The hunt

When we arrived at Kapama Game Lodge, the first thing I asked the game warden there is if we will be able to spot a cheetah when we went out. And his answer was "No, because there are no cheetahs on Kapama". I don't know why I thought they have cheetah there (maybe it is something to do with the fact that right next door to Kapama there is a cheetah breeding farm, with a programme for introducing cheetah back into the wild), but having already seen all of the Big Five on this trip I was looking for something more. And I must admit that his answer left me feeling kind of.... cheetahd (sorry, couldn't resist that one, hehehe). But we did see something almost as good.
It was late afternoon, the shadows were already getting long. We were driving through Kapama when we came across a group of two-three wildebeest grazing in the bushes. We hadn't gone more than a hundred metres further when our tracker spotted this lioness crouched in the grass, looking very intently at the wildebeest. From the expression on her face it was obvious that she had a vision of wildbeest kebab in her near future.

The wildebeest, on the other hand, were very nervous, and didn't fancy themselves at all as the main attraction in the lioness's menu. Our guide told us to sit very quietly and not to use flash when taking pictures, and maybe we'd be lucky enough to witness the lioness making a kill. The tension in the air was so thick you could actually feel it. Looking through the lense of my camera I could see the lioness, and the cruel intensity of her gaze made my blood run cold, literally. People talk about a piercing gaze but believe me this was bloodcurdling. Then she began to make her move. Without moving her gaze from her prey she began to slink forward. My heart was beating like a jackhammer, I was literally holding my breath as she crept close and closer to the wildebeest.When she judged she was close enough she charged.But as she started forward the wildebeest turned and ran. She chased them a couple of metres, but the distance was too great, so she turned.... And she went right past our vehicle! She RAN RIGHT NEXT TO OUR VEHICLE! She was only a couple of metres from our vehicle she was so frickin' close and she turned those cruel hungry eyes and looked at our tracker, who was sitting right on the bonnet of the vehicle... He didn't budge a muscle, not so much as a twitch. And then she stopped right next to me and looked off to where the wildebeest had run. And I raised my camera, and I was almost too afraid to take a picture, in case the click of the shutter would draw her attention. Just to keep her from looking at me.You can see how lean and hungry she looks. Then she lay down and rested for a few minutes.
After a couple of minutes rest she got up, and walked off into the bush, and I heard someone saying "I haven't been so excited since the first time touched a girl's tit".
We followed her at a respectable distance, to where she had left her cubs. There was a male and a female, you can see the male here marking his territory. She lead them away and we followed. They were quite big, the male was almost as big as the mother, but they were still pretty playful, like a pair of overgrown kittens.
The mother lead the cubs to a watering hole, where they drank for a bit and then rested.Here's the male cub after drinking his fillMother and daughter:A yawn or a roar? You decideAnother shot of the young male:
Later, when we stopped for a rest everybody was talking about the experience, and I asked the tracker if he had been afraid when the lioness went so close to our vehicle and he said "A little, but I just sat there and didn't move". Then the guide explained that although your first instinct is to run away as fast as you can it is not the correct thing to do. If you stay stock still the lion will probably ignore you. So I said that my first instinct would have been to piss myself, and one of the other guest who heard me laughed and agreed.
Check out more of my pictures of lions
Next: Elephants on parade

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My

The lion is truly the king of the jungle, and you can see it in his attitude. Most animals ignore you, but it's like "Yeah, we know you're there but we choose to not acknowledge your presence" (or they try to make sure that you don't see them). But with the lion it's different. When a lion ignores you the impression you get is that you are so beneath him that he doesn't even register your existence. But when he does notice you, boy oh boy you want him to ignore you.
Take this guy: we found this guy sort of, well.... lyin' around in Chobe National Park, and our driver stopped the car a few metres from him. He just sat there and ignored us while we took pictures like crazy. There was this Korean family on the vehicle with us, and one of the kids stood up to get a better look at the lion, and suddenly the lion's eyes kind of like locked onto him, and lemme tell you, the way he was looking at that kid it made my blood run cold. I've never seen such a ... predatory... gaze (there is no other way to describe it). If looks could kill... Luckily I wasn't the only one who saw the lion taking an interest, the driver noticed and told the kid to sit down. it seems that the lions don't see the vehicle and the people in it as separate entities (luckily for us), so they just ignore the vehicle. But by standing up the little kid had broken the outline of the vehicle and established himself as something separate that made the lion curious.

Madonna con bambino

Lioness and cub, Kapama Game Lodge

You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me?

