PHOTO: A lion taking it easy in Kruger National Park, South Africa. (Photo by David Cogswell)
A word of advice for first-time safari takers: bring warm clothes!
A couple of my new compatriots from Hong Kong here at Lion Sands Narina Lodge in South Africa told me how shocked they were at how cold it was going out on game drives in the morning. It was the same for me on my first African safari, and it must happen to many people on their first trip to Africa. All of our lives we have seen images of Africa: the blazing hot veldt, the steaming jungle. It's always hot. Isn't Africa always hot? It seems obvious.
But no, sometimes when you are riding in an open safari vehicle in the bush in the early morning before sunrise, it feels like freezing. When the air blows over you with no windshield to block the cold, it can make your ears numb.
This morning when we went out on my first game drive it was 6 a.m. and the legendary African sun had not yet appeared over the horizon. Mist was hanging in the air, the dew was moist on the leaves and I could see my breath. I had already learned my lesson about the cold in Africa, so I had put on many layers of clothing, which I would be able to strip off bit by bit later as it warmed up. But even with all those layers, when we were moving and that wind blew across the hood of the Range Rover straight into my face, it was so cold my ears began to ache. I had to put a hood up over my head.
A couple of hours into the safari, the sun has risen, the mist has lifted and the air starts to warm. Then you can start peeling layers. When the sun starts beating down on you, then you might get hot. But if you don't have those layers at 6 a.m. your attention may be so occupied with how cold you are you may not be able to fully attend to the task at hand, which is tracking animals.
The modern safari is built around the game drive. The game lodges offer one at dawn and one at dusk. The reason for the timing is that most of the predators are nocturnal. They hunt and are active at night, and the edges of night when it is light are the only times you have much chance of seeing them.
The purpose of a game drive is to go out in search of the spectacular wildlife that only Africa has. You go in a tough safari vehicle, usually a Range Rover that is built like a tank and can drive over almost anything. It's also lithe enough to get you out of the way of a charging elephant or buffalo in a flash.
The vehicle is driven by a ranger, who can maneuver the thing around in seemingly any direction almost effortlessly over the dirt paths that serve as roads in the bush, and may sometimes turn and drive off the roads into the grasses and gullies and gulches in pursuit of something. He has a great knowledge of the local wilderness and what animals live there or pass through.
He knows it intimately as it changes day to day. The ranger is your guide and shares the leadership and people skills common to tourguides in general. Besides the great breadth of knowledge of the wilderness he shares, he must also be good at organizing and directing the activity, must be a good teacher and explainer of what he is showing you, and must be a charming and engaging person.
The ranger is assisted by a tracker who rides on a seat that is mounted right up at the front of the Rover. He's the full-time eyes and ears of the safari. He has no driving responsibilities to distract him from being fully concentrated on observing everything around him in search of any signs of game. The ranger and the tracker will confer about what they are seeing and how they are analyzing the clues in the environment.
The ranger and tracker are the detectives of the wilderness. Their vision is so acute as to leave their passengers dumbfounded as to what they are doing or how they manage to get the group to places where they can see the spectacular but elusive wildlife of South Africa.
They see a footprint or a clump of dung and they can derive a range of information about what kind of animal left it, how long ago it was there and probably some good ideas about where it was headed and what it was doing.
The ranger is also in contact by radio with other rangers in the area, and they share information about the movements of animals. It's all focused on tracking the animals. They take you to the most spectacular animals, the ones they know people most want to see, such as giraffes, elephants and most of all the big cats, the mighty lions and the elusive leopards.
The animals are ranked in popularity roughly in terms of their rarity, scale and their place on the food chain. Impala are elegant antelopes who prance through the fields with the grace of the greatest ballerina. But they are also plentiful, so after you've seen a few, they become so commonplace no one even mentions the sight of one anymore.
Elephants are massive, powerful, intelligent and peculiar and never fail to attract the interest and fascination of safari goers. Giraffes are towering in size, and yet somehow serenely graceful in their movements. But of all of them, the lions attract the most attention. They really are the royalty of the wildlands.
Being at the top of the food chain, there are few of them. Since they are relatively inactive during the daytime, they are hard to find and rare to see. When you see them hunting it's the most spectacular, heart-stopping experience in the bush.
Fortunately modern safari takers are not seeking to kill the animals as in the safaris of a century ago. The only shooting they do is with their cameras. The pursuit of the animals gives the game drive focus and structure, but what draws safari goers together is really much broader. Underlying the search for game is an appreciation of all of nature, all the splendor that the African wilderness provides, including the many colorful birds and the smaller animals, the hardy plant life, and the awe-inspiring landscapes. And part of the drive underlying the pursuit is the sense of the preciousness and the fragility of the environments you are seeing. No one knows how long we will be able to do this.
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