather than
the lion. At some point, Johannes saw it sticking out from my sleeve, and
said, "You got a knife", and Jules said "WHAT are you doing with a knife?" I
pointed to Johannes, and said with an absolutely straight face "Well shit,
he's got a gun !!!", and all the nine other people in the group collapsed
with hilarity. It took a full 20 minutes for them get over it. It was
one of the most exciting adventures I've ever had, and I want to do it again
next year. |
