I had been dying to spend a penny for about 2 hours, but the whoops of hyena and the sounds of buffalo and hippo grunting just a stone’s throw from my pillow, had counselled a near bed-wetting strategy of staying put and thinking of deserts.  Finally, I slithered out of my tent and paused.  The buffalo languidly turned to look at me, and in a semi ducked position, I kept my eyes on him as I side-stepped 3 steps right, and then a couple of steps back until I was just on the other side of the tent, though still peering round the corner and geared for flight.  We both observed a respectful truce, and I executed an equally undignified return to the opening of the tent and flung myself through the gap, heart racing.

Apparently this is a fairly typical night in Mana Pools on the Lower Zambezi.  Helping with a game count of the park, I have spent the last couple days walking through one of Zimbabwe’s best wildlife destinations, and can confirm that it lives up to expectations in every way.  Watch this space for more.

“FOLLOWING A STATEMENT ISSUED ON SATURDAY EVENING BUT STILL OFICIALLY UNCONFIRMED  IT APPEARS THAT THE TANZANIAN GOVERNMENT MAY HAVE PARTLY BACKED DOWN IN THE FACE OF GROWING GLOBAL CRITICISM AND OPPOSITION TO THEIR PLANS TO CONSTRUCT A HIGHWAY ACROSS THE SERENGETI.
THE TANZANIAN GOVERNMENT HASAPPARENTLY  ASSURED THE UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE CENTER IN PARIS THAT THEY WILL SEEK AN ALTERNATIVE SOUTHERN ROUTE AROUND THE SERENGETI TO BRING ROAD ACCESS TO RURAL COMMUNITIES AND LEAVE THE SERENGETI PARK ROADS UNDER THE ADMINISTRATION OF TANAPA AND FOR TOURISM PURPOSES ONLY.
The proposed highway would have linked remote under-developed communities to larger hubs, cutting  through the park into which giant herds of wildebeest migrate between Tnazaani’s Serengeti and Kenya’s Masai Mara. But following strong world wide criticism of the project, and a recent visit from US Secretary, Hilary Clinton, it appears that the Tanzanian government has informed the United Nations’ cultural organisation UNESCO that it had been dropped.

“The World Heritage Committee has received assurance on the part of the Tanzanian government that the highway project is abandoned .The committee has therefore decided not to list the site on its list of endangered World Heritage Sites because the threat has disappeared,” said a WHC spokesman.

Tanzania’s government had backed the road plan by saying that the country should start caring for its people as much as it did for its wildlife. But critics said it would destroy what scientists consider to be the “largest remaining migratory system on Earth” and lobbied hard against the project.

Serengeti Watch, urge caution, this organisation committed to preserving the Serengeti’s ecosystem, said it feared the highway plan could still re-emerge at a later date.

“We do not consider this the final word in the Serengeti Highway saga by any means,” the group said

The Serengeti Highway was intended to link Musoma, on the banks of Lake Victoria, to Arusha.

The project’s critics argued the road would achieve the opposite of what it set out to do by destroying a key tourist attraction and thus stripping local communities of their jobs.

Serengeti Watch said the government was now considering a highway that would wrap around the southern tip of the protected areas. It quoted a letter it said had been written by Tanzania’s Natural Resources and Tourism Minister Ezekiel Maige.

Instead of cutting through the park towards Arusha, this new road would run “south of Ngorongoro Conservation area and Serengeti National Park,”"

The locals can be a strange bunch too.  On a trip through Malawi, our 1958 Land Rover ground to an agonising, clunking halt, as only a Land Rover can, in a mosquito-ridden swamp called Kazilizili.  From behind a dark bush materialised a man wearing a broad hat fashioned from black bin bags and fishing line, strumming a jaunty tune on a homemade banjo.  He was joined by another rural type, clad in a fashionable, though grubby, Burberry trench coat, who brought a Tipex bottle to his nostrils, declaring in the Queen’s own English: “Where’s my snuff? Where’s my snuff?”  It’s not something that you easily forget, and inhabitants (or should I say inmates?) of Kazilizili still appear to me in disturbed moments.

And then there are the nomads of the world.  While working in Kenya’s Rift Valley, a visit to market day in a Maasai village yielded a pair of handsome sun-burnished French folk, wearing what looked like school uniform, carrying a small backpack each.  They were in the process of walking from Cape Town to Jerusalem (as you do), trusting only in the generosity of people along the way, and a film has since been made about them.  We spent hours listening to their tales of soaking in the hot-tubs of South African millionaires, and of sharing meals with warlords in countries that you only hear about for all the wrong reasons.

Incidentally, this week I bought an apple pie from a lady dressed as a fairy standing at a Harare traffic light.  Apparently the apple pie, in addition to a good thing to have with a cup of tea, was also the secret to eternal life.  I’ll let you know how that pans out.

As the saying goes; “there’s nought stranger than folk”.

Within a few weeks, a couple of these souls have embarked/are about to embark on pretty incredible personal journeys and every few days I read with a mixture of awe and envy of their latest exploits, bug-bears and conquests.  One of my Facebook friends, Julian Monroe Fisher, will shortly begin walking across the belly of Africa, from the coast of Mozambique to the Atlantic in Angola.  The second person is someone I regard with the same curious incomprehension as a fax machine: I have no idea what makes it tick but think it is quite marvellous in any case.   Well-known ocean rower, Roz Savage, is a few days into her mammoth 4000 mile solo row across the Indian Ocean.

The blogs relate a repertoire of interesting happenings thrown across their paths (Roz seems to be frequently pelted by flying squid), and describes the very human afflictions which make life on the explorer’s pedestal sometimes less than comfy.  From painful blisters to sunburn, annoying insects to homesickness… hurrah, they are mere mortals after all.  I find myself searching for what motivates these people to take up the mantle of extraordinary endeavour.  Much like my great grandfather, who set off from Scotland in the early 19 hundreds to carve a new life for himself in East Africa, I imagine that much of the reward comes from stepping off the well-trodden path and relishing the unexpected.

Whatever it is that galvanises such people, the interesting thing is that the inspiration they provide can come in many forms and you can take what you will from it.  Whether it means choosing a different country to visit next year or throwing in a tedious job to do something on your own, pushing your physical and mental limits in running that marathon, or reading a controversial author…the message for me is that boundaries are there to be pushed and only in doing so do we make room to grow (or, less philosophically, experience the novelty of being hit in the face by air-borne seafood).

DIRECTORATE OF PRESIDENTIAL COMMUNICATIONS UNITED REPUBLIC OF TANZANIA

PRESIDENT’S OFFICE, THE STATE HOUSE, DAR ES SALAAM.

PRESS RELEASE

The Government has reassured the international community that Tanzania will never do anything to hurt or take any decision that may irresponsibly destroy the Serengeti National Park such as building a tarmac road through the Park.
However, the Government has reiterated its commitment to meet its responsibilities of supporting development efforts of poorer communities living around the park including building a tarmac road on the northern tip of the park to ease the severe transport challenges facing those communities.

“The Serengeti is a jewel of our nation as well as for the international community. We want to give you our assurances that we cannot be irresponsible by destroying the Serengeti. We will do nothing to hurt the Serengeti and we would like the international community to know this,” President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete told Mr. John McIntire, World Bank Country Director today, Wednesday, February 9, 2011 during a courtesy call on the President at the State House in Dar es Salaam.The Dar es Salaam-based Mr. McIntire also represents the Bank in Uganda and Burundi.

Armed with an illustration of a map of northern Tanzania, President Kikwete told Mr. McIntire: “There has been so much unnecessary confusion about this issue. Let me give you my assurances that we will keep the Serengeti intact. We will not build a tarmac road through the Serengeti National Park. We will only build a road around the park to ease very serious transport challenges facing the poorer communities around the park.”

Under the plan, the Government wants to decongest traffic inside the park that currently crosses the Serengeti daily on a 220-kilometer road which passes right through the park. Instead, a planned road will only cross the Serengeti for only 54 kilometers which will remain unpaved.

In recent months, a global network of environmental activists and conservators has mounted a completely misinformed campaign claiming that the Government of Tanzania intends to destroy the Serengeti by building tarmac road through the park, which will seriously hurt the famous migration of wildlife.

“No tarmac road will be built through the Serengeti. As you know well, Tanzania is the most conservatory country in the world. This has been our policy and position since our independence and you can have my assurances that this position will remain unchanged,” said President Kikwete

“While we will continue protecting our Serengeti seriously, we will also make sure that, as Government, we meet our responsibilities to our people. These people living in the northern side of the park were removed from inside the park itself as part of our conservation efforts. It takes about eight hours of very rough travel to reach their area from Mto wa Mbu town, and it is only 170 kilometers stretch. They have no road. They have no water. They have no power. We will be doing huge injustice if we do not move to correct these imbalances. If they perceive that we don’t care about them, they will easily become enemies of the park and that will harder to deal with.”

“We will continue with our serious efforts of conservation, but we cannot deny these people living on the northern side of the Serengeti border a road. There is neither justification nor explanation for not building this important road.”

The President thanked Mr. McIntire for his suggestion that the World Bank would be willing to fund processes leading to building a tarmac road on the southern side of Serengeti National Park but insisted that the road to the south would not solve transport challenges of communities living on the northern side of the park.

Ends.

I thought I would share it with you…

Said person once made the point that there was really no need for her to visit the Masai Mara when she could view the migration perfectly well on satellite TV, edited for the action without having to hang around waiting for the wildebeest to eventually summon up the courage to take a dip with the crocodiles. Perhaps she has a point.

Recently I’ve been reading interesting stuff about the role that technology will play in the future of travel and it got me thinking. The gadgets and gizmos that are now part of everyday life have done much to bring us into closer proximity to the world’s wondrous environments, wild animals and diverse people. For someone who still hasn’t figured out how the now-obsolete fax machine works, I find it remarkable that, from the couch, I can watch a leopard hunting baboons in the Okavango Delta, or learn about the colourful tribes of Papua New Guinea. I can spectate as the intrepid presenters of Top Gear try hard to kill a Land Cruiser (and themselves) in the Arctic or watch the often excruciating experiences of the likes of Bruce Parry as he surrenders to the manhood initiations of people in South America (incidentally, how many initiations does one need before one feels secure in one’s manhood?).

So I got to thinking, while sitting warm, comfortable and within easy reach of the salted peanuts and a cold beer, why bother leaving the couch at all?

When getting ready to meet our maker, no one ever says “I wish I’d watched more TV”. TVs, Laptops, Smartphones, iPads etc., are amazing for finding out what’s out there, sharing it with your mates and planning your adventures…there’s an app for that, but this is not the same thing as actually “living it”. And therein lies the rub: casting yourself into the 3-D reality of the migration, actually being there and experiencing it, is incomparable in every way to the unmemorable event of observing it on a flat-screen. Out There is where you hear, taste, feel, smell AND see it happening, leaving sensations and emotions deeply and indelibly branded on your psyche.

While life becomes faster, more complicated, more stressful, increasingly artificial, I yearn more and more for simple pleasures such as the delicious sensation of rinsing the days’ adventures off myskin in the balmy evening air under a bucket suspended from the branch of a tree…and there ain’t no app. for that.

I have traveled and lived in Namibia over the last 10 years and have never seen the desert with this tinge of gree

Chris (my zoologist husband now working with W.W.F here in Windhoek) and I have spent the most wonderful weekend in Sossusvlei! It was a slow start from Windhoek, we had to hire a 4×4, and my card didn’t work, so lots of phone calls, presumably to India… eventually we were on our way.

Unusually for this time of year, Namibia has had a lot of rain, and as we journeyed down, many of the dry riverbeds were in full flow. So much so, that we wondered if we were going to be washed down river… but we got there.

Mountain Homestead Lodge, in the Namib desert, is an extra-ordinary place. The jagged Nabib mountain range rises to the east and the huge expanse of red desert resembles some sort of weird moonscape. We had an amazing room with picture windows overlooking the vast desert. Because of the recent rain, everywhere we looked, a tinge of green was emerging and flowers were opening up.

Chris was on a mission to find the Jameson Red Rock Rabbit, which is specific to this area and find him he did… nibbling on the fresh shoots. Such a handsome animal, large, reddish brown with long sticking up ears and a little fluffy black tail.

Chris was also thrilled to find the tiny Dassie rat, or Rock rat, which are squirrel-like without the fluffy tail. Weighing in at only 9oz, they have padded soles, noticeably flattened heads and flexible ribs which enable them to squeeze into extremely narrow crevices. The Dassie rat has an unusually slow reproductive rate; they only produce a pair of off spring once a year during the hot summer months.

Normally you would be compelled to get up at some un-Godly hour 4.30-ish to drive to the entrance gate to the Sossuslvei dunes, but we decided to take it easy… we were the only ones at the lodge, as this is the low season, and we were just as happy immersing ourselves in the stillness and silence of this captivating place.

When we did set off, the 60 km drive to Sossusvlei and Deadvlei was a wonder! You can never get enough of the beauty; a constant play of light and shadow from the clouds on the shifting sands. The stark majesty of the dunes piled one on top of the other until it seems they reach half way to heaven.

Last year there was an interesting online debate about the ethics of travelling to Zimbabwe.  Amongst the various arguments was one made by a Zimbabwean who pointed out that the future of wildlife in his country relies on the revenue generated by tourism and, by staying away, travellers may actually be helping to expedite the loss of these precious resources.

Zim is not the only place where tourism plays a hefty part in conservation.  Pick up any travel mag and there will be stories about the likes of lodge owners in Zambia who recently saved a lioness injured critically by a poacher’s snare.  Beyond the emergency response; many small camps are involved in training rangers, supporting long-term research and educating adjacent communities about the value of wildlife.  Plenty more companies opt to take local communities as business partners, providing them with a stake in the future of their environment.

Of course, it is absolutely in the best interest of these companies to invest in conservation – after all, their businesses depend upon it.  But more often than not, this is a secondary concern and the extraordinary lengths that people go to come from a deep sense that this is just the right thing to do.  Sadly there are others with a much shorter-term view and less integrity where tourism does leave large and grubby footprints on our natural heritage.  Tourism undoubtedly has the power to support livelihoods, bestow economic viability on wilderness that might otherwise be used for mining or agriculture, and conserve and regenerate habitats.

Therefore, the important question should not be “should I travel?” but rather “how can I support the people who are themselves busting a gut trying to save the world all on their tod?” (or words to that effect).  Just as you would want accountability from Oxfam as to how they use your donation, choose carefully who you entrust your hard-earned safari dollars to.  That way, while you are enjoying your holiday, you know that you’ve invested in the conservation of those fabulous places that you are privileged to visit: killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.

Of course, now I’m a grown-up (sort of), I take enormous pleasure in planning my next adventure and relishing the anticipation for months before it happens.  There’s the thinking about how soon after my last holiday I can tactfully abscond from my responsibilities on the next one.  Then there’s the endless studying of maps, enjoying the strange-sounding names and beautiful pictures of places I might visit.  Once an approximate plan has been hatched, the reality begins to dawn as I start scheming about how to make it all fit together.  Then I get to bore my friends for weeks about where I’m off to next (with the promise of making them jealous with the photos on my return).  In fact, I get almost as much pleasure in looking forward to the thing as actually doing it.

