Africa - Dinner and the Fifth Morning Game Drive

When last we left our heroes, they had concluded their evening game drive, and were retiring to the camp for dinner and sleep. 

The evening of 4/4 was Tim's birthday, and the staff came out and sang African songs to him.  It was very cool.

Dinner was again very tasty.  We were all still riding the high from seeing the leopard, and were chatty and vivacious all through the meal.  Then it was time for bed.*

Sandy and I reached our tent without mishap, and I took the first shower.  At Stanley's, the tents are all in a straight line, with the porches and main tent flaps facing out into the game park, and away from one another.  Privacy screens made of lathes provide shelter for the front porches from folks on the porches to either side, so the only way anyone could eyeball you on your porch or in your tent was from the front.  There was a large marshy savannah in front of our porch, and since the nights were cool and relatively bugless, we'd opted to keep our tent flaps open for air circulation, and just keep the inner mosquito flaps shut.  It was very dark out that evening, and nothing was visible beyond the small circle of light that our tent lamps were casting out onto the porch.  I harbored no fears that anyone was out in that marshy field without a lantern - and really if they had been brave enough to risk running into a lion in the dark just to play peeping tom, more power to them - so I disrobed for my shower in the main area of the tent, visible of course to anyone out in the grassveld.  Like I was saying, I was pretty damned confident that there was no one out there.  But as I was pulling off my pants, I suddenly heard someone out in that savannah wolf-whistle!  Wolf whistle!  At me!  Who the hell could see me???

I whirled around to search the darkness, futilely, of course...eyes straining to find the culprit...and then the nightjar finished its call and I realized it was a bird.  A bloody bird!  I burst out laughing, and muttered, "that's what I get, for spying on them all day..."  I tried everything I could think of just now to find the exact sound the nightjar actually made, but the whip-poor-will call was the closest I could find.  It sounded exactly like someone wolf-whistling, followed by a pause and then three descending "quirts."  

Our shower at Stanley's had no middle gears, the first night we were there.  At first I thought there was no hot water.  So like the veteran back-packer I am, I took a cold shower.**  Then Sandy discovered that there WAS hot water, but if you tried to cool the hot water at all by adding the cold tap into the equation, the hot water disappeared entirely.  So what you had to do was turn the hot tap on, jump under for the 30 or 40 seconds or so it took for it to become unbearably hot, turn it off, lather up, and then turn it back on, and rinse for the 30 or 40 seconds you had before you got scalded.  I admit that it probably makes me sound like a lunatic, but I was really happy about our dysfunctional shower.  It made me feel a little more normal.  This "Gentlewoman Safari" had thus far made me feel a bit out of my depth, but crazy temperamental Death By Burning or Freezing Showers?  I was back in my wheelhouse.  

Alas, we'd been laughing about it at breakfast that morning, and someone from the camp must have overheard us because after I ascertained that no one had seen me nude, (presumably), apart from my feathered friend, I then discovered that our shower had been fixed.  Still, after a day of driving around on dusty game trails, you'd be an idiot to complain about the ability to take a hot shower without losing skin.  So I didn't.  And clean and full and totally pumped about seeing a leopard, we fell asleep.

The next morning we were at breakfast bright and bloody early.  See that?  That is the sun rising.  After us.

We ate breakfast and then it was back into the vehicles for a half-day's game drive.  We were catching a plane to Chief's camp early that afternoon.

Gavin stopped by the side of the road to point out some elephant dung to us.  He picked an undigested morula fruit out of a lump of dung, and offered it to Nora to smell.  Then he asked me if I'd like to keep it for a while, so as to have that elephant smell around when I was feeling nostalgic for Africa and elephants etc.  I declined politely, and he remarked, 

"I had rhino dung in a jar once, I kept it in my travel bag.  I used to just take it out and smell it.  Lovely stuff."  

Gavin is a very interesting person.

See the orange morula fruit?  Anyway.  After the dung Gavin brought us to a defunct hyena den that he had found a few years back when it was still occupied.  He regaled us with stories of the mischief that the young hyena would get up to and explained that dens would be abandoned after a certain period of usage because flea populations within them would build up to untenable numbers.

As we were driving we surprised a large group of warthogs - several females and young, and a male, or as Gavin called him, 

"a breeding bull warthog.  He's up for makin' bacon."  

Breeding bull warthogs have four *warts* on their faces, females only have two.

