Port Elizabeth - Many, many aeons ago, say the Bushmen, Hippo went to King Lion with a request: “I stand in the sun all day eating grass, but the sun burns my skin and makes it split open.
“Please, King Lion, as king of all of the beasts, grant me permission to live in the rivers so I can avoid this pain and discomfort.”
King Lion answered that he could not grant this request as he was afraid Hippo would eat the fish, which also fell under his protection. Hippo swore that he would remain a strict vegetarian.
To this day, Hippo defecates only out of the water and when he does so, he swishes his tail to spread his dung. When King Lion asked him why he did this, Hippo said it was to show his sovereign there were no fish bones passing through his digestive system.
I’d heard the story from Geran Ellish at Shamwari in the Eastern Cape and here was I, less than a fortnight later, sharing it with JP “Papsak” van Wyngaard and one of his colleagues at Sanbona, the Shamwari group’s Karoo reserve just outside Barrydale. They’re specialist guides for the group’s Explorer walking safaris – there’s also one at the Jock of the Bushveld facility in the Kruger National Park – that run from September to April.
Ellish is one of the – acceptably affable – alpha males of this genre in guiding and he welcomes guests to Shamwari at Eagle’s Crag Lodge. He’s one of the most experienced and highest-qualified guides (something that becomes very apparent over the next few days) and is held in extremely high esteem by his peers.
After lunch and a beer or two at Eagle’s Crag, he ferries me in an open vehicle to the explorer bush camp where two other guests, Americans Syki and Spencer Wells, are lounging in hammocks under the trees. It’s the hottest part of the day and Ellish urges us to take it easy until the temperature drops and the animals come out again. We all head off to our tents for a siesta.
An hour later and our rest is shattered by coughing grunts and Ellish is yelling to us to get to the vehicle and two minutes later we’re hurtling down the rutted track until, not 300m from our campsite, we come across a writhing mass of seven lions.
We stop within a few metres and watch them dismembering their kill: there are three females and four sub-adults – the latter being forced to watch while the lionesses gorge themselves. This proves too much for one hungry young male and he darts in. A snarling spat erupts and the young male lashes out, leaving the lioness with a deep bleeding scratch across her nose, but holding a warthog’s head in her jaws.
We look around nervously. Where’s the leader of the pride? There’s no sign of him.
The next morning we walk down to the killing ground – Ellish with rifle over the shoulder – to see if we can learn more. Mommy Warthog and at least two of her piglets strayed too close to the big cats and, yes, the spoor shows that Big Daddy got there later and chased the rest off the larger carcass.
On the way back to camp – past a dam with a lone hippo bull miles from the nearest river and prompting the King Lion story from Ellish – I introduce the Americans to a time-honoured tradition of African safaris: a bokdrolverspoeg competition.
I am standing over a pile of springbok droppings, neither too fresh nor too old. If this were the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, they would be “just right”.
“The object of the competition,” I tell them, “is to see who can spit one of these the furthest.”
“You’re sh**ting me,” says Wells, a wildfire-fighter with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. His wife, a doctor of South Vietnamese descent, says nothing. Her eyes mirror his astonishment.
The Americans take the contest and Syki wins it. She’s also quick to gulp down an early morning beer or two – we all are – because antelope faeces leave a lingering taste on the palate. The fresh lion scat Syki trod in earlier in the morning was infinitely more malodorous.
The Explorer walk-in safaris combine driving and hiking, so, after a hearty campfire breakfast, we get into the vehicle and go looking for rhino. We spot a female with a calf and, not far away, a big bull ambling through the scrub.
A rhino bull can weigh up to 2.5 tons and reach a speed of 55km/h fairly quickly. This is a beautiful thing to see unless you’re on foot and looking at the pointy end.
The experience at Sanbona is distinctly different. Because it lies in the Little Karoo, Sanbona is much more open than Shamwari and allows for much more time spent on foot. Because I am there for the last weekend of the season before camp is struck – the Shamwari and Sanbona Explorer tours are suspended in the winter months – I am on my own with JP and another ranger who has just joined the reserve. With the smallness of the group and my relative fitness and experience of the bush, this means an unparalleled opportunity for getting close to the animals.
The first memorable encounter, however, is from the back of a vehicle. A week before my arrival, a bull hippo killed a calf and left it by the waterside. “Tenderised” by the sun, the carcass was discovered by one of Sanbona’s white lionesses and she didn’t move far from it for the next couple of days. We get in close and can hear her slurping away at the liquefying flesh: thank heavens there is little wind because the smell is utterly putrid.
Far more pleasant are the couple of hours spent alongside a stone dam watching a herd of elephants – including a trio of utterly adorable little ones – filling their big bellies before spraying themselves and each other joyously.
Elephants have repeatedly broken down the dam wall trying to get to the water when the level is low, and the rebuilders have set large, sharp rocks point-up to try to prevent them getting too close. It has been a waste of effort because the animals simply, but gingerly, lift their huge padded feet on to the rocks and step daintily up to the wall.
Over the next two days, I get close to elephants and rhino, but the highlight is two encounters with cheetah – one of which is truly remarkable.
First we walk to within 20m of a mother and her three sub-adult cubs. They’re unconcerned about our presence – one female seems more concerned with licking all the fur from her larger brother’s face.
Late the next day, JP and I climb out of a dry riverbed adjacent to a plain, where we’ve been told a pair of cheetah brought down a young gemsbok that morning.
Yes, there they are, less than half a rugby field away, crouched over the remains while two jackal squabble over the entrails nearby. We creep closer, spooking the jackal, but leaving the cheetah apparently unfazed.
I am clicking away at the animal bent over the kill (of which there is little left, something to which the round fullness of the cheetahs’ bellies attests) when JP hisses softly.
I look up over the viewfinder to see the second animal walking slowly towards us. We stand very still.
It is about 5m away when it flops down – panting almost painfully at the pressure the newly ingested meat is exerting on its ribcage and organs.
Before long, the other animal comes to join him and there we sit for the best part of the next hour… man and wild animal content with one another’s company.
l Both the Shamwari and Sanbona Explorer tours come with an option of spending a third night in one of the reserves’ luxury lodges. For more information, visit www.shamwarigroup.com/explorer_camps
Jim Freeman, Saturday Star