Now that Christmas is behind us, the shops are spending a small fortune on endlessly repetitive adverts with irritating jingles and fake-smiley people trying to get us excited about spending our own small fortune on a sofa at 70% off.  Now forgive me for bursting the bubble here but just how excited can you get about a sofa?  And even if you do manage to summon up the energy to wade through the throngs between the freezing grey streets and the overheated fug of department stores to blow some cash on discounted goods that you quite possibly don’t need, just how long is that feel-good factor going to last?

My poorly disguised point here (if you’ve not walked in with the bowling), is that instead of opting for the all too easy instant gratification of a new sofa, why not start planning your next great escape?  It’ll give you hours of pleasure in anticipation, butterflies in your tummy, and make the next few long winter months pass more quickly…and it will leave you with memories that will be more beautiful and last so much longer than a new sofa, guaranteed.

(The above image is of an innovative road-side curio shop…everything’s on sales if you barter hard enough).

People-watching has always been a favourite hobby and I am capable of spending hours at a cafe regarding the variety in our species as one would observe the behaviour of elephants and baboons in the Masai Mara.  Since I moved to Harare a year ago, The Braai has become one of my favourite anthropological field sites.  It has revealed a fascinating ritual played out in two-tone khaki and “veldskoens” in dozens of leafy gardens every weekend.

A characteristic of the southern African male is his inability to comprehend a meal unless it comprises about 80% meat.  As he stands proprietarily next to his Weber, a range of tongs, forks and other implements laid out beside him as though preparing for surgery, he flips the various cuts over the coals with one hand while keeping a cold Castle constantly grasped in the other.  It’s a sort of balance that has been perfected over time and if the hand is empty, he will probably topple over.

As a general observation, I have found that upon arriving at a typical Zimbabwean braai, couples part ways upon disembarkation from the standard white “bakkie” (pick-up truck).  The men congregate beer-in-hand around the fire while the women sit on the verandah.  To enter into the sacrosanct circle of the braai as a woman, you need to have an exceptional grasp of the finer points of cricket and rugby at the very least.  You will never, regrettably, be able to participate in the other topic of conversation which revolves around which boarding school you attended and the tireless, good-natured abuse related to your house’s sporting conquests or lack thereof.  Please believe me when I say that this topic is still alive-and -kicking when the gentlemen are in their 70s, and decidedly less so.  If you sit with the girls, you will probably spend quite a lot of time talking about children.

Now, I have a series of problems identifying and subsequently playing a satisfactory part in this performance.  The first is that I would choose a veggie salad over a bloody rump steak on any day of the week and many people behave as though I am a carrier of a rare and faintly amusing disease when I skirt the boerwors in favour of the lentils.  The second problem is that, my dog being no substitute for sprogs, I have little to contribute to the re-hashing of Little Johnny’s latest sporting achievements.  Lastly, while I can still climb trees and wax lyrical on the pleasures of mountain biking, I have never succeeded in retaining a single useful detail of either cricket or rugby.  I’m now contemplating that arriving at the next braai dressed as a clown might make me stand out less as a creature from a different eco-system…I’ll try that next time.

Unjustly cursing the deep red sand of the Namib that had left my feet somewhat tender, I went to soak them in the pool.  I swam up and down with torpor appropriate to a mid-thirties afternoon in the Namib (the desert was mid-thirties, not me…let’s be clear).  It occurred to me that I was swimming lengths on top of a sand-dune.  There can’t be many places in the world where you can say that.

Having cooled my heels, I joined my fellow travellers for the obligatory sundowner.  The open landrover wound its way along the “road” (two tracks in the red sand), between dry-blue grass that looked rather like clumps of tumble-weed, ready to scatter in the wind at any moment.   Suddenly, the ridge of dunes gave on to a 180° view of such depth and emptiness that I could do nothing but just stare and stare.  It was vast yet the silence and emptiness made it almost two-dimensional – like a film set all prepped and ready for something dramatic to happen.

Huge gnarled mountains provided a back-drop which changed from grey to red to purple in the setting sun.  Fairy circles (more about these later) dotted the wide straw-coloured valley floor as though some divine interior designer had opted frivolously for polka-dots for a bit of a laugh.  Sitting with cold green glass bottle in hand and feet wiggling deeper into the sand, warm wind stroking my bare arms….I wished for time to stand still.  Later that evening, I seriously considered sleeping on the lounger on my verandah because it seemed such a waste to cover up the gzillions of stars with canvas.

It’s hard to do this place justice with mere words so may I suggest you saunter over to our Facebook page and lose yourself in some stunning imagery from Wolwedans.

This surreal contrast is typical of a journey through Namibia.  Every other day the scenery changes so dramatically that it is hard to believe you are in the same country.  This morning, for instance, I awoke to the chill of a dense sea fog draped over the very German coastal town of Swakopmund and now I sit beneath a warm African sun surrounded by the azure sea.

Nick pilots our little vessel expertly from Namibia’s only deep-water harbour past oil rigs in for a service, container ships and even an abandoned diamond-mining boat, registered to Panama.  This one has been running up IOUs in many different ports and skipping town without paying the bill.  Interpol finally caught up with it in Walvis Bay and it is now the centre of a court battle.  We learn about how gravel and sand is vacuumed from the seabed and sifted for the precious stones.

As we skip across the glittering waves, we are joined by the “Namibian Airforce” – a fleet of pelicans that fly alongside the boat, hopeful for a fresh snack.  At such close quarters, their fabulous anatomy can be appreciated fully and Nick gives us the benefit of his knowledge about these and the accompanying seagulls as we go.  Everyone on board turns National Geographic photographer as we are treated to clear glimpses of both bottle-nose and heavy-sided dolphins breaching alongside the hull.

At Pelican Point, the seal colony proves a good fit for our trip theme…more mating animals.  The males weigh in at upto 350kg and at almost half their weight, no wonder many of the females end up practically buried in the sand during “the act”.  Youngsters lollop along the sand in search of their mothers.

Turning for the harbour, we see where the meaty oysters that we are drenching in lemon and Tabasco are grown.  Seed oysters come from Chile to thrive in the chill Benguela current.  They are huge and truly delicious.  Windswept and freckled by the sun, we step back onto dry land and head back through the dunes of the Namib for coffee and cake in a German bakery.  Quite surreal really.

Click here to see more images.

Now, I’m actually starting to bore even myself with exhortations about how wonderful this place is, but it is like nowhere else I’ve been on earth.  The colours at sunrise, the shapes of the mountains, the fact that anything that lives here survives on 100mm of rain a year and sea mist, the rock that is strewn on the land as though it was put there, the deep silence of the place.  Among its many blessings are that it is not suitable for any human activity (except perhaps rock farming), which means that it has remained hitherto largely unscathed by our clumsy attentions.  It lends itself to over-the-top, adjective-rich repetitions about just how magnificently splendid it all is.  Ok, I’ll shut-up now.

Our safari takes us from Etosha through the Grootberg Pass and down towards the oasis of Palmwag.  We spend a couple of nights at Etendeka Mountain Camp; tents dwarfed by the mountains, outdoor bucket showers where you can cool off, the warm breeze drying your skin as you admire the view.

An early morning walk through the canyons reveals extraordinary plants such as the euphorbia – poisonous to everything except rhino, kudu and ground squirrels.  Golden-trunked butter trees crouch in the rocks and we discover that one which is barely 6’ tall is almost half a decade old.  There are birds like the Damara rock-runner and Herero chat which are found nowhere else the world.  I am amazed to find blue chloride, white quartz and amethyst crystals hiding inside the dull rocks, testament to ancient geological processes.

Later, returning to camp on an evening drive, we stumble upon an overgrown litter of lion cubs.  Following the linear oases which cleave this arid place, the lion are like many other species in that they are adapted to the desert.  They inherit memories of rich hunting grounds, water that does not dry up and sometimes their wonderings take them to the beaches where they prey on seals.  As the sun lowers and sets the mountains on fire, we disturb a black mongoose in his feast of harvester termites.  Also endemic to this area, he was only recognised as distinct from other mongooses (mongeese? mongi?) about twenty years ago.

Around the camp-fire, after chicken roasted in foil over the coals, I turn my chair to face the darkness, feel the silence creep into my mind, and search for shooting stars amongst a galaxy so bright that it seems to hang just above my head.

Check out our Facebook page for more photos of this area from my trip.

Comical tortoise lurve aside, there have been many impressive attempts of the boys out there to win even an appreciative glance from the object of their infatuation.  Firstly, they literally put on their Sunday best to go a’courtin’.  The ostriches develop rather bizarre red stripes down their shins…not quite sure that would do it for me, personally.  The shaft-tailed whydah birds transform themselves from drab LBJs (Little Brown Jobs) into resplendent tail-coated studs with feathers 8” long.  The male agama (or rainbow) lizard dons a dazzling combination of cobalt blue and orange and stands with his head bobbing and toes raised on the hot rock.

Then the boys put all their energy into showing off.  Sunshine-yellow weaver birds spend days painstakingly knitting beautifully crafted nests which need to meet Madam’s approval (she will reject many potential homes heartlessly by nipping the grass that binds them to the branch, sending them tumbling to the ground).  The northern black korhaan (a sort of pheasant-size bird with beautiful black and tawny markings and a bright red bill) flies high into the air and plummets to earth with break-neck speed. The large cory bustard puffs out the feathers of his throat, sticks his black crest in the air and fans out his tail.  Ensuring that the ladies are paying attention, he then struts back and forth in almost military fashion.  It’s worth braving the odd rainstorm for all this.

The variety and ingenuity of all these creatures in displaying their manly prowess is seriously impressive and one does wonder where we went wrong with our own species…although our lads donning high-heels and blue eye-shadow?  Perhaps not.

The country is vast and largely empty, with a population of around 2 million people, 75% of which live in the northern-most reaches.  A whole playground of remote, wild and scenically breath-taking areas are connected mostly by excellent tar or graded gravel roads, making it perfect for our self-drive trip.

I’ve learnt that you need to prepare for some pretty long days in the car, but that each journey offers plenty to see and some very dramatic changes in landscape.  The hire car, a 4×4 Nissan double-cab, is comfy and well-equipped, the real bonus being the fridge which, at any one time, contains a variety of chilled drinks, the obligatory supply of chocolate and “padkos” (snacks for the road).   We’ve met some folk travelling in saloon cars but I’m pleased to have something a bit more sizeable to allow us to explore some of the rougher terrain.

Our safari is taking us through a cross-section of eco-systems; from Etosha’s assorted bush and huge salt pan, through the flat-topped red basalt mountains of Damaraland, the harsh but surprisingly varied desert of the Skeleton Coast and into the red-dunes and mountains of the Namib Naukluft.  We’re covering about 4,000km over two weeks but within a few days we feel as though we’ve been travelling for months – there is simply so much to see and do.  Since we like to be a bit intrepid, one of the best aspects is the freedom we have to explore at our own pace while still being able to take advantage of the specialist knowledge of the guides in each small camp we visit.

At the end of the safari, we will have seen a huge variety of birds and animals, walked through pre-historic canyons, visited seal colonies aboard boats, experienced some local culture, slid down sand-dunes and marvelled at the intensity of the stars in this vast wild country.  Tomorrow is another day and I wonder where the next straight road will lead us?

Okonjima is a private conservancy located in Namibia’s central highlands.  It has long been home to the Africat Foundation which attempts to offer a safe haven to cheetah that have clashed with surrounding commercial cattle farms.  Cheetah are physiologically closer to dogs than cats and unlike lion or leopard, are not instinctive hunters.  Much of their first 18 months is spent learning the techniques of survival from their mother.  Many cheetah come to the centre having been orphaned by farmers poisoning or shooting the adults, which are seen as a threat to young livestock.

The foundation is engaged in long-term research and rehabilitation projects to re-introduce the animals back into wilderness areas where they will not come into conflict with people.  It is a long process and a steep learning curve as they experiment with different methods.  Animals are collared and monitored constantly.  As a guest at Okonjima you can head out with the guides to track the animals and see how they are getting on.

Charlie and Trish are brother and sister and have recently been re-released into the 16,000ha conservancy where they are attempting to survive without the human handouts.  Their ambitious attempt at a large kudu unfortunately failed but hopefully they were able to put it down to experience and would have better luck next time.

Seeing predators in this context is very different from seeing them in the wild but it does provide exciting opportunities for close encounters with otherwise elusive creatures.  The guides here are possessed of an in-depth understanding of the animals and it is interesting to gain a deeper insight into the controversial issue of conservation vis-a-vis human livelihoods.

Find out more about visiting Okonjima by clicking here.

The day before, we land on a white sand beach upon which the Atlantic beats with frothy waves and the wind whips sharply around my ankles.  I walk barefoot away from the plane and into the bare reaches of sand, rock, and gravel to feel the emptiness of the desert.  The wind is quick and gusty and fills my lungs with fresh salty air.  There is not a cloud in the sky.  The impression is one of liberation, felt deep in the chest: it touches all the senses.

The following day, from our birdlike vantage point, we witness the patterns of rock and sand created by ancient processes.  At the right time of day, the paper-sheaf of angled rock is thrown into relief, the shadows emphasising every sinuous curve.  Patterns like veins in the sand made by rare water courses spread beneath us.  As we descend, the knobbly bald heads of rocky outcrops race by the windows.  I never knew the earth to be such a canvas of patterns and colours.  It is beautiful.

As I try desperately to preserve the impressions in my brain of all I have seen, and touched, and felt so that I can revisit it all in later years, I realise that this nothingness is what I came for.  And the nothingness provided one of the richest experiences I have ever known.

Amanda travelled with Andre Schoeman (pictured above) on the Skeleton Coast Flying Safari in November 2010.  Check out our Facebook page for more stunning images and watch this space for more blogs of Amanda’s trip.

Wander through any market and you’ll be treated to a sort of raw sensory overload that I can bet you’ll never match.  Large-bottomed ladies in colourful prints argue over the price of tomatoes and sharp lads sit around playing draughts with bottle tops while imbibing the contents of the bottles.  Chickens cluck and scoot around between flip-flopping feet, dusty and calloused from hard days treading the rough streets and weekends spent hoeing fields.

An old woman, sucking teeth that are either missing or black, rests her back against a red-brick wall; legs outstretched and creased hands kneading folded notes in her hands.  She sells crispy-smooth woven palm mats and baskets, wooden spoons for stirring goopy white maize meal.  The sea-smell of drying capenta – small lake fish – fills the air in this corner, while further on, a young woman swiftly chops away at a clenched bunch of greens, bitter and fresh.  All around are people calling to each other, advertising their wares, exchanging greetings and family news, gossip.

In southern Africa, roundabouts are known as “circles” and traffic lights as “robots” (making for potentially disastrous results when requesting directions).  Robots are a prime opportunity to tempt captive motorists into purchasing all manner of things…miniature markets.  Loofahs, brash holographic pictures of waterfalls that move when you walk past them, dustpans made from cut metal sheets printed by Coca Cola.  There are wooden bowls and cheap alarm clocks, copies of men’s magazines covertly displayed between the pages of the local newspaper.  There are sometimes puppies and rabbits.  It’s where you get your daily newspaper and your telephone scratchcards.