This guy lives in Pilansberg National Park, and he was guarding a couple-of-day-old kill. We could barely see the tip of his tail twitching as he lay in the long grass, and then he got up and turned and faced us almost as if he were posing for a picture, and gave us this very belligerent stare. It was very impressive, but iff iff iff what a smell from that darn carcass.

"Then who the hell else are you talking... you talking to me? Well I'm the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to?"

Lion traffic Jam

Actually getting to see a lion is not really an ordinary day-to-day thing - unless, maybe, you're a game ranger or something - for us "civilians" it is helluva impressive. So when someone actually sees a lion (or any other interesting animal) word gets passed around by radio pretty quickly, and all the tourists converge on that spot. This creates something of a traffic jam, as you can see in this picture from the Kruger National Park:We'd hit upon a pride of about six-seven lions, but after a couple of minutes of being gawked at they got up and moved further into the bush. The moved right past the cars, if someone had been brave enough (suicidal enough?) to put his hand out he could have stroked them.

No animals were harmed in the making of these pictures

This is a picture of a lion guarding a recent kill in Kapama Game Lodge. There were lots of vultures in the trees around the "scene of the crime". Every once in a while the lion would get up from the kill and move a few metres aside. Then the vulture would land and try to get near the carcass. But then the lion would see they are getting interested in his kill and he'd come back and they would fly away. Then he'd assert his ownership by eating a bit more of the carcass.

Check out more lion pictures
Next:The Hunt

Hunting the Big Five

The name of the game is game spotting. They have these game trips, where they take you out in a kind of safari vehicle/bus thingie that is open on all sides (and if it rains - tough). They have a guide and a driver (or sometimes a guide/driver) who takes you around, and points out the interesting game and gives you some explanation about the animals. Of course, they rely on the passengers to point things out, which can lead to some amusing moments. Some of the animals are easy to spot, but others you can barely see in the tall undergrowth, and when they stand still they look like rocks. And if that isn't complicated enough, some of the rocks look like animals. In most places they are very eco-concious, and make a point of telling people that the animals aren't there for our viewing pleasure. We are the ones invading their domain. Usually before you go out they give you quite strict instructions, like: don't stand up while the vehicle is moving, don't take flash pictures if we tell you not to. One of our guides even told us that if for some reason an animal attacks the vehicle do not jump out, as you never know what might be hiding in the tall grass. (You could run into a pride of lions and not know they're there until one of them was breaking your neck). It's better, he said, to hide underneath the seat. When he noticed me look quite dubiously at the cramped leg space and low seats he said "Don't worry, if it comes to it you'll be surprised at how much room there is under there".
They're called the Big Five not because of their size but because they are the most difficult and the most dangerous to hunt on foot. And they are:
Lion

Leopard

Elephant

Rhinocerous

Cape Buffalo


Of course, if there is a Big Five then there must also be a Small Five. So someone came up with a list of small animals who's names contain members of the Big Five (Elephant shrew, Leopard Tortoise, Ant Lion, Rhinocerous Beetle, and Buffalo Weaver).

And then, five being such a popular number, somebody made a list of the Ugly Five:
Warthog Wildebeest Vulture Maribu Stork They call the Maribu stork "preachers" or "undertakers" because they kind of look like they're wearing a seedy black suit with a white shirt (kind of like a preacher or an undertaker).
And Hyenas. Unfortunately hyenas are mainly nocturnal animals, and while we did get to see a couple of hyenas I couldn't get a good enough shot of any of them to warrant including it. So for the purposes of animal shooting it can't really be counted...

I looked all over but I found no mention of a Beautiful Five (it seems I am not that well known....)
Next:The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Birds, Beasts and Relatives : a summary of my trip to South Africa

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered."

Nelson Mandela, ''A Long Walk to Freedom'

