ON SAFARI -- Guest Blog by A. Bowler

When Gigi and I decided that our big Easter weekend vacation was going to be a safari, I don’t think I realized how special the trip would be. We are in South Africa for just a few months so it seemed logical that with our only extended weekend together we should see the African bush. 

After consulting our travel book, we eventually decided on Madikwe Game Reserve near Botswana. Although not nearly the largest African reserve, Madikwe is 475 square miles, slightly bigger than all of New York City, water included.

We flew into Jo’burg on Friday night, stayed in a hotel and then drove four plus hours to the reserve early the next morning. I use the term “we” loosely since I was about as responsible for the actual driving as I was for the flying.  Gigi has gotten comfortable with the other side of the car thing and was as used to the way South African’s “pass” each other on the highway as someone can be.  So with some high pressure driving ahead of us, there was really no question who would be behind the wheel.

We arrived at the park around 1PM and in the 11 km drive between the front gate and our lodge, we got close to our money’s worth.  Zerbras, wildebeest and a beautiful animal called an Impala (named after the popular car by Chevrolet no doubt).  I would later become self conscious about how much I loved looking at this animal known as the McDonalds of the bush, cause they are everywhere.  They look like tiny reindeer with fashionable black stripes on their hind legs (kind of in the shape of the McDonalds “M”).  The females are very dainty and travel in harems of 60 or 70 led by only one male.  The male is noticeably larger and has twisted shiny horns that look like a gorgeous piece of pottery.  I could go on about these creatures but I can already hear the snickers of our South Africans friends who don’t give Impala a second thought.  I guess I would feel the same if someone visited New York and stopped every block to say “Oh wow.  A pigeon!”

Our lodge, Mosethla Bush Camp is a very small,friendly place that prides itself on foregoing amenities like running water or doors.  I had to talk Gigi in to staying here over some of the more luxurious places in the reserve.  She was a trooper and although she may not admit it, I bet she kind of enjoyed the pully system shower.  The funny thing about all the different lodges is that all the guides from each lodge know each other and work together.  So even if you go with a place that has high tea or white table cloth dining, once you are on the actual drive you still end up like every other guest in the reserve, pulling alongside any truck you pass so one guide can ask the other “see anything?”

Shortly after we arrived, we headed out on our first official drive.  They load you into an open truck lined with benches and take you around the park looking for wildlife. 

As soon as that first drive started and we drove past our first herds of animals (probably Impala), and I was struck by the realization that I had always dreamed of doing this.  Not so much as a life goal - illustrated by the fact that I had forgotten I dreamed about it.  But rather, it was an event stored in the part of my mind reserved for the things I might do some day way off in the future.  "Some day when I am all grown up, I'm sure I will get to go on a safari, looking at lions and elephants up close, in their natural environment."  That's how I always thought of it.  So watching this landscape fly by that was nothing like anything I had ever seen before was so thrilling I was practically moved to tears.

That day the thing all the rangers were talking about as they chatted from truck to truck was the lions.  Someone had spotted a pride and understanding how high lions were on every guests wish lists, the guides were not about let go of an opportunity to see the king of the jungle (or in this case semi-arid savanna).  We circled the few square kilometers the lions had been seen last, with all the guides from all the resorts working together to help spot.  At one point two brave rangers parked their trucks on the edge of a field and, on foot, criss-crossed the bush thought to have lions in hopes of flushing them out and towards the guests waiting in the parked vehicles. 

I was having such a nice time looking at the birds or trees or whatever, I did not notice that our guide got the call on the walkie that the lions had been found. I thought it was standard to take the vehicle off the dirt road and start trail blazing, later realizing she only did this on special occasion. Looking back it seems a little strange that we completely demolished at least two acacia bushes in this nature preserve to get a better look at the lions--but collectively the brown, dry, pricky bush is doing just fine in Madikwe so don't worry about them.  After a few bush casualties we could see a lazy lion lying right in our path.  The driver continued straight at the animal, getting surprisingly close to it without stopping.  As we approached, the lion got up and started to move. I thought we had scared it away.  Instead he slowly moved a few feet closer to the other four members of the pride, just barely out of the way of the inconsequential truck/ beast and plopped back down. It was later pointed out that a lion’s classically lazy personality comes from the fact that they are at the top of the food chain. “What’s the hurry?  Literally nothing can hurt us.”

Each lion was obscured by bushes but we could still see them well enough. I even took a moment to size up exactly how close they were so I could easily communicate when retelling the story. “See that dude in the blue shirt? That’s how close we were to lions!”  But until I see you in person, let’s just say the closest one was about 15 yards away.

We took loads of pictures and video and after about 20 minutes pulled out of the area so another vehicle to come take our place. As we slowly drove past, I got a head-on look at one of the males and he was clearly staring right back at me. Boy did that truck seem to be crawling along. It’s fascinating to sit in an open vehicle and have a staring contest with a lion who is as close as the dude in the blue shirt. What’s fascinating is how quickly they win. When he wasn't looking directly at me, the lion reminded me of our fat cat back home but staring into the eyes of the King of the Semi-arid Savanna, he suddenly seemed more like a beast happy to jump into the truck and eat me if not for the effort it might take.

We did two drives a day for the next two days, rising at 5:30am for a 6am drive. You return around 9:30, have breakfast, sleep, shower, prep the shower for your wife, have lunch and leave 3:30ish for the next drive which lasts until sunset.  Gigi took most of the pictures.  I captured a little video but spent much of the time looking through our binoculars.  It’s amazing how important it was to have a nice pair of heavy binoculars made with real glass so you could roll the plane of focus back and forth as you scanned the terrain.

On our second day we saw a pack of wild dogs, a huge treat for all the diehard safari-ists in our truck who won't even lift their massive telephoto lens for anything less than the big five (lion, rhino, elephant, buffalo, leopard) or the nearly extinct wild dog.  Yes, wild dog look like regular dog only with huge ears.  They also have unique spotting.  But they leap around, lie around and clean themselves, just like any old dog.

The next day’s highlights included Rhino and plenty of giraffe.  One particularly curious one took a shine to Gigi and her camera and seemed to at times be posing for her.

The final trips were overcast and the last one was downright rainy. Gigi skipped that one and ended up missing elephants play fighting in the road and one little guy covering himself in red mud for an unknown reason. But in her defense the rain-soaked the canopy dripped down on my head for the entire three hours.

I could have driven around Madikwe, hanging out the back of that truck for another week. Most of the drive is spent looking for something, which can be a little tedious for some, but for me it felt like Christmas morning, twice a day, for three days. And when we weren’t seeing the kinds of things people come from around the world to get photos of, there was African bush, which looked, smelled and sounded unlike anything I had ever seen. And of course everywhere you look, there are always Impala.