The interesting thing is that the vendors don’t try and persuade you that you need the thing.  Their sales pitch revolves entirely around how cheap it is.  You say “no thanks” and they say: “but, madam, you know the price?  So cheap!”.  You say: “even if it was free, I still don’t want it”.  They say: “only $5…such a good price.  End of the day.  Closing down sale.”  As if this was reason enough for you to go home with an ironing board.  Africa….wonderful, frustrating, unique, surprising Africa.

To this day, dhows are an integral part of the East coast of Africa and the Persian Gulf – transporting mangrove poles, tea, sugar and cereals. Smaller dhows are sturdy enough to go fishing way out into the ocean for several days at a time.

Now it was my turn to set sail.  Heading out from Lamu Island towards the mangroves and then to the open sea beyond, it was so easy to pretend for a moment that we were pirates setting forth in search of ancient gold and exotic spices, or fishermen heading way out into the Indian Ocean for weeks never to see land, but the reality was quite different.

I was aboard Tusitiri – a beautiful dhow owned not by The Sultan of Oman but an eccentric Scandinavian gentleman. The wide wooden deck furnished with heaps of brightly coloured cushions, a vast wooden dining table at the base of the mast and, at the front, the massive wheel.  This was to be home for the next three blissful days.

Going to the loo got some getting used to; the small wooden cubicle hanging off the edge of the dhow was a tight squeeze but perfectly private from the team and with fabulous views of the sea and passing dhows. Getting used to using the smallest bit of loo paper was a tad awkward but very important. The shower on the other side was refreshing and a real luxury. In the cool, dark depths of the hull below was space for luggage and changing.

Our days were spent on deck with forays onto deserted beaches for picnics. Most of the rocky coves are covered with oysters so armed with a knife, we gouged off the oyster shells, prized them open, swilled them in sea water, a squeeze of lemon, drop of Tabasco and plopped into your mouth. You can’t get fresher than that.

We certainly did not starve.  In fact, every meal was a banquet of either lobsters, mangrove crabs, barbecued fish or prawns, all freshly prepared by the on-board chef using local spices and plenty of coconut milk. Hot bread, tropical fruits, salads, cakes and pastas, the table was positively groaning not to mention the old waistline.

I snorkelled, water-skied and went deep-sea fishing, where I caught my first sailfish which was tagged and released. It was nonstop – and I thought I was going to finish my book!

Twilight was the best bit.  Cool air, delicious smells coming from the galley kitchen, a chilled glass of white wine, relaxing on cushions, and listening to the men sing their gentle Swahili songs while watching the great sun disappear across the sea.

Explore more beaches and coves: check out camps and lodges on the Indian Ocean coast.

Carl Swanson got this extraordinary shot last month in the Northern Serengeti.  He spent 3 nights of his safari with a private Nomad vehicle and guide, up at Kogatende on the Mara River and it was here that he witnessed this extraordinary scene. Here’s what happened in his own words:

“We were standing up in our safari vehicle in complete awe as we watched a seemingly endless parade of wildebeests crossing the river. This scene would have been more then enough to call it a very successful day. Then all of a sudden we saw a lion, who came out of nowhere, slowly walking past us and toward where the wildebeests were surfacing on our side of the river. She crouched down, considered her multiple options, and then viciously pounced on this young wildebeest, wrestling it to the ground. It was shocking and exhilarating to watch, a brutal example of survival of the fittest, just 25 feet away from us! It truly was a major highlight of our two weeks in Tanzania!”

Riding with Safaris Unlimited in the Masai Mara

Firebrand and I eyed each other with mutual distrust and the scene took on the sepia tones of a Wild West stand-off…any minute now one of us was going to draw a six-shooter…or at least that was what it felt like. “We’ve given you one of our feisty fellows” our hostess, a weathered, kind and adventurous lady, pointed out rather unnecessarily.  “He’s fine as long as he doesn’t encounter water and he’s a bit skittish around logs” she added cheerfully. “Oh and watch out when you turn for home…sometimes he’s a bit eager for the stable”.

With these ominous notes ringing in my ears, I glumly mounted my steed and adjusted the stirrups. My history with four-legged transport had been chequered and having been bitten on the shoulder, kicked in the thigh and thrown more times than was medically advisable, my view of horses was a fairly dim one: dangerous at both ends and uncomfortable in the middle. We plodded out of the paddock.

This was my first experience of “riding wild”. The dry grasslands and whistling thorn of Kenya’s Great Rift Valley rolled away in front of us and the homestead stood in the prehistoric shadow of Mt Longonot – a vast volcanic crater that rises from the valley floor. The warm sun, the peace of the bush, the calls of the birds and the gentle swaying motion of the horse was hard to resist and I decided that I had missed my calling in life…I should have been a cowgirl. We hacked smoothly through the vegetation, able to enjoy its sounds and scents unspoiled by a jolting vehicle. Apart from the odd sudden sideways manoeuvre to avoid a perfectly innocent stick, my mount was well-behaved.

With each animal encountered, it became apparent that, on four-legs, we were a much more acceptable part of the scene. In a clearing, a herd of impala watched with curiosity, jaws working and ears alert, but they didn’t run away. We found ourselves walking alongside giraffe as if part of the group, able to see the details of their painted hides and watch the ox-peckers at work. As we turned for home, we cantered full-pelt alongside a herd of zebra, stripes hectically flying past us, hooves hammering and dust flying. It was one of the most exhilarating experiences I’ve ever had (and consequently I embarrassed myself by shouting “yeeha”).

At this point, we discovered that my younger brother’s nag (“the mellow one”), which had been reluctant and surly from the outset, had actually ground to a halt up a barely perceptible incline and all the kicking in the world was insufficient to galvanise it into forward motion. Of course we discovered that our backsides were ill-prepared for several hours in the saddle and spent the rest of the afternoon waddling around the garden, but it was definitely a memorable experience worth repeating.

There are a number of places that offer short rides into the bush to view wildlife, or, if you are a seasoned rider, you could consider a longer riding safari somewhere like Kenya’s Masai Mara or the Okavango Delta in Botswana.

Fancy yourself galloping across the plains?  Click here for more information on riding safaris.

Almost a year has passed since I moved to Harare and the variety and colour of the seasons here has been astonishing.  At the moment, we are treated to avenues of dense purple jacarandas to match the bruised skies that precede dramatic electric storms.  Clashing spectacularly with the purple, the bright yellow cassias leave a carpet of sunshine on the roads as the flowers start to fall.

Over Christmas and the early months of the year, the flamboyants and poinsettias paint the northern suburbs with a festive red and a couple of months ago there was a tree that flowered pink, white and purple in such abundance that some roads looked readily decked for a fairy-tale spring wedding.  Harare’s botanists planned for the streets always to be clad in flowers and they did a remarkable job.  It goes without saying that the accompanying bird life is equally noteworthy, with iridescent starlings and sunbirds, multi-coloured louries and vocal robins.

As we wait for the tropical summer storms to brew and ripen, we sit supine on steamy verandas in temperatures that climb to the mid-thirties.  In June and July, I hauled out boots that last trod London streets and lived in thick woollen jumpers.  There was even frost on a couple of mornings.

The passing seasons have rung other changes too in Zimbabwe’s capital.  Young people are flooding back and there are new cafes and restaurants opening every month, in which it is often difficult to find a table.  There are ten times more cars on the road and a buzz of cautious optimism about the country’s future.  Shops are full, and though the cost of living is not far off London, people seem happy that they no longer have to queue for the basics.  There is talk of elections next year and everyone hopes that these will not throw obstacles in the road of economic recovery that we seem to be steadily travelling.

The fact of the matter is that beach holidays in Africa are so varied that it is possible to find something that appeals to everyone if you plan carefully enough.  It goes without saying that most places have a plethora of opportunities to indulge in the above-mentioned do-nothing activity.

Above and beyond this, though, are places like Lamu Island in Kenya, Zanzibar in Tanzania and Ibo Island in Mozambique where the culture is fascinating and you can spend hours wandering the narrow streets, encountering unique local craft and architecture, meeting the locals in colourful markets or watching the fisherman argue over the day’s catch.

For the sporty folk, some of the best diving and deep-sea fishing is to be had off the coasts of Tanzania and Mozambique.  The coral reefs are abundant and accessible, with regular migrations of whale shark, humpbacks, dolphins and big game fish.  Some places are particularly geared for young folk and offer water-skiing, dune boarding and sailing.  For really little ones – well, they just see the world’s biggest sandpit.

If you are an intrepid sort, then sleeping under the stars on an uninhabited island off the coast of northern Mozambique and island-hopping by dhow or kayak might appeal?  There are far flung islands that are little more than white piles of sand surrounded by improbably blue seas, like Vamizi or the remote Kiwayu.

To find out more about the kaleidoscope of beach getaways that you could be heading off to as winter approaches…click here.

* Image courtesy of Vamizi

A few years ago, while camping in Namibia, I had one of the most surreal nights of my life.  The tent was tiny – just a taut mosquito net between me and the stars.  During the deepest part of the night when even the crickets seem to stop humming, an odd feeling woke me.  I remember being aware of the quality of the darkness – it was not quite right.  Lying still, I took stock of my surroundings and then the side of the tent shifted slightly, almost as though the wind had suddenly gusted.

Looking up, I became aware of shades of night above me and suddenly came properly awake with the realisation that what I was looking at was the underside of an elephant.  With two fore-feet against the side of the tent (only a couple of inches from my prone form), the animal was stretching gently over the tent to reach some ripe fruit on a bush.   Weirdly, I didn’t start thinking of the inconvenience of being crushed to death at that moment, but lay there marvelling at the size and quietness of this animal.  I could smell its grassy scent and hear its knees rubbing against the canvas from time to time.

The point of the story is that this is something that will remain with me forever, long after I will have forgotten the finer points about the interior decor.  In Africa, the real richness comes from just being in the place and the closer you can get to the essence of it, the more memorable it is likely to be.

Want to know more about luxury in the bush?  Click here.

Have a look at luxury safari ideas.

Rather like a modern-day Rudyard Kipling (and his Jungle Book creation, Mowgli), Tippi not only made herself at home in the bush but also befriended its inhabitants, displaying unusual fearlessness to the creatures she encountered.  Pictures of Tippi scaling the trunk of an elephant, reclining against the furry flank of a leopard and riding an ostrich depict a very unusual child.  How cool that your best mate is a meerkat and that, barely knee-high to a grasshopper, you can tick off a leopard by tapping it on the nose and saying “stop that!”.  Her mother, Sylvie Robert, developed the belief that her scruffy little rough diamond of a daughter could communicate with the animals and regarded them as her contemporaries.

Not all children are Tippis but they all certainly have the capacity to be captivated by Africa and its wildlife.  How tangible is the excitement of children when they first see the tent they will spend the night in, or the Samburu warrior who shows them how to shoot a bow and arrow, and the antics of geckos catching moths around a light at night!  While Nintendo and the TV do provide handy distractions for kids, how can they possibly compete with excavating the tiny funnels of ant lions in the sand, or the excitement of hearing a hyena whooping at night?  And, selfishly, how cool to benefit from a second childish euphoria while you watch all this as a grown-up?

Furthermore, and probably stating the obvious here, but if the next generation don’t get to enjoy the barefoot freedom of wild places and develop an understanding of its importance for our future, how on earth can we expect them to take an interest in conserving it?

Find out more about going on safari with your children.

Check out some ideas for child-friendly trips to Africa.

Check out Tippi’s web-site.

In the late ‘90s I took at trip on a ferry from Nkhata Bay on Lake Malawi to Likoma Island.  Having travelled hard for a month through Mozambique, we decided that we’d earned a little luxury and splashed out on a first class ticket (all of about $20), envisaging a cosy bunk and a cabin cooled by the lake breeze.  Unfortunately it didn’t quite work out like that and first class turned out to be a hard bench on the open deck.  Third class was down in the bilges with a lot of people, assorted livestock, bunches of bananas, pungent dried fish and sacks of rice.  Luxury was clearly relative.

The on-board entertainment consisted of watching the dugout canoes of traders pulling alongside as we chugged along.  These boats were hewn from a single tree and some were vast – I counted a family of ten plus baggage seated comfortably in one.  Sales were made to the passengers after noisy haggling and the dugouts paddled off as the sun went down.  We disembarked in the dark at 4am.  It was rather like the D-Day landings…lifeboats were lowered with a single kerosene lamp suspended from the prow.  Passengers in the bottom of the ship fought with each other for space, behaving as if each boat was the last.  Finally aboard our own lifeboat, we huddled in the cool of the early morning and listened to the gentle splash of the oars as we headed for the dark island.

We sat on the beach and watched the sun turn the smooth lake to mercury as the sounds of the day reached us from the villages on Likoma.  We spent several idyllic days camped in rustic thatched shacks on an almost impossibly picturesque beach, accessorized with promontories of big round boulders.  We snorkelled in the warm clear water where colourful tropical fish swim, rivalling any marine reef (and lacking only the coral and saltiness of the ocean).

This little patch has now evolved into the beautiful island lodge of Kaya Mawa and Likoma is the jumping-off point for the equally special hideaway of Nkwichi (pictured above), on the Mozambique side of the lake.  These are not the easiest places to get to but then again, that’s half the appeal.  That said, you can still enjoy the solitude and splendid isolation without slumming it on the deck of the ferry.  Simple berths are available for the adventurous and there are also charter flights to the island.

Find out more about the Lake.

Check out Nkwichi – our featured hideaway.

Find inspiration for other Wild experiences.

After the fact, I am still not sure how I feel.  Undoubtedly, it was surreal to be so close to these huge animals in such a peaceful context;  the cool, tough, bristly hide beneath my fingertips, the smooth groove worn in one solid piece of ivory, the proffered trunk seeking treats, the immense size, the improbable eyelashes.   You get an intimate sense of “moving with the herd” and from this vantage point, can enjoy the scampering of the youngsters as they indulge their curiosity and the interaction between individuals.   For an animal close to three tonnes, it is astonishing how silently it (or indeed a whole herd) moves through the bush, sensitive pads moulding over the uneven ground with infinite care.

An interesting observation was that of the relationships between handlers and their animals.  Clover, originally a zoo-keeper from the US and now in charge of this project, says she’s noticed the subtle body language of an elephant towards someone he doesn’t like, and the flirting that one female reserves for a particular handler.  The handlers are rigorously trained and anyone who doesn’t make the grade or gel with the elephants falls by the wayside.  Interestingly, many of them are Zimbabweans who have also left their homes and families for a new life.

Whether the elephants enjoy being ridden or not is unclear but it is hard not to admit that they do seem fairly happy.  In between their two rides a day, they go out into the bush to be elephants.  One of the females left for eight months only to return pregnant to the habituated herd where she gave birth.  Two of the elephant here have bred while on the project which is often taken to be a sign that they are content.  Not too long ago, the herd returned from their foraging with a youngster in tow.  He had been orphaned and is now growing up with his new family and treats the handlers like his bipedal buddies.

I guess I still think that wild animals should remain wild and being able to be so close perhaps dispels a little of the magic.  I hope that the operation of elephant safaris remains in the hands of a very few responsible people of high integrity.  There is no doubt in my mind that such projects should only serve to give a home to animals that would not otherwise make it in the wild and under no circumstances should wild elephants be captured for commercial purposes.

At the end of the day this is going to be a very personal decision and while some people might find it a life-changing experience, others may never quite get used to the idea.

Zenzo is a Zimbabwean who is in charge of this particular project and he speaks well and passionately about its history and the ethos behind it.  The core animals that form this herd were orphaned during a culling regime in the early 1990s which at the time, thought that doing away with all the adults and leaving all the youngsters was the way to go.  Now we know better, but unfortunately this left a legacy of traumatised and poorly socialised youngsters that went on to become dangerous problem animals.   Saving four such individuals from most likely being put-down, the White family took them on and began to instil discipline through training that favoured rewards for good behaviour.

More animals joined the herd as word of the successful rehabilitation of these youngsters spread.  Some were rescued having been snared and once their horrific injuries healed, joined the rest of the elephants in training.  Now, the animals are stabled on a large conservancy on which they roam for most of the day.  During an hour in the morning and in the afternoon, visitors can come and ride the elephants as they go out for a walk and a forage.

As Zenzo says, their ideal is for all these animals to be released but experience has shown that this is not always viable.  They have lost their fear of people and the bulls particularly are likely to become crop-raiders and end up being shot.  Some have been released into the wild successfully and work continues with that ideal in mind.  In the meantime, the cost of their upkeep and continued care is paid for by people who are interested and passionate about their welfare.

Zenzo and the Whites hope that, just as they were one of the first to successfully habituate wild African elephants, they will also be amongst the first to successfully return them to the wild.  For now, they have a responsibility to ensure the animals are looked after.

Find out more about The Elephant Camp.

Image courtesy of Wild Horizons

The last two days on the Zambezi Queen have done something similar to my rather dusty safari-psyche.  Sitting in the early evening light watching herds of elephant and buffalo glide by gently as this rather special riverboat chugs gently down the channels of the Chobe has to be something of a unique experience.  This morning I woke to the lapping of the water only a few feet below the most comfortable bed in the world, and walked onto my private balcony to see a small herd of elephant swimming across the river with only the tops of their backs and heads exposed, trunks held aloft.

Admittedly I think I would get cabin fever if I had to stay on a boat for more than a couple of days – the food is too good and the options for exercise all too limited for my comfort.  Fortunately there is plenty to do.  I opted to forego a game-drive (maintaining the water theme of my stay) and instead tried my hand at Tiger-fishing this morning and failed to coax even a nibble out of the little beggars.

Yesterday evening I ventured out on a simple but immaculately designed little launch to take in the sights and sounds of the Chobe.  It proved to be the perfect vantage point from which to sit and watch a herd of fifty elephant peacefully drinking, oblivious to our presence.  A youngster, not yet in control of his limbs, experimented with his trunk with limited success.  African skimmers wheeled around us and pied kingfishers dove for small-fry just metres from the boat.  The crew surprised us by whipping up an impromptu mini-barbecue of chicken and beef kebabs on the prow of the boat.  For the ride back to the “mother ship” I took up residence on the top level of the launch and watched the sunset paint the water pink and purple, and stars come out one by one in the warm African night air.

Find out more about the Zambezi Queen.

Having been divided between the boats, our assorted collection of travellers (American, Aussie, Japanese etc. from 16 to 70 years old) descended the gorge on foot and followed a series of drills in a calm bend of the river.  In different ways, each member of our crew displayed their varying degrees of anxiety at the prospect of facing rapids sporting names like “Oblivion”, “The Devil’s Toilet Bowl” and “Commercial Suicide”.  Dudley, our 70+ year old was full of fighting talk while Mio was quiet as a mouse, listening intently.  Jacqueline from Australia giggled hysterically.

The scenery of the Batoka Gorge below Victoria Falls is spectacular; sheer, cubic black rocks fall from the sky to the river which navigates an extreme series of hairpin bends where rapids are interspersed by eerily calm stretches.  Depending on the time of the year, you start rafting at The Boiling Pot right below the Falls or as far along as rapid 4 or 11.  Between September and November you can expect general carnage – lots of grade 4 and 5 rapids and the likelihood of airborne people jettisoned from flipping rafts.  From December to March, the river is more mellow and the adrenalin-factor more moderate.   June to August can be either pretty tame or quite manic depending on the water levels.

The Creamy White Buttocks is named for the countless ill-prepared rafters who have lost their shorts whilst negotiating this rapid.  We faced it with whoops and laughs as our boat was tossed around like a rubber duck on the white boiling water.  After this, minefields of eddies and whirlpools, standing-waves and cavernous depths tackled our boats while we laughed at the others who took a swim and rescued our recently made friends loyally from the Zambezi.  Returning home flushed with sun and exhilaration of our day on the river, the autopsy of our experiences and dissecting of our collective memories will no doubt take a great deal longer.

Find out more about Victora Falls.

Image courtesy of Wild Horizons

The course was beautiful with the first leg being out along the bridge to the Zambian side, with views over the Falls and the cavernous mouth of the Batoka Gorge and majestic Victoria Falls Hotel.  Then, out along Zambezi Drive towards the Big Tree, the road made safe from elephants by numerous game scouts.  A few kilometres of running into the Park before looping back round to town.

Amongst the crowd were local runners, lean and muscular who ran like the wind at a pace inconceivable to mere mortals.  I ran alongside a Zimbabwean woman for a brief stint (and the sight of African women running is not all that common) out of sheer curiosity at her bravery; she was running the full marathon in bare feet.  A Canadian lady was sporting a pair of Vibram Five-fingers – an impossibly ugly set of foot-gloves that protect your soles while creating the feel of barefoot running.  Most impressively, several local competitors completed the race in bone-shaking wheel-chairs.

Amongst the runners were the “Zambezi Man” competitors.  Over the last two days, they had rafted 50km of the fiercest rapids the Zambezi has to offer (some grade 6), and then ridden over 100km on their mountain bikes through the bush and sand to finish up with a marathon.  As they eased their aching muscles with cold beer at the boat club this evening, I learned of the various tales of personal achievement that had been reached.  One man had only ridden his bike three times before tackling the Zam-Man.  Another already has sixteen Comrades’ Marathons (87km) under his belt (pity his long-suffering wife who spends family holidays in good spots for hill-training and little else).

Victoria Falls on any day of the week is a hub for people wanting to do crazy things but on days like today, it is a testimony to the indomitable spirit of folk.  Tomorrow I will be trying to find my indomitable spirit (which I think I carelessly mislaid somewhere) as I head out to tackle the white water of the Zambezi myself.  Everyone I’ve spoken to says (in typical Zimbo slang) that the river is quite “cheeky” at the moment…

But some humans have not sloughed off the knack of living by their wits and in depleting numbers, a few races of people still live as nature once intended – rather more at one with the earth.  The San people of the Kalahari are one such tribe.

San is the generic term for a collection of kinship groups, sometimes referred to as Bushmen that are found in parts of Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe.  They trace their ancestry back over 20,000 years and have left their legacy painted in bile and pigment on the rocks of Africa; scenes of hunts, spoor depicted alongside their respective animals for teaching purposes, records of the arrival of white people in pith helmets with ox-wagons.

No one else in their right mind calls the Kalahari home and it is no small feat to subsist in this hostile landscape.  As semi-nomads, the San move with the seasons, their destinations determined by the availability of food and water.  It’s hard to imagine that there are still people whose street knowledge includes how to concoct lethal poison from bits of a tortoise, which stunted and desiccated shrub will yield a juicy tuber, and remembering where one buried an ostrich egg filled with water a few months ago.  It rather puts a trip to Tesco in perspective.

San folk are lively, cheerful and kind and place a high value on family (particularly children), gift-giving and story-telling – told in their largely unwritten “click” language.  Their deep understanding of the environment and its inhabitants goes beyond textbook stuff; hunters are so tuned to the psychology of their prey that they can follow animals where the spoor has long since vanished and still come up with the goods.  Walking in the footsteps of the San is a unique privilege and puts a completely different slant on Africa and its wildlife.

Look at safari ideas that include time spent among the San.

See camps that work closely with the San.

Look for more information on the Kalahari.

I was speaking to the guys from Nomad the other day and they were telling me about an interesting conundrum they’ve had to deal with recently.  One of the main attractions around Chada Camp is the elephant who regularly drift through camp hoovering up the seed pods from the various large shady trees that the camp is built under.

These  eles are usually polite and well behaved; they’ve been coming here for ever and the presence of the camp is of little interest to them. But recently they’ve been causing problems by tearing the canvas fly sheets of the Chada tents.  At first it was assumed this was an accident, although elephant are well known for their dexterity and often happily pick their way between guy ropes with no trouble, so it did seem unlikely.

A tailor was called for who meticulously sewed up the fly sheets. But sure enough, just a day or so later, it happened again.  This pattern was repeated several times, until the guilty elephant was caught – “red trunked”  – resting his tusks on the taught flysheet at the back of the tent and gently pushing down to rip the canvas. Clearly no accident, so what on earth was he up to?

The guys in camp went over and over this, but there seemed to be only one possible answer;  They like doing it.  And it seems as though  the noise that the ripping canvas makes is just too much to resist (bubble wrap anyone?)…  Seems like a reasonable explanation, but that left quite a challenge for the camp crew. There’s only so much sewing up that you can do.  So what is the solution?

This is where I think it gets particularly good: the solution they have come up with is to replace the torn sections of the flysheet with strips of canvas held in place with…wait for it…velcro.

Job done, the elephant still gets the very satisfying noise of the tearing velcro and it’s a simple job to patch up when they get bored.  I have a feeling this may not be the last installment of this story, but will keep you posted.

The Wildebeest Migration crossing the Mara River in the Northern Serengeti last month.  Photo by Patty Spencer (to whom many thanks) while on safari and staying at Nomad’s Serengeti Safari Camp in Kogatende.

African wild dog (sometimes known as painted dog or Cape hunting dog) occupy an almost mythical status in many parts of Africa.  Local people are fearful and superstitious, holding them responsible for livestock deaths which are often the work of hyena or lion.  Their intriguing markings, each one unique as a fingerprint, and intimate social structure together with impressive hunting success rate makes them a fascinating creature to watch.  Furthermore, they are amongst the most endangered carnivores in the world with fewer than 5,000 individuals remaining.

Highly intelligent and sociable, wild dog hunt in packs and communicate constantly through strange bird-like hoots and chirps.  Since they often face the loss of hard-won kills to larger predators, they try to avoid attracting attention and dispatch their prey as quickly and quietly as possible.  The speed with which they can consume an impala (bite-swallow-bite-swallow) would put happy hour at McDonalds in the shade.  After the hunt, the pack will return to the den and regurgitate their kill for pups, old and injured pack members.

Seeing wild dog is infrequent enough to be special however you do it, but Mana Pools in Zimbabwe  is one of the few places that you can do so on foot.  Experienced guides who spend their office hours in this scenically beautiful and game-rich park, have got to know individual dogs in addition to the many elephant and lion that reside in the area.  The thrill that comes with walking amongst wild animals is difficult to replicate but the opportunity to meet a pack of wild dog on their own terms, hear their calls and watch them interact is a truly once in a lifetime experience.

Check out safari ideas that include Mana Pools.

Read more about Mana Pools National Park.

Learn about painted dogs and conservation efforts in Zimbabwe.

Picture courtesy of Vundu Camp.

1. you have just been avidly reading,
2. you are about to get seriously excited about,
3. is pretty much your reason for getting out of bed in the morning

… is written by the gang from Natural High.

We get out of bed for the following reasons: vast open spaces, memorable days in the bush, wild animals, different cultures and the fact that we can share these things with people like you.  We design tailor-made journeys to East and Southern Africa; from tented trips to luxury lodges and beautiful beaches.  We have a history in Africa, a love for authentic experiences, relationships with the funky characters, slick operators and the best camps on the continent and a serious track-record of drawing on all of this to create memorable, great value adventures.

This blog is drawn from our own experiences on safari, philosophical musings and interesting stories.  We’d love to hear what you think so please feel free to leave your comments.

For more information on what we do, visit our site at naturalhighsafaris.com

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Along the same vein of wildlife toilet humour, a guide recounted an incident in the Ngorogoro Crater many years ago where a lady guest had been bursting to relieve herself throughout the morning’s game drive but refused to visit a bush.  He stopped at the Park toilets on the floor of the crater and the lady hastily disembarked and dashed in.  Within seconds, she reversed with equal pace and executed a spectacular re-mount of the land-cruiser through an open window.  Sauntering after her was a large lioness who had been posing on her hind legs with her front paws on the sinks admiring her reflection in the mirror.  Possibly the bush would have been the better option?

Sometimes one’s position on a bush toilet is the best place you can be in a certain situation.  Guests safely dispatched on an afternoon game-drive in Botswana’s Linyanti wildlife area, another guide took his book to relax on the “throne” of the mobile tented camp.  This consisted of a wooden box over a shallow hole, crowned with a toilet seat and screened from the camp by foliage alone.  Absorbed in the plot, it was the unexplained raising of hairs along the nape of his neck that made him look up.  Twenty metres away was a lioness with her belly to the floor, creeping intently toward him with her head low and shoulder blades riding high on her back.  Instinct alone made my friend leap to his feet and, throwing his book high into the air, waddle aggressively towards the stalking lioness shouting “Shoo! Shoo! Get lost…go on!” which she promptly did, fortunately.  Knees shaking with relief, the guide returned to camp like a high-speed penquin, still with shorts firmly around ankles, much to the amusement of the camp staff.

Well, at least when you clamber aboard that little plane and fly out over a turquoise sea, you will feel you’ve earned a bit of respite.  Stretching along the coast of Mozambique lie the four islands of the Bazaruto Archipelago.  Originally inhabited by a few indigenous villagers, the two larger islands of Bazaruto and Benguerra are now a popular beach destination.  A handful of stylish lodges offer relaxation on tap in a variety of guises (be they quiet places to relax with a book, spa treatments or private plunge pools).

Of course, the idea of a beach holiday may not float your boat and if you’re like me (and don’t like the idea of basting yourself with coconut oil and getting sand in uncomfortable places) you still might consider a visit to Bazaruto.  Both fly and deep-sea fishing are rewarding pursuits if you know your weights from your lures.  For non-fishers, exploring the other uninhabited islands or kitting yourself out in fetching neoprene for a little scuba diving might sound appealing.  And if all of that doesn’t blow your hair back, there’s also sea-kayaking, horse-riding and beach walks to choose from.  Still not? You may want to consider staying at home and taking up knitting.

The Bazaruto Archipelago is not as remote and logistically challenging as Quirimbas, and since it is easily reached via Johannesburg, it combines really well with safaris throughout southern Africa, including Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique itself.

Find out more about holidays in Mozambique.

Image courtesy of Benguerra Lodge

I think we can probably all agree that the 1950s was not a decade which stood out as a shining beacon of architectural and design prowess…not the sort of stuff one would want to preserve for posterity.  In fact, it’s hard to think of another decade which produced a more generally awful look.  Having said that, there do seem to be the faithful folk to whom this era (bafflingly) appeals.

At the centre of a steep, green whirlpool of tea fields in a deep cleft of Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands, lies the Aberfoyle Country Club.  One of those classic colonial relics, the club is a slightly surreal little blot in this maze of winding roads, dense indigenous forest and tea bushes.  Throughout Zim’s recent tricky period, the Country Club has staggered on, offering a weekend getaway to the dwindling outdoor enthusiasts, keen golfers and people who would simply like to relocate their beer-drinking to somewhere more picturesque.  Lush forests bursting with biodiversity harbour waterfalls, exotic birdlife and intense tranquillity.

One of the owners is an avid collector of anything 1950s and, immensely proud of this museum piece, regularly procures and ships “collectables” to be displayed in the club.  Dark panelled rooms with retro-glass and mismatched furniture are highlighted here and there by a black and white portrait of a well-coiffed and be-pearled dame. The collection includes, rather oddly, three pairs of narrow ladies shoes from that era which are exhibited in the washroom.  There remains an ornately carved billiards table alongside a line of fairly utilitarian rooms that overlook a small but beautifully clipped fairway.  Blissfully isolated from WiFi and mobile phones, it is a genuine time-capsule.

Once a bustling social hub for the white community of the Honde Valley, the club is now gathering itself to face a renewed demand from domestic tourists of all cultures.  Rather rough around the edges, the Club feels as though it is pondering how best to tackle this great leap forward into the fast-paced new millennium which does not sit entirely comfortably with its heritage.  It seems to me that this same predicament is shared by many people and places in Zim.

The Makgadikgadi Pan is about as far removed from your stereotypical safari experience as you can get.  Viewed from the lofty vantage point provided by Google Earth, the pan appears as a white smudge to the southeast of the rich greens and blues of the Okavango Delta.   On the ground, the glaring flatness stretches to the horizon and it is possible to see the curvature of the earth.  Around the edges of this once great lake, the vegetation struggles to regain its tenancy – coarse grass, stands of palm and rugged bush.

As you can imagine, there is a certain knack to survival in the middle of this hostile environment but this doesn’t mean that there is nothing to see.  In fact, the tougher the environment…the more interesting the beasties and this gives the Makgadikgadi a special story-book quality; rather like stepping through the looking-glass.  Of a morning you might be foraging with a family of meerkats or tracking the strange brown hyena on foot alongside the intuitive San bushmen, sinuous and clad in little more than a small leather kilt and ostrich egg beads.  Areas of the pan host colonies of vivid pink flamingos.  Scattered fossil sites and ancient human habitation allude to the indelible history of this place.

You should come to the Makgadikgadi with an open mind and be prepared to be surprised on a daily basis.  There’s very little in this world that could compete with unrolling a bedroll amid towering baobabs on the lunar rock kopjes that mushroom from the pan, or the sense of freedom imparted by riding a quad-bike hell-for-leather across the vast emptiness.  It’s just one of those things that you are unlikely to forget in a hurry.

The camps here are also far from ordinary.  Jack’s is famous for its museum-like collection of weird and wonderful objects.  San Camp’s stylish simplicity lends itself to its lovely location without detracting one iota from the natural beauty.  For a more laid-back experience, Meno a Kwena lies between the Delta and Makgadikgadi.

For safari ideas from Natural High that include Makgadikgadi, click here.

Search for camps and lodges in the Makgadikgadi and Kalahari.

Find out more about the Kalahari, when to visit and other useful articles.

Image courtesy of San Camp

The camps in this area cut a dashing wild style; Sausage Tree’s high canopied white tented roofs, Chongwe’s unique Albida and Cassia suites where you can hear hippos while you do your own wallowing in roll-top baths.  You may find yourself indulging in the ultimate liquid lunch aboard an intimate launch, cruising peacefully down the river with birds and animals aplenty laid on for your entertainment.  Game-drives are interspersed with scenic interludes under palm trees where coffee is served on a crisp cloth on the bonnet.  You may find yourself enjoying a sunset, glass of wine in hand with your feet cooling in the mighty Zambezi.  It is all very Clark Gable and Ava Gardner…and what a pleasure.

It is impossible to separate the guilty pleasures from the adventure here; walks, river cruises, game-drives and canoe trips offer up a rich game experience.  In fact, this is one place where you really feel as though you are a visitor in wildlife country.  For example, in Chiawa you may find that an elephant sees fit to wander into camp during lunch, while hyena and lion call around the camps through the night.  In Kulefu, the dawn-chorus is so overwhelming in its variety and volume that it renders that lie-in impossible.

If you like the idea of a safari in style, click here for some ideas from Natural High.

"mother and child" rock formation

Standing at Sir Cecil Rhode’s grave gazing over the “View of the World”, it’s easy to see why this driven, visionary (if controversial) pioneer wanted this to be his last resting place. The landscape is a stormy sea of granite boulders caste as far as the horizon in oddly familiar shapes of animals or people. The human history of Matobo rolls back over 13,000 years when the oldest example of rock art tells of the stone-age hunter-gatherers that once inhabited this place. Among the tens of thousands of bold and striking pieces of art still brightly evident (no faint scribbles, these) more recent ones chart the arrival of the colonial settlers in ox-wagons and pith helmets.

Matobo has been a key strategic area for the Matabele king, Mzilikazi, who, like Rhodes, still lies interred in his rocky tomb, and his son Lobengula. Overrun by Rhode’s troops, the hills werre subsequently the battle ground for the Matabele wars in the late 1800s. It has been the spiritual centre for the Mwali cult and remains a religiously significant place for the inhabitants of Matabeleland. A living museum, it is not over-dramatic to say that the hills are tangibly steeped in this melting pot of history, sacrifice and spirituality; it is deeply haunting.

Named a UNESCO Heritage Site in 2003, the Matobo Hills also possesses a great natural history; the highest known density of (elusive) leopard in the world, a valuable population of white and black rhino and the largest numbers of black eagles found in southern Africa. The game has taken a bit of a knock over the last troubled years in Zim but it’s still one of the best places to track rhino on foot and enjoy the varied birdlife. So interesting and scenic is the area that, provided you don’t come here expecting the big five, you won’t be disappointed if you don’t see a thing.

Matobo is a perfect addition to safaris that include Hwange National Park (for your animal fix), Mana Pools (for great canoeing, walking and big game), and the Victoria Falls. It’s important to choose a specialist guide to get the most out of the place and to allow sufficient time.

Look for trips that include Matobo Hills

Read our blogs about Matobo

See a map and places to stay in Matobo

Mokoros are long, sturdy canoes traditionally hewn from hardwood trees such as ebony and bleached a pale grey by the sun and water over time.  The “River Bushmen”, amongst other tribes, still use the canoes for transport and fishing.  However, with the influx of tourism into the Delta, some of these seasoned fishermen have turned their skills to guiding and what better way to undertake this unique experience than in the capable hands of a local?

The core of the Delta remains water-logged all year round, but the seasonal inundation fills out a vast swathe of channels and lagoons between March and June, swelling the Delta to more than three times its permanent size.  The water that rises in Angola gradually creeps down hippo “highways”, creating seasonal islands and enriching reed-beds.  Annual migrations bring an influx of elephant, buffalo and antelope into the area along with hundreds of birds as the Kalahari loses its green mantle to winter.  For this reason, the period between July and the end of October is the best time of year to visit the Delta for the quantity and variety of wildlife.

Travelling by mokoro allows you access to areas otherwise impossible by motorboat or vehicle and the quiet is very much part of the appeal.  It allows you to enjoy the sounds as much as the sights and gives you the opportunity to cruise quietly up to animals without disturbing them with noisy engines.  It goes without saying that the view of an elephant is quite different from a few feet off the surface of the water and many animals are surprisingly relaxed in the presence of water-borne humans.

Many camps and lodges in the perennial Delta offer mokoro trips as part of the day’s activities while other camps which benefit from seasonal flood-waters will do so if the water is high enough, so you do need to choose your area carefully depending on the time of year.  For those that wish to experience full immersion (not literally) in the Delta, there are safaris solely dedicated to exploring on foot or by mokoro in the old ways of the local people.

Look at ideas for safaris in the Okavango.

What are the main areas to visit in Botswana?

When’s the best time to visit Botswana?

I want to see birds in Botswana!

During this trip in Zambia, I’ve been incredibly lucky with big game sightings; five beautiful leopard in ten days, several prides of lion with cubs, lots of elephant doing interesting stuff, buffalo, giraffe, hyena and masses of stately impala and cute puku to name but a few.  Among the high points was this time spent sitting quietly and watching a pride of twelve lion on a recent buffalo kill.

Incidentally, what an interesting reflection it is on our species that some of the highlights of a safari include one animal being ruthlessly hunted and killed in full, live, 3D, gory reality by another animal.  Take the migration for instance; everyone hopes to see the spectacle of several thousand wildebeest crossing the Mara River under the hungry gaze of some enormous crocodiles (and many will secretly want to see what happens when one or two come to grief).  Similarly, the vivid scene of a pride of lion bringing down an adult buffalo will be recounted with excitement around the camp-fire later in the day.

I watched with morbid fascination as these lion gorged themselves, ripping at the carcass, gnawing the bones and when just too stuffed to eat another morsel, almost lovingly licking the fur.  The sights and sounds were graphic and I was assailed by an olfactory cocktail of buffalo innards, feline musk and ferrous blood.  Every now and then, a junior of the pride would get a swatting from a big male for insubordination and a great racket of growling and snarling would erupt.

I mentally calculated the distance between this raw, wild scene and my bare legs, clearly visible in the open vehicle and figured that if I looked as tasty as the buffalo, I’d be tickets in a matter of seconds.  Fortunately I am apparently not as attractive as a dead buffalo (at least not at that particular moment in any case) and have lived to tell the tale.

Walking in the bush is more than just a game drive without a vehicle, as you’ll quickly realise. It’s not a hike or a route march either, although it is great to get out and about and stretch your legs. Simply “spotting” animals is just the superficial tip of the African safari experience and by getting out on foot, a whole rich tapestry of interesting stuff is laid bare.

You may be following the recent tracks of a lioness or discovering the filigree nest of a praying mantis, learning how termite colonies work or establishing which way a breeding herd or elephant walked last night. It’s pretty cool to watch an experienced guide call in half a dozen different species of bird by imitating the call of a pearl-spotted owlet. Curiously, you spend an inordinate amount of time examining poo. It’s amazing what you can learn from it!

In the 1960s, Norman Carr pioneered guided walking safaris in the South Luangwa National Park in Zambia. Both a hunter and passionate conservationist, he was also one of the first to acknowledge the importance of involving local people in the development of tourism and care of resources. Since then, the Luangwa Valley has carved a well deserved niche as one of the best places to experience the bush on foot.

The landscape of the Luangwa is perfect for walking. The broad sandy river winds through forests of ebony and winter-thorn, leaving lagoon-like oxbows and grassy floodplains which attract wildlife like a magnet. Animals are creatures of habit and carve their own footpaths through the bush, so we can follow literally in their footsteps.

Animals tend to be more wary of people when we are not camouflaged in a land-cruiser so you may not get as close or see as many animals as you would on a game drive, but there is always the possibility of unexpected encounters. If the wind is in your favour, you can approach an elephant thrillingly close without it even realising you are there. Things that seem ordinary from a car take on new significance when you part of the action.

The good news is that whether you are new to Africa and/or walking, or a veteran of the bush, there is a range of options to suit your interests. You can try out bush-walks as part of the daily activities, or alternatively go on multi-day safaris where you walk at a leisurely pace from one camp to another, stopping to check out interesting things along the way. Mobile walking safaris (where your camp moves with you) offer one of the best ways to explore a different, and usually more remote, area every couple of days.

Zambian guides are rigorously trained and there are some who have worked in the Luangwa Valley for decades. Many of them have been brought up in villages nearby, with their ancestors’ understanding of the environment ingrained within them. They know the local beasties, where best to go to see them and how to keep safe if you encounter the big ones. In Zambia, you always walk with a guide that is specifically qualified to do so, an armed game scout and often, the all important tea-bearer.

Look at some ideas of Luangwa walking safaris

“Shorty”, as he is affectionately known, is among a number of local eles that makes it clear that elephants have right of way and that humans occupy this shady ebony grove as tolerated guests.  It’s clear who the landlord is.  Shorty’s particular brand of topiary doesn’t make for elaborate landscaping and there is a line item in the camp’s accounts for “Elephant Damage”.

Whilst finishing off our lunch, we watched as his gentle progress around the camp’s foliage took him within half a foot of the main lounge.  We took in the details of his lengthy eye-lashes, rough creased knees, and endlessly mobile trunk without the aid of binoculars.  I was astonished to see him place a foot on the ground, feel a spiky twig with the very sensitive sole and gently reach under the foot to move it away with his trunk before putting his full weight on the foot.  To be not five metres away from an animal that is so relaxed but still so wild is a real and unusual treat.

Chiawa enjoys the regular patronage of a number of elephant, hippo, birds and other animals.  There is frequently an elephant on the footpath to the guest tents, where a favourite rubbing post gets a great deal of attention.  Fortunately there is always someone around to deliver you safely home.

Arriving by boat after the flight, you chug your way slowly down the shore of Lake Tanganyika, Africa’s deepest lake. The water is gin clear and turquoise and the woodland along the shore is still rich and green at this time. As if that wasn’t enough, as you trek up into the mountains in search of the Chimpanzees, the forest is filled with the scent of wild jasmine and wild butterflies are in abundance.

Greystoke Camp, just 6 rooms sitting on a white sandy beach on the lake shore at the foot of the Mountains is one of the most unusual and exceptional experiences in Africa.

Chimp tracking is quite unlike any of the more traditional elements of safari. Here you are on your feet throughout and in awe inspiring forest that bares no resemblance to anything you will have encountered elsewhere in the country. When you find the chimps you are often in close proximity to them (sometimes they pass within a few feet of you) and they more or less ignore you…read more

View an itinerary for Mahale and Katavi

The Chongwe River is a tributary of the mighty Zambezi at the point where the Zambezi National Park borders the Chongwe GMA (Game Management Area).  Winding gently down from the ripples of the escarpment, the Chongwe is a pretty cool little spot.  At this time of day it is particularly attractive as the light softens and the river takes on the colours of the trees and sky.  It’s hard not to concede to such an all-encompassing peace and quiet.

Fortunately I didn’t have the opportunity to nod off (which may have led to a disappointing capsize and a humiliating return to camp).  There was no shortage of things to see on our gentle late afternoon paddle.  We floated past steep sandy banks in which white-fronted and carmine bee-eaters throng by the thousands to make their nests at different times of the year.  A small breeding herd of elephant ventured down within fifty metres or so, with a tiny calf no more than a couple of months old.  The assorted nostrils, eyes and ears of a pod of hippo watched our progress with interest but didn’t seem inclined to dispossess us of our transport, likewise the couple of crocs and a terrapin.

As the sun dipped below the escarpment, a giant eagle owl called from a large tree and we witnessed the aerial displays of a number of different species of kingfisher and a multitude of other water birds.  A fish eagle even gave us a private fly-by.  Troops of vervet monkeys and baboons watched us watching them.

I think that canoeing makes a great change from being bounced around in a vehicle with the noise of the engine and the dust which can get to even the most seasoned safari veteran after a while.  The quiet, the quality of light on the water at that time of day and just the gentle sounds of nature make you naturally want to switch to a lower gear, cease the chatter and just absorb the world around with heightened senses.  Click here for a little video…and pay attention to the sounds!

Incidentally, as I write this now, I am sitting in my room in Chongwe listening to a veritable cacophony of sound; lions roaring not far away, a hippo grazing about five metres from my room (I can see him by torchlight), an entire pack of hyena whooping over the river in Zimbabwe and all the other unidentified sounds of the African night….not sure there’s much sleep on the cards tonight!

Sound good?  This morning I woke up after a night spent in the Luwi Riverbed in South Luangwa National Park.  After setting out for a two hour walk from Nsolo Camp yesterday afternoon, we found our supplies had been neatly left for us in a broad bend of the sandy river.  As the sun went down, my guide Innocent, scout Batwell, camp chef Jason and myself, unrolled our bedrolls and hung mosquito nets over sticks we found in the riverbed.  The little wooden box crowned with a toilet seat was discreetly positioned behind a large hunk of driftwood…I regarded this a little dubiously…it looked like the kind of arrangement to induce stage fright.

The camp-fire was built swiftly and soon we were sitting around it and watching as Jason started to prepare chicken, foil-covered potatoes and maize meal with a tomato and onion relish.  The lingering dusk gave way to wall-to-wall sky lit by a Cheshire-cat moon and masses of stars.  The creatures of the night began to call all around us; a leopard sawed only a few hundred metres from camp.  Somehow, simple meals become the best you’ve ever tasted when prepared and enjoyed in such a magical place.  It was with deep contentment that I let my feet burrow into the soft sand and traded wildlife stories with the lads.

Feeling weary after long hours walking in the bush, I crawled between the crisp sheets and toasty blankets of my bedroll and enjoyed the view of the stars.  The men sat around the fire quietly chatting and laughing.  Every now and then one of them would get up and stoke one of the fires that surrounded us, letting any passing beasties know that this was a no-go area.  Batwell spends much of his time on patrol and is used to waking up automatically every half hour or so.  I slept in spells too, tuned in to the orchestra of night noises.

I woke as the sun rose and joined Jason by the fire as he brewed tea and toasted bread.  Over breakfast, we shared stories of what we’d heard during the night.  Lions had been calling in the distance and a herd of elephant crossed the river just below the camp-site.  A hyena had ventured close to investigate our leftovers and Batwell and Jason had chased it away with a flaming log.

This may not be everyone’s cup of tea but it is a raw African safari experience which will put everything you thought about camping in a new light.  Click here for a short video interview with my guide, Innocent, all about the sleepout.

Now, like the other guests in the land-cruiser, who had been delirious with excitement over the admittedly impressive lion and leopard sightings earlier in the evening, you may have found the above punch-line a complete anti-climax.  They failed to see why I was hopping up and down uttering incomprehensible squeaks and pointing at the tree when I had been pretty cool around the cats.  For the birders out there, I am sure you can understand.

The Pel’s is a magnificent owl, large and tawny with beautiful markings and a distinctive call.  It’s also very uncommon and the kind of thing that people can go through decades of life in the bush without seeing.  I’ve been hoping to see one for over ten years and even a few days ago at a different camp, was plagued by its call, never to catch a glimpse.  And here were two sitting immediately above the vehicle within a few hundred metres of the camp.  I went to bed happy last night…what a day!

My guide at Nsolo Bushcamp in South Luangwa, Lawrence, is a passionate ecologist.  He doesn’t give you a single titbit about the bush without explaining how it relates to the bigger picture.  It’s like watching a giant jigsaw puzzle being put together and it gives you a real sense of how critical each piece is to the effective functioning of the whole.

This morning’s walk though the tall elephant grass and back along the banks of the Luwi River, gave me a real insight into the area.  Did you know, for example, that baboons often use termitaria (anthills) as lookout posts?  Well, while they are doing this, they sometimes leave droppings which contain tamarind fruit from earlier foraging elsewhere.  The seeds germinate here because the termite mound is moist and built of soil made fertile by bringing nutrients up to the surface.  Rather than killing the invasive tree, the termites foster it because it provides shade which helps maintain a lower temperature in the mound.

Lawrence pointed out a couple of hollows where elephants habitually come for a dust bath.  Dust is scooped up with their trunks and thrown over their bodies, helping to protect against parasites.  The hollows fill up with water in the rains and provide a drinking place for many different species and sometimes a refuge for hippo.

The elusive aardvark is a very effective digger of holes but they move around and often leave holes abandoned.  These cosy homes in turn provide refuge for warthog, snakes and other creatures.

Humans have their place in nature too, at Nsolo Bushcamp, the honey badgers have taken to raiding the camp kitchen at night.  They’ve clearly worked out that the camp cook produces a fine menu.  Small but vicious and incredibly destructive, they dig under the fence and raid the supplies night after night, much to the consternation of the staff.  Further up river, at Luwi Bushcamp, two honey badgers were found on their backs one morning, four paws in the air, apparently dead.  Roused with a bit of prod, they blearily made their way out of camp.  Further investigation showed that they had broken into the bar and consumed a disproportionate amount of cellar cask wine.  Now a honey badger with a hangover is something to take a wide berth around.

To add insult to injury, last night it was eaten by a honey badger.  C’est la vie.

After checking nearby shade patches for lion, we went to take a closer look.  A large giraffe, freshly dead (perhaps 24 hours previously) had been hastily disembowelled by the scavengers.  We did our best CSI interpretation but couldn’t agree what had been the cause of its demise.  Although there was no real evidence, the most likely culprits were lion, being the only ones large enough to bring down a full-size giraffe.

We continued with our walk and encountered another gang busy dismembering a young puku antelope.  This was turning into a rather grizzly walk.  We later found out that this was the remains of a wild dog kill and that the wild dog research team had seen one dog feeding here less than an hour before we appeared.  Well, I’ll just have to be happy with wild dog leftovers today…but it’s good to know they’re around.

My guide, Isaac, is a 35 year veteran of the Luangwa Valley and his vintage makes him one of the most experienced here.  Our little crocodile-formation was brought up by Justin the tea-bearer (they really are called that!) who was really the most important member of the group.

We set off a little later than usual and so walked through a fairly warm part of the day.  Nevertheless, I was surprised and pleased by the amount we saw.  Teak and mahogany lined riverbeds gave onto open vleis and thicker bush, the constantly changing habitats always providing something interesting to ponder on.  The bush is quiet but never silent and bird calls, the sharp alarm of puku and honk of hippopotamus was audible all around.  We picked our way along routes established by elephant and other animals…literally walking in their footsteps.

Walking is just such a pleasure and sights that may be banal from a vehicle take on a new substance when you’re on your own two pegs.  Just off the boat, we came across an enormous monitor lizard with fresh injuries caused by a leopard.   Later on we startled a small herd of zebra which abruptly fled in panic and suddenly our eyes, ears and noses were filled with pounding hooves, dust and a confusion of stripes as they galloped within a few metres of us.  An aroused male puku almost ran us over, so intent was he on the shapely backside of the female he was pursuing, shying wide at the last minute.  We had the pleasure of walking quietly onto a young bull elephant drinking in the shade, thrillingly unaware of our presence.  Kingfishers, saddle-billed storks, wood-hoopoes, a martial eagle and spoonbills were amongst a true cocktail of birds.

With a stop-off for a welcome cup of tea, our walk to the Chikoko Bushcamp took around four hours.  The walking is easy and the pace gentle so you don’t have to be a marathon-runner to enjoy it, just reasonably fit with comfortable shoes and a passion for the outdoors.  It is a completely different experience from driving, as I am reminded every time I go bipedal, and the best calories ever spent!

Click here for a little video tour of my room at the Chikoko Bushcamp.

After maize-meal porridge kept bubbling over a little camp fire by the river, I donned a particularly fetching helmet and set of headphones and climbed into what is essentially a flying lawn-mower.  John’s favourite toy is possibly the best way to get an overview of the park and the winding river below.  Feeling that last nights’ three course meal might have been a course too many, I relaxed once the revs of our take-off died down and we were launched skywards, sailing low over the trees in the balmy morning air.

This is the only micro-light in the park and for flight enthusiasts it is really a very special experience.  John is an informative guide and helps put the area into perspective.  Particularly thrilling for me was the view down onto a fish eagle’s nest where two large chicks crouched…and further on, the wide eyes of a giant eagle owl regarded us from her nest as we whizzed overhead.  Both of these views only otherwise possible courtesy of a National Geographic photographer…a real treat.  Further on, a great herd of buffalo ambled towards the river and warthogs dashed along, tails held aloft.  A herd of elephant cows and calves drank unconcernedly as we circled overhead.  Pods of hippo form interesting patterns and chains as they rest their heads on each other’s rumps…something I didn’t know before.

Our aerial game-drive over, we returned to the camp for another cup of coffee.  Just fifteen minutes in the air had given me a whole new bush experience.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you value your life), we didn’t have to attempt to ride our bikes up a nearby tree and instead found ourselves a suitable spot from which to watch the sun go down and recover with a cold beer.

Changing steeds, we boarded a completely open land-cruiser to commence our hunt for the local nightlife.  Our drive home yielded a plethora of genets (not the same as a gaggle or a troop), fat-bottomed hippos out for an evening of cumbersome grazing and a very handsome white-tailed mongoose which had the good manners to pose under the spotlight.  There was also an equally cooperative civet and the back-sides of two porcupines.  All in all a pretty satisfying drive.

The best was yet to come in the stately form of a female leopard, glimpsed above the dry grass.  We held our breath as she stalked sleekly past the car, untroubled by the attention.  Stepping calmly onto the track in front of us, she dropped her belly to the sand in a crouch and lay looking intently, tail flicking gently in the light from our beam.  As she clearly looked as though she might be about to make a meal of one of the nearby impala, the guide killed the light and we sat in the glow from the stars and waited silently listening to the faint movements of creatures around us…expecting any minute to witness a dramatic kill only fifteen metres from our wheels.

After a tense wait, the light showed us that she had moved off.  Apparently impala was not on the menu today.  Returning to the camp to boast, we learned that the other guests too had been treated to a leopard behaving like a playful kitten in full daylight and had had their sundowner interrupted by two sociable lion.

So as I tuck myself up in my warm bed, surrounded by the sounds of hippo chomping on sausage fruit and chirps of crickets, I can’t really believe I’ve only been on safari for 7 hours.  Tomorrow I look forward to a micro-light flight over the Luangwa River before breakfast followed by a walk to my next camp.

Amanda is out and about in Zambia…keep tabs on her here.

Upon arrival, getting from the plane to the terminal is a bit like a lucky dip…I never know whether I will have to walk up a tunnel, get onto a bus that resembles the London tube in rush hour or walk across the steamy tarmac apron, sweating and hauling my usually prolific hand-luggage feeling like a bit of a refugee, surrounded by the roar of engines and getting inadvertently high on aviation fuel.

Airport buildings in Africa are not famous for their sophistication or choice shopping.  Some time in the latter half of last century, the architecture ceased being charming and stately and commenced being intimidating and dull, adopting a style best described as colonial-gothic.  More recently re-vamped airports like Harare and those in South Africa are really quite lovely; calm spaces of tranquillity.

Next there are the innocuous immigration declarations to complete.  More often than not, they are written in such small lettering it’s hard to decipher.  I have visions of stacks of dusty immigration forms held together by old rubber bands lining some poor clerk’s office from floor to ceiling awaiting processing.  Sometimes the officials are a bit bored and disinterested, sometimes pretty cheery…it just depends which side of bed they tumbled out of.

Hmmm….luggage carousels.  Well, these things in Africa tend to have a life of their own and there are several things that you can never depend on: that the carousel with be working, that your luggage will appear on the designated carousel, or that there will be a carousel at all (it may be evident by the heaps of carousel components at one end of the baggage hall).  I just keep an open mind, adjust my expectations accordingly and leave my luggage-related sense of entitlement out of sight.

As I emerge from the airport, with all the above safely packed away in a box marked “experience”, what a pleasure it is to find my very own name on a board with a smiling face hovering above it, offering to take my bag.  I now don’t have to fret about how I will get to my hotel, where I can change currency without being fleeced or how I will negotiate a city completely devoid of street signs.  It’s just all taken care of…and suddenly I’m on holiday and I can appreciate my new surroundings as if I were a local.

Amanda is currently out and about exploring Zambia for the greater good…keep tabs on her experiences here.

This is one of the few places left in Africa where people still coexist alongside abundant wildlife without the artificial boundaries of national parks and reserves.  This is not to say that there are not frequent incursions by wildlife into human territory or vice versa but somehow they muddle along.  This area is home to elephant, wild dog, leopard and hyena in addition to a variety of other herbivores and small mammals.

A bushwalk from Sarara Camp in the Matthews Range took us up an old riverbed in the height of the dry season.  From some distance away, the sounds of livestock could be heard, their bleating and beaten iron bells echoing from the hills.  The herds were milling impatiently with their child-shepherds around a narrow metal trough.  From a broad shaft dug roughly down into the sand, perhaps 25 feet deep, came the sound of men singing.  The voices belonged to a chain of four or five young warani (warriors), red shukas over lean, muscular torsos, elaborately accessorized with strings of multi-coloured beads looping around their necks, across their ochred foreheads and swinging from their ear-lobes.  A series of funky vintage vegetable oil tins filled with water were passed up to the top of the shaft where a particularly statuesque young man tossed it expertly into the trough for the thirsty animals.  All the while, the singing reverberated from deep within the sand river, the harmony of deep voices carrying across the heads of lowing cattle to the grey hills in the distance.

There’s something fascinating about objects whose appearance belies their value.  The notion of hidden potential is a beguiling concept and one that makes us open our eyes wider to the world around us.  Uncut diamonds or amber washed up on the beach spring to my mind; things that the uneducated eye would simply miss altogether.

And a piece of firewood may seem like an unlikely place to look for such a quality, but if you’re in the bush, and looking for a really good piece of wood to cook your supper over, then one of the best – that produces a wonderfully slow burning and hot coal – is also one of the more beautiful substances to come out of Africa.

Dalbergia Melanoxylon, known locally as Mpingo is Tanzania’s National Tree.  It’s often referred to as Ebony, but is actually African Blackwood.   If you wander around in places like the Selous Game Reserve, it wont be long before you (probably literally) stumble on a piece of scruffy, dull looking wood.  Elongated, but intricately contorted, the heartwood – long stripped of its soft cortex and bark by termites – is weathered a dull and unremarkable grey.

But stop and pick up the stick and the first thing you’ll notice is its weight.  Take out a pocket knife and make a small cut, and immediately you reveal a hint of the hidden character.  For something so hard, it cuts surprisingly easily – the grey outer layer falling away to reveal a deep black richness beneath.  It’s so closely grained that it carves almost like dark chocolate. And the cut surface has a luxurious coolness to it.

Drop a short length of this wood on a rock and you reveal what must be its most alluring quality.  Instead of the knock you’d expect, there is an ever so soft, but distinct ringing note as it strikes.

And this is what the makers of musical instruments have known for centuries.  Oboes, Clarinets and Picoloes are traditionally made from Blackwood, its tonal qualities make it one of the world’s most sought after sound woods.  There are even stories of pipe makers from the North of England taking lengths of Blackwood used as ship’s ballast and turning it into pipes.  There cant be many more poetic examples of an object’s potential being unlocked.

(Unsurprisingly these very qualities threaten the survival of African Blackwood in many places.  If you’d like to read about on going conservation of this an other species, you can do a lot worse that look at Flora and Fauna International’s Global Trees Campaign website)

As we sat at the end of the runway with the brakes on and the engine straining, Dad would conduct a series of rapid-fire communications with himself (flaps, check…rudder, check…) and then with the tower to request permission to take off.  At that point, we’d be thrust back in our seats, hearts in our mouths, while the white lines raced beneath us as we shot down the runway.

Wilson borders Nairobi National Park and we would sometimes spot rhino or giraffe as we gained height above the trees.  There were always little white scatterings of bones to testify to some lion’s leftovers.  Then we’d be heading over the Ngong Hills across the arid floor of the Great Rift Valley towards the Mara’s grassy plains.

Since those early picnics, I’ve been privileged to travel many times in small planes across Africa and it is always just the most intense and liberating experience.  Admittedly there has been the odd bumpy ride where the pilot gets more entertainment out of the rapidly greening faces behind him than the passengers but for the most part it’s just amazing.

Just imagine the Namibian Skeleton Coast from a few hundred feet up.  Or the Okavango Delta fanning out green against the sands of the Kalahari.  Or the turquoise archipelago off Vilanculos in Mozambique, Victoria Falls from the “Flight of Angels”…. Rather like that eerie picture of the earth taken from space, they take on a rather surreal appearance…like a giant piece of art.

The reason I got thinking about this is that I recently met the luckiest man on earth whose job it is to guide and pilot flying safaris across southern Africa – from Namibia to Botswana, Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe and even Angola.  With his few lucky travellers, he glides across some of the most spectacular sights on this earth.  In between small camps and lodges where you can explore with your feet firmly on the ground, you can get the bird’s eye view of some of the wildest and most breathtaking places in the world.

Much is written about the quality of game drives, walks and game viewing by boat but flying adds a whole new dimension to Africa.  Click here to know more.

In so many places in the world, our impact as over-active, demanding and short-sighted bi-pedals is evident in the slow whittling away of biodiversity and environmental splendour. Increasingly, the places which are left to nature are little islands under siege by human activity.

I’m certain that many a conservationist has heard himself muttering about “pesky tourists” under his breath as he tries to ensure that predators are not disturbed on the hunt by fleets of zebra-striped minibuses pursuing them across the plains. And yet, in our world today, is it possible that these wildlife enclaves could survive without the vital funding that tourism brings? I think of park fees often as a tax to maintain roads, pay the salary of the guy that collects the fee, and ensure there are nice signs around the place. I seldom think that if I didn’t pay my fee animals might die and people might not be able to put food on the table for their families.

In 2005 (when Zimbabwe was already struggling through farm invasions and hyper-inflation), there was a terrible drought. Hwange National Park was slowly losing its lifeline as tourist numbers hit the floor and from around 45 safari camps in the good times, Hwange was now relying on income from just 10 little ones. At its peak, there were 1000 people employed by Parks and hundreds of others within the private safari camps.

Hwange National Park is nearly 15,000km² with an estimated 20,000 elephants in addition to hundreds of thousands of other animals. A big bull elephant needs around 200 litres of water per day and as you can imagine, it’s not a matter of first come, first served when you weigh as much as five landrovers. During that drought, elephants dominated the available water holes, trunks held to the pipe pumping vital water from the ground. Still, over 1000 elephants died because there simply wasn’t enough to go around. Herds of buffalo and other animals would walk miles to a waterhole only to find it dry. Desperate scenes were witnessed as animals had to turn away to start their search afresh while others, too depleted to go on, simply lay down to die.

However, the silver lining to all this is tourism. As Gary Cantle (man on the ground for Friends of Hwange) said, “the biggest threat to Hwange is no tourists”. The ten waterholes currently only just being maintained by charitable donations to The Friends of Hwange, are the life-blood of the park. They require $5000 per month in fuel but wind and solar are slowly replacing the diesel engines, making a more sustainable investment. When travellers return to Hwange to see this amazing wilderness and to enjoy the selection of picturesque camps there, they will be directly ensuring the survival of the wildlife within its borders, and the Zimbabweans who work there. Now if that isn’t a feel good factor, I don’t know what is.

So come and visit Hwange or buy a round for just $10 which will provide water for 400 elephants for a day.

For more information on the good work of the Friends of Hwange, visit their web-site on www.friendsofhwange.org.

For information on safaris to Hwange, visit our new Zimbabwe page on www.naturalhighsafaris.com.

Active Volcano Ol Donyo Lengai...and a lot of happy wildebeest

Volcanic ash has had something of a bad press this last week, but, at the risk of sounding controversial, I thought I’d stand up for what seems to have become something of a pantomime baddie.  This has more to do with plains than planes, but in Tanzania  – and the Serengeti in particular – it’s no exaggeration to say that without volcanic ash, there’d be no wildebeest migration at all.

Now I don’t want to bore you with (my sketchy knowledge of) the detail on exactly how and when the Serengeti was formed (although you can read that here if you’re interested).  Save to say that much of the area around the Southern Serengeti and Ngorongoro Conservation Area is predominantly vast sweeping plains of volcanic ash.

What’s important is that the ash has two properties in particular that explain why the wildebeest migrate.  Firstly, it’s rich in nutrients like phosphates. Secondly, it’s a similar consistency to a cereal like Grape Nuts.  In the same way that when you pour milk onto your cereal it all goes to the bottom of the bowl, so the plains struggle to hold much surface liquid.  During the dry season there are no rivers, no lakes no water holes.  These become dry, dusty and barren areas.  But, once it rains there is the most dramatic transformation and the plains are carpeted in phosphorous-rich grasses as far as the eye can see.

So juicy and tempting are these grasses that wildebeest willingly throw themselves across croc-infested rivers in the Northern Serengeti and travel hundreds of miles to get there.  And, if they had their way, and it didn’t turn dry and dusty once the rain stopped, then this is where they’d stay year round.

And having just come back from this exact area with my family last week (missing the Icelandic volcano by a day) I can see why.  When it’s green, this is quite simply some of the most epic and staggeringly beautiful scenery I know anywhere in the world.  Free from people and rules, and with limitless horizons, it’s like the Garden of Eden.

And to my mind it contains a lovely paradox that explains in part why so few people go here.  If it hasn’t rained, then just like the wildebeest, you don’t want to be there.  It’s a conundrum that we find difficult to explain to people sometimes – “it’s likely to be raining, but we still recommend you go”, but I guess it boils down to the fact that things aren’t always straightforward; sometimes rain isn’t a bad thing.  A bit like volcanic ash.

On a walk about in 1966, Roland’s Dad found a tiny cottage clinging to the coastline.  Today, Roland has upgraded the accommodation by putting in such luxuries as…erm, a kitchen and some doors on the house and if you’re lucky, you can stay there and experience one of the wildest places in Europe for your self.  This place is wild, wild, wild and not for the faint hearted – have a look at their blog and drop Zoe an email if you’d like to hear more.

Surely this can’t be Zimbabwe?!  Well, actually, it is.  In ten days, Harare will pretty much grind to a halt as the Harare International Festival of Arts (HIFA) comes to town.  Founded in 1999 by artistic director Manuel Bagorro, the festival has ravished Harare for 11 years.  Each year there is a theme around which the performances are hinged and this years’ is aptly titled “About Face”.

High profile performers from all over the world are hand-picked by Manuel who tours the international events looking for the best.  Over 100 acts create a melting pot of modern and traditional, classical and contemporary, international and local.   The festival is a highlight in the calendar.  Carmina Burana (from Spain’s La Fura dels Baus theatre company – responsible for the opening ceremony at the Barcelona Olympics) opens the festival on 27th April on the Global Stage in the gardens in the centre of town, under the African sky.  Local theatres host other performances and there is a wide choice of free shows that everyone can enjoy.  The tickets for the main acts go for no more than $15 making it pretty accessible.  So popular is the festival that many tickets are sold out within a day of the box office opening.

Local corporates, NGOs and diplomatic missions sponsor the event which is entirely non-profit.

So…I’m off to fill my diary with opera, Hamlet (abridged and performed in Shona), a puppet show, The Hothouse Flowers and the Shanghai Circus, to name but a few.  I’ll let you know how it went.

I learned to drive aged 12 in the old landrover around Samburu and Shaba; I suppose my parents figured that it was the safest place to let me loose behind the wheel.  The first thing I ever overtook was a small herd of goats near the park entrance.  So after bumping down the road for half an hour, we found a promising spot under a shady tree and got out to stretch our legs.  Dad hauled out the old sisal kiondo (basket) that bears the coffee on safari and we settled into the tyre mounted on the bonnet of the landrover to see what might come down to the river.

First came the troupe of baboons.  The big daddy shinned up the doum palm looking suitable intent and businesslike and scooped himself a palm nut which he savoured back on the ground.  The youngsters gambolled around taunting each other and getting the odd clip over the ear ‘ole from the adults.  One particularly precocious little fellow had studiously noted the old boy’s palm nut technique and decided that gains were to be had more easily by pilfering from his cousin.  Using a cunning distraction which wouldn’t have been out of place in the sweetie aisle in the supermarket, he swiped the palm nut and attempted to make good his escape up the tree.

While this was going on, a family of elephant wondered down on the opposite bank.  Only a few months old, a small calf hurtled down the bank full of excitement and stood wide-eyed before the rolling river.  He gave a squeaky, unpractised trumpet and backed into his parent’s legs unsure of how to proceed.  Given a gentle nudge the calf took a few unsteady steps into the water and was promptly knocked sideways by the bow-wave as an adult female collapsed in a rather ungraceful but seriously satisfying heap in the mud.  Within minutes, half a dozen elephants were rolling, heaving and spraying water around the place with the happy calf being treated like a baby in a paddling pool.  It was like eavesdropping on a backyard family pool party in mid-summer.

Back on the baboon side of the river, the little guy was struggling to hold his palm nut out of reach of the pursuing cousin, his paws just too small to grasp it properly.  Each time it threatened to leap from his grasp, he executed a series of impressive manoeuvres to recover it – sometimes under his armpit, other times in his mouth.  As he skittered and clambered further up the tree looking increasingly desperate, he finally backed himself into a corner and was faced with losing the nut altogether.  In a defiant gesture he took a look at his advancing foe beneath him on the tree and dropped the nut with some accuracy on the other’s head and raced down the back side of the tree for cover behind mummy.

Watching these two families occupied the best part of two hours by which time we could identify the individuals and had nicknames for all of them based on their personalities and features.  As kids growing up in Africa, we spent many hours driving the park roads in search of wildlife but those times we spent actually getting to know them were the best.

I must admit to thinking in the past that we appoint governments to manage this sort of thing and that my individual choices wouldn’t really add up to more than a token gesture.  After the last few months of travelling around Zimbabwe and meeting people in the industry, it is very apparent that the decisions that we make as individuals are critical in preserving our environmental heritage and can go far in helping people who are poor or suffering.  This is especially true where the regulatory bodies are not functioning that well.

By way of example, Mana Pools National Park, one of five World Heritage sites in Zimbabwe is heavily subsidised by the safari operators and camp owners in the area.  Through the Tashinga Initiative, operators help to fund training, equipment and salaries for game rangers, develop management plans, improve infrastructure and contribute to community outreach programmes.  This doesn’t come cheap and is entirely voluntary.

In Zambia, operators have clubbed together to form the South Luangwa Conservation Society and the North Luangwa Conservation Project which invests in community and conservation projects.  Around $10 per person per night goes directly to these initiatives.  The safari operators that we try to promote are well aware that their future rests on the effective management of natural resources and treat them as they would any company asset; they invest in maintaining roads, in educating communities in environmental awareness, and in anti-poaching projects.  Critically, they also employ people, giving them an income based on keeping wildlife alive and trees in the ground.

Recently there was a debate hosted by The Times online about the ethics of a holiday to Zimbabwe.  I followed the discussion with interest and afterwards, asked the people that I met around and about what they felt about it.  Did they think that things would improve if people showed their lack of support for the current government by boycotting Zimbabwe or would they prefer if people visited the country (and risk adding pennies to the government’s coffers)?  Overwhelmingly, the answer was “please come!”.  People need the jobs and support of the international community more than ever and if you make the right choices, you will be investing directly in the preservation of this country’s valuable resources and the lives of its people.

Last week, on noticing the beautiful evening that the day and become, we spontaneously hauled out our cool-boxes and biltong (sundried yummy meat snacks), piled into the truck and headed for the hills.  North of Harare lies a beautiful rock rising out of the ground in a big smooth hump.  It looks over the sleepy villages and provides an ideal vantage point for the vast night sky.  The best sundowner points always involve a bit of a clamber which somehow justifies that gin and tonic.

So, seated bare foot and relaxed on the sun-warmed rock, we watched a huge red ball of a sun make a lazy descent and the stars light up one by one along with the kerosene lamps in the houses.  The last of the day’s bird calls mixed with the sounds of evening chores from the villages below and the smell of wood-smoke.  One friend had come from London and this was an entirely new experience; just sitting quietly on top of a rock, with a cold drink, smelling, hearing and feeling Africa as night crept up the sky.

As a veteran of the sundowner, I remember evening game drives interrupted for a cold beer on top of the landcruiser out on the grassy plains of the Mara with the sound of the crickets loud in my ears and hyena whooping.  There have been lovely times watching the light fade over Mt Kenya, as viewed from Samburu, and early evenings, feet and drinks cooling in a river, nightjars swooping overhead.  The air is somehow softer at that time of day and it is as good as meditation for putting things in perspective, just sitting quietly and not thinking about very much at all.

So, instead of rushing around after the big game as the ultimate safari objective, consider when you will next have the opportunity to sit somewhere so wild at the end of a day (far away from other people, cars, towns, noise and light) and feel so content.  I’ll raise a glass to that…

Image courtesy of Wilderness Safaris, Selinda, Botswana

Matobo has a pretty impressive concentration of rhino and elusive leopard and the birdlife is very special indeed, with an indecent number of raptors (including 200 breeding pairs of black eagles).  For more detailed information, visit the Zimbabwe part of the Natural High Safaris web-site

As a biology undergraduate drifting in and out of consciousness in my lectures, I have memories of the word “equilibrium” cropping up rather a lot.  As I remember, it described the way in which two or more groups of things coexist in some kind of a balance.   It all sounded nicely logical.  Harmonious even.

And it possibly is if you’re describing plants or things living in rock pools.  But how is anything approaching a balance achieved if you take 3000 crocodiles, a thousand odd hippos, and millions of fish and pop them all in to a lake a couple of miles wide?  What is there to prevent only one extremely fat animal remaining after a couple of weeks?

This was the thought that occurred to me a couple of weeks ago as, on a walking safari in the Selous, I spent the night out under a star-filled sky on the edge of the stunning Lake Tagalala.

The density of large cantankerous animals in this place defies belief.  The relatively small patch of water is literally stiff with life.  It supports everything from the aforementioned crocs, hippos and fish, to endless species of bird that have evolved ingeniously different ways of making life for anything that lives in the lake intolerable.

So sitting on the shore and watching life go by, I couldn’t help thinking that any notion of equilibrium here must be anything but calm and harmonious.  Quite the opposite, it must be the net result of a horrendous cycle of violence balanced by what, given a distinctly unromantic atmosphere, is an impressive level of procreation.

And while it seems that crocs and hippos exist in their own little armed truce, with the occasional mutual indiscretion (“I’m sorry I sat on you / bit you in half /by mistake ate your grandmother” etc) the same really doesn’t seem to be the case for fish.  For them life seems to involve a lot more “give” than “take”.

As I sat having breakfast by the lake shore, everything seemed to be casually snacking on fish.  Pied and malachite kingfishers used dead trees in the shallows as perches from which to catch small fry.  A grey heron used the back of hippo as a fishing pontoon, fish eagles casually cruised in every couple of minutes on long slow glides to effortlessly pluck a writhing fish from the water.  A pair of ospreys methodically quartered the lake, plunging time after time into the water, only to emerge – albeit often fishless – and shake themselves in flight, exactly as a dog does after a bath.

And every few minutes, the long snout of a croc would break the surface with yet another poor fish doing its bit to sustain the equilibrium…

In the 20 minutes or so it took me to drink my coffee before breakfast, I must have witnessed the demise of at least as many fish.  That’s just in the very small area where I was sitting and in only 20 minutes.  A fish a minute biting the dust? How on earth do they sustain this hour by hour, day in day out?

I’m sure if I’d paid more attention during lectures I’d be able to explain concisely why what I was seeing is simply the manifestation of some kind of equilibrium – that broadly speaking births equal deaths and things perpetuate.  But when you think about it, it’s pretty amazing that nature works in such an elegant way.   And extraordinary that the net result of all this random activity is not, as you might expect, just the big greedy animals left, but spectacular diversity.  An unimaginable array of different species of different sizes and ages, living their complex lives together, hugger-mugger.  Now that’s what I call a balancing act.

Jean du Plessis, who runs these walking safaris in the Serengeti has a couple of great Easter safaris planned in April this year.  The safaris are mobile, using the light mobile camp in this film, and take in the Serengeti, Gol Mountains, the Ngorongoro Highlands and Lake Manyara.  This will offer a mixture of walking and some exceptional game areas. 10 days on safari starts at £2200 per person based on a group of 4.  Drop us an email if you’d like to hear more.

Now out on the trail through preposterously high grass and thick bush, heart hammering loud enough for the deafest rhino to hear, I was rather uncomfortable with the thought that the only thing standing between me and the rhino appeared to be one tall, slender khaki-clad guide…he didn’t look as though he’d slow a speeding rhino.   I made a mental note of likely looking ant hills to shin up.

Ian Harmer has grown up in the Matobo Hills.  His family rocked up in 1892 and he spent his childhood barefoot on the farm.  Now risen to the lofty heights of 4^th best guide in the world (courtesy of  Wanderlust Travel Magazine), Ian is possibly the best person to be with when thrashing around on the hunt for rhinos.  His casual confidence and clear mastery of the bush just about kept me from shinning up the nearest tree at every snap of a twig.

After a lengthy but fascinating synopsis of the dynamics of rhino territory, and a short drive to find the freshest spoor, we had followed Ian into a triangle between two roads and a river in search of Swazi, a 45 year old male white rhino.  We could smell him, see the tell-tale flattened grass where he had spent the night, see the dung piles marking his territory and touch the smooth trunks of saplings where he had stopped for a belly rub.  It was incredibly exciting.  Regrettably, the weather closed in and our time ran out before we caught up with Swazi, but the time spent on his trail was infinitely more exciting than any rhino viewed from the relative safety of a vehicle.  Rhodes-Matopos National Park is one of the best places to view rhino – indeed a couple of days later, Ian found 9 with some other guests.

Photograph courtesy of Ian Harmer

Having begun by carving a pair of ivory earrings for his wife, Patrick now creates detailed studies of animals, birds, seashells, trees first rendered in blue and green wax and then cast in sterling silver from mines in Zimbabwe.  His work ranges from tiny ornate wildlife cufflinks to great ornate table pieces for the Duke of Westminster’s banquet table depicting stags and pheasant on a craggy base of hollow silver.  Each piece carries a story and individuality which makes it quite special.  His studio presents itself as something of a gathering point for African artefacts (head stools, ox carts, drums) which find themselves later on among the silver in his gallery in London’s Fulham Road.

The man himself, tall and rangy with longish greying hair around a genial face, is very much evidence.  Appearing in the gallery to chat to guests and invite them for a look around the studio, he is justifiably proud and passionate about his work.  His is now a family business with his wife and three of his sons involved in either the creative or operational aspects of the business.  The studio also trains and employs many local Zimbabweans who can be seen at work on both on special commission pieces or the diverse gallery collection.  It is well worth a visit.

Have a look at Patrick’s work: www.patrickmavros.com.  There are some great little stories on animals here too.

The choice being considered this year is a very simple one, but the consequences could be catastrophic for East Africa’s remaining elephant population.  In simple terms it is this: Should countries such as Tanzania and Zambia be allowed to cash in their ivory stocks, or should the ban be renewed and strengthened preventing the sale of all ivory.

Elephants in East Africa are already under severe pressure since the decision to allow the sale of “legal” ivory stocks in 2008. There is no difference between legal and ilegal ivory in East Africa.  There are no sound reasons for lifting of a ban, other than greed, pure and simple.  If you would like to read more about this, then have a look at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/no-more-trade-in-elephant-ivory where you can also add your name to Daphne Sheldrick’s petition.

The second notable aspect is the names that many Zimbabweans sport.  Consequently, I am on a mission now to find out how the parental deliberations are conducted prior to the naming of a child.  Just by way of example, here are a few of the people that I have come across so far: Hardlife (Gardener), Godknows (Waiter), Blessing, Thankyou, Exorbitant (Doctor), Talent, Precious, Credence (Retail Marketing Exec), Persuade (Sales Executive), Lovemore (Credit Manager), Nearest (Operations Manager), Loveness.  In a web-site detailing the top 100 Zimbabwean names, Perseverance, Learnmore, Copyright and Passmore all feature.  I do wonder when I am introduced to someone with an intriguing name, whether the handle is intended to convey something of the parent’s hopes for the child or whether it just sounded good at the time.

Barbara, an accomplished horsewoman and entertainer, bred race horses and polo ponies for sale throughout Zimbabwe and beyond.   The thoroughbred horses and pedigree cattle were well known for their quality.  Mike grew tobacco and cultivated exotic plants – another of his wife’s special interests.  One of the first commercial farmers to the area, Mike was well respected in the local community and granted honorary custodianship of a rocky kopje of spiritual importance.  Mike and Barbara were never dispossessed of the house during the last ten years of land reform; however most of the farm has been settled by new farmers and war veterans.  Forbidden to farm themselves, and faced with the departure of their friends from neighbouring farms, Mike and Barbara finally moved to Harare, never to return.

Visiting the house can’t help but provoke mixed feelings.  While it is clear that a great disparity existed between the opulent lifestyles enjoyed by many white farmers in the past, compared to the living scratched by the rural poor, the hard work, skill and investment in creating these successful  farms cannot be undervalued.  While redistribution of land may hopefully raise the standard of living for a larger number of people in the long term, it probably hasn’t detracted from the deep sense of personal loss that individuals like Mike and Barbara must have felt in shutting the door behind them for the last time.

James and Janine Varden, long-standing friends of Mike and Barbara’s, are now “house-sitting” Siya Lima and hoping to one day restore it to its former glory.  James and Janine use the farm as a base for their riding and walking safaris in the Mavuradonha Mountains.  Eager to rebuild relationships with the local people, the Vardens invest in helping the local school and are developing a bee-keeping project to create additional income and encourage the conservation of trees which are at risk from the increased subsistence agriculture.   They employ local people as guides, anti-poaching rangers and camp staff and hope to develop the area for the future enjoyment of visitors.

What many people don’t realise is what goes into making a top guide, and that there is a very big distinction between a good one and a bad one.  If you go to a lawyer, you like to know that he’s at least passed the bar exam and has a fair amount of experience behind him to give you the confidence that he can give you the best service.  After all, you want to see value for your bucks.  Similarly, when you go on safari, while it is certainly important to choose the right place, have a comfy bed etc. ensuring you have a great guide can make your safari.

Zimbabwe is renowned throughout Africa for having produced some of the best professional guides.  This is primarily because it has such stringent standards which entail rigorous training, long apprenticeships and tough examinations before a guide is let loose with a group of clients in the bush.  Hunting is still allowed in Zimbabwe and the system for training both hunters and guides is the same.  While photographic guides do not actually ever want to go out and shoot an animal, as a client, it’s quite nice to know that they are adequately prepared to deal with a headlong encounter with an accelerating buffalo if called upon to do so.   The guide training therefore includes a large ballistics component…just in case.

After sitting a lengthy theoretical exam to gain a “Learner Professional Hunter’s Licence”, the guide has to commit to a 4 year apprenticeship which exposes him or her to all aspects of the industry from first aid to animal behaviour, safety in the face of dangerous game to good camp management, vehicle mechanics to weaponry.  To gain a full licence, the guide has to complete a shooting exam, submit to a 2 hour interrogation by a panel of 8-10 experts on a vast range of subjects, complete numerous written exams and spend a week in the bush with his examiners, experiencing a range of real-life situations and exercises to ensure that he/she will react well.  Only then is this guide considered capable of leading clients in the bush.

Zimbabwe has, by far, the most stringent standards when it comes to guiding.  By comparison, Kenya does not yet have a compulsory professional guide’s licence, and in South Africa you can go from shelf-stacker to professional guide in around 7 months.  That is not to say that extremely good guides don’t exist elsewhere, only that in Zimbabwe, you can be guaranteed that your professional guide will be well-schooled, regardless of the length of his shorts.

“God invented the giraffe, the elephant, the cat…he has no real style, He just keeps on trying things.”

So said Pablo Picasso, no doubt with his mind on painting rather than the animal kingdom. But I cant help feeling slightly irked by the thought that Picasso of all people really could have tried a bit harder to find animals that provided better examples of interesting stylistic variations by the Almighty.

I can quickly think of a number of creatures that look strikingly like Picasso’s own drawings – from the wildebeest to the elephant shrew, but I ask you, can there be a better example than the naked mole rat?

On my first trip to Africa, I was very serious about seeing the world’s most unlikely animal. As soon as I got there, dazzled, I forgot all about it.  Then one slow, sun-dazed afternoon, dozing in the back of a truck in the middle of nowhere, a series of little ankle-level puffs of dirt gradually caught my attention, and peering over the tailgate, I saw the unmistakable dusty chiminified spoor of the naked mole rat.

Of course, I didn’t really see the animal itself. They look, according to pictures, like uncooked sausages with claws. Without a shovel and a complete absence of shame, seeing one was never going to happen. But I got as close as you can. And it was a blessing.

We chose to re-locate to a wee cottage, owned by Parks, perched on a causeway across the Pungwe River, slightly up-river from a fairly impressive waterfall.  This part of Nyanga is a bit tricky to get to and so was off the radar for other revellers.  Just the fact that there was a wood-burning stove was sufficient to make us feel like we had really escaped, regardless of the fact that the efficient operation of said stove eluded us.  While we did manage to produce an adequate approximation of a roast chicken, it would have been frowned upon by Nigella.  In the absence of electricity, candle-light was central to creating an illusion of pampered penury.  Interestingly, being stripped of the useful trappings of modern living, we felt quite refreshed, unburdened and indulgent.  Although hot water was provided by a “donkey” (no, not a methane contraption, but a wood-burning stove), it seemed rude not to bathe in the river, which pooled conveniently and crystalline a few yards from the door-step.  Aside from the pleasing absence of conveniences, the cottage was beautifully decorated and very comfy (so we weren’t that hard up).

As you can imagine, it did prove tricky to galvanise ourselves into activity of any sort.  Hours spent reading books in the shade or wallowing in the shallows seemed like a very good use of time.  However, the craggy gorges, flowing grassy hills and pine forests do make an exceptional playground.  We explored on foot, by car and bike, swimming in the river wherever possible and loving every new expansive view, and seeing very few other people.  This is not somewhere you should go seeking big game but if you are looking for birdlife, space and safety to walk, enjoy quiet and simply experience nature, this is it.  The once-smart hotels in this neck of the woods are now a little dated, and other self-catering accommodation appears to keep a low-profile; it’s not easy to find out where to stay around here.  However, as confidence and demand returns, this little gem will become popular with outdoor enthusiasts looking for more than the big-game experience.

In one of the local shopping centres, a reformed street-boy is selling baobab trees beautifully crafted in wire, complete with small wooden painted birds.  In another area of town, the more utilitarian artisans are crafting an impressive array of dog kennels, wendy houses and wicker furniture.

However, the artist to whom this blog is dedicated takes the biscuit.  At a crossroads on my way home yesterday, I spotted a baboon, on its hind legs, apparently clutching a gourd.  Intrigued, I pulled over and on closer inspection realised that it was indeed an inanimate and pretty impressive replica.  The artist’s brother was trying to sell this masterpiece to passersby.  When I asked him about it, he told me his brother was a very talented and original artist.  He drew my attention to the leafy shrub at its feet and told me he called the piece “Baboon on Orchid”.  It was on sale for the (possibly slightly ambitious) price of $450.  I have to say that in all my travels, it is quite the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen for sale on the side of the road.  But, ten out of ten for originality, I say.  Damien Hurst may have met his match.

About a 30 minute drive out of town to the north of Harare there is a great slab of rock, rising out of the surrounding countryside like a hump-backed whale (although, Zim being a land-locked country, this is probably not an apt analogy).  Dombashawa (meaning red rock) is a beautiful piece of natural architecture that made me want re-visit my childhood habit of climbing everything in sight.  Covered with rust and lemon-yellow lichen, the rock has spiritual significance for the local people.  Paintings depicting hunting scenes decorate the walls of a small cave, and the small pool fed by rainwater run-off used to yield wild rice to be ritually harvested.  The rice has gone now: apparently the gods were not suitably appeased and turned off the taps on this little perk.  The view over the surrounding rural countryside is stunning, and on a Sunday morning the sound of drums and church singing carry incongruously up to the top.

On the road to Dombashawa