I am standing in a slow moving line for passport control. In front of me is a row of counters, each one housing an immigration officer busy checking the passports of my fellow travellers. On the walls I can see posters in English and Afrikaans. I'm trying to fit the Afrikaans posters to their English versions when a heavy-set official motions me to move forward -a space has opened up at one of the counters, and I step up. I give a cheery "good morning" to the black lady sitting behind the counter, and get a blank stare in return, making me wonder how many hours she has been sitting there. She scans my passport with a bored expression, then stamps it and slides it back to me. I thank her, take my passport, and go through the opening next to her counter. This is it: for the first time in 33 years I am now back on South African soil.
I was 13 years old when my family emigrated from South Africa, and this is my first time back. Oh, it's not that I didn't have opportunities to make the visit, rather that I didn't want to. My sister was the first one to visit South Africa, a year after we emigrated. I can still remember her telling me how she felt when she described her visit back to the old neighbourhood, how shocked she was to see how quickly our house had become dilapidated (the people who bought it were obviously not as house-proud as my parents), and at that moment I resolved not to go back even for a visit until it had become a different country to the one I was born in. Now, 33 years later, I had decided to take the plunge and have a holiday in South Africa.
I'd heard all the horror stories about the rising crime rates, the gated communities, the fact that people don't even stop at traffic lights after dark for fear of being car-jacked. And if that wasn't bad enough I got a double dose from my sister a couple of days before my flight (it seems that one of my aunts had been mugged in her own garage in broad daylight). "They don't call it Darkest Africa for nothing" she told me. "There are hardly any street lights, and it is very dark at night. And dangerous" Here followed a story about some friends of hers who had been mugged in Johannesburg just a few meters from the entrance to their hotel. "I don't understand why you would even want to go there" my brother in law added. "I was so afraid for my children I just couldn't wait to get them out of that place".
My visit to Johannesburg is a surreal experience. Most of the street names haven't changed, and I found it hard to restrain myself from exclaiming every time I recognise a name. "Oh, this is Sylvia's Pass! We used to take the bus this way to school every day!" (Of course, in those days there was always a wise guy who would go down the street and paint over the "P" on all the street signs....). But when we actually drove past the school I had to struggle to fit it to the picture in my memory.
My second moment of deja vu came when I met my cousins (some of whom I have not seen since we left South Africa). Some of them look so much like the aunts and uncles that I recall from my childhood that it is disorienting. But it is amusing to note that all my relatives from my father's side insist that I look like them, whereas all my mom's relatives think I look like their side of the family.
So without further ado here are some of my impressions:

1. I think the single thing that made the biggest impression on me was the people. The blacks used to act in a sort of servile grovelling manner when talking to the whites, and it always made me feel uneasy. I was happy to see that they have a self respect that was missing back then, and they look prosperous. A few of them told me that the crime is mainly committed by immigrants who came from neighbouring countries and couldn't find work.
2. Was everybody there always so friendly? It is a pleasure to be in a place where people are so friendly and hospitable.
3. I remember many of the places and street names, but I didn't recognise almost anything when we drove around Johannesburg. I remember walking down streets and seeing houses with front lawns, flower beds etc. Nowadays all you see are 2-3 meter high walls with electrified fences at the top, and signs for armed response firms next to every gate ("We live in prisons, while the thieves walk freely in the streets", one of my relatives moaned).
4. I cannot say this from personal experience, as I was lucky enough not to have any bad experiences, but the crime rate in Johannesburg is very high. Muggings, carjackings, robberies are very common and just about everybody has either been attacked or knows someone who was.
   
5. I have an issue with names. I'm still adjusting to the fact that Rhodesia is now Zimbabwe and that South-West Africa is now Namibia. But in South Africa all the names are changing. Witwatersrand has become Gauteng Province - you can see the abbreviation "GP" on all the car license plates
   
   (local jokers say it stands for Gangster's Paradise). And if that isn't bad enough, The Eastern Transvaal ( a place where we had many happy holidays in my youth) is now called Mpumalanga - which means "The Place Where the Sun Rises" (as opposed to Petach Tikva, which is The Place Where the Sun Doesn't Shine....), and Pretoria is becoming Tshwane. I can understand that people want to distance themselves from the old Apartheid regime, but....
6. In contrast to what people say, you *do* stop at traffic lights at night (well, maybe in the high crime areas like Central Johannesburg you don't). All my relatives who took me around every evening *all* stopped at traffic lights and even at stop signs.
7. Against all the dire warnings of disappointment from my sister and my parents, I did take the trouble to go to see our old house - and I was disappointed. It seems so much smaller than I remember! It, too, is blocked from the street with a high wall, and while it didn't look as bad as I had thought it would it doesn't look anywhere as nice as it did when we used to live there. While we were standing looking through the gate, an elderly Asian gentleman came out and asked who we were. I explained that we used to live there, and he filled me in about what has changed in the neighbourhood. He told me that they get a lot of fruit from the trees in the back yard, and was impressed when I told him that we were the ones who planted them. He did look a bit skeptical when I told him that my mother was the one who dug the hole for the pool in the back yard (but it is true).
8. The thunderstorms were exactly the way I remembered them: Very sudden and quite spectacular :-)
9. One thing I didn't see is African women walking around with a huge bundle on their heads.
   
   You used to see it all the time, nowadays you can see it mainly in rural areas.
   


10. I went into a shebeen, and I had boerewors and mielie pap, and I enjoyed every mouthful. When I told the waitress that it was the first time in 33 years that I was having real boerewors and pap she looked at me with a mixture of incredulity and pity.
    

Next: Hunting the Big Five