The thing I found most charming about wart hogs, apart from their adorable sideburns/moustaches, is the way their little tails stick STRAIGHT up behind them when they are running about the place.  Whenever we saw them, this was all I could think of.  (Click the link in the word "this" for photo reference).  Awesome.

It's the way they're JUST visible above the tall grass, you know?  

Anyway, here's another Gavin-ism on warthogs:  

"Warthogs are brilliant!  They're quite fun.  If you get down on all fours in the grass, downwind, and make grunting noises they'll come right up to you.  You can see them thinking, 'hey!  You're no warthog!'"  

Who does that?!?  Did you see the tusks on those warthogs?  Those are no joke!  

We left the warthogs behind, and drove through a watery area - lots of birds.

A Monarch Caterpillar crawling on a milkweed plant.  Gavin did give us a lecture on how remarkable the monarch butterfly is, because it stores the milkweed poison that it ingests in a special sac in its body during its caterpillar phase, and it KEEPS that sac intact while all around it the caterpillar metamorphoses into a butterfly - because of the sac it is not considered edible by birdlife - it tastes bloody foul and it's poisonous.  

Scenery!

Can you spot any animals in the above photograph?  If so, you're probably wrong.  It's probably a termite mound.

Above, a Thick Knee/Stone Curlew/Water Dikkop.  A very small bird with a LOT of names.

Above, a Wood Sandpiper.

Above, a Grassveld Pipit.  We passed through a short dry area, and ran into some grazers.  If you all have been paying attention, you will be able to identify the lot below without any help from me...

So, there we are, cheerfully driving along.  We'd returned to the wetter areas, and were following a track alongside a river-ish sort of marsh thing happening on the left, and we were looking in vain for hippos.  Gavin was pointing out several hippo trails leading to and from the water.  

I was taking the break in action to go through some of the photos I'd just taken of the Impala above, and weed out the repeats and the ones that were out of focus, so I was looking down at my camera's display screen.  Gavin was looking out to the right-hand side of the vehicle, looking for game, and Kaiser, (the local guide), was looking out to the left for hippo.  I glanced up at the road.  I glanced back down at my camera screen.  My head shot up and I yelled "STOP!" before I even really knew consciously what I was doing.  Gavin slammed on the brakes.

Whoo!  She'd been taking a nap in the wheel ruts of the track.

I apologized semi-hysterically for yelling - it's considered very bad form in the bush to make loud noises or quick movements, etc.  I added, "I thought we were going to hit her!"  Kaiser grinned at me and gestured to the leopard, saying, "so did she."

She did look pretty disgruntled.***

She performed some typical Annoyed Cat body postures, licking her lips, looking away from us, and then she gave up on subtlety and just glared at us, every ounce of her frame radiating an air of aggrieved petulance.  "Do You Mind???"

We totally failed to take the hint and disappear.  She gave up.  

Clearly deciding that she'd get no more peace in that area while we were sitting there clicking away at her, she got up and marched toward the vehicle, and passed us on the right hand side quite close.

She stopped a short distance away, and lolled around in the grass, seemingly very relaxed.  Then she crouched, and she tucked her head down and she opened her mouth, and she rasped.  Gavin says a leopard's call is often described as sounding like someone cutting wood with a cross-cut handsaw.  While this is what the sound is like, it doesn't really convey the body-shock you have upon hearing it.  Your Hindbrain wakes up and starts yammering in the back of your skull something along the lines of, "RUN YOU IDIOT WE'RE LUNCH!"  It was the kind of sound that vibrates your tonsils, the kind you feel in your sternum, like a drum beat at a rock concert...Gavin told us she was calling a mate.

Then she marched off.  She climbed into a treed verge on the right hand side of the road, and posed very briefly on a log for us before disappearing into the undergrowth for good.

I think there may be too much here for a single post - stay tuned for the next installment!

*A note on nighttime in the camps - because they are not fenced in, and situated right in the middle of the game parks, and because large and dangerous animals like elephants regularly appear in camp, after dark you are required to ask for an escort to take you from the gathering tent to your own sleeping tent.  This is to ensure that you don't get eaten by anything.  To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what the escort could do for you, if you DID run into a pride of lions on the path...all of the escorts WE had looked much faster than me, so I'm pretty sure I would have been the sacrificial lamb had we ever been in any danger.

**Mostly this involves sticking a limb under the water, taking it back out, lathering it up, and then rinsing it again.  Then repeating with all the other limbs, bits and your hair.  Attempting to put your entire body under a cold shower spray is not optimal, in my opinion.  

***What the heck is a gruntle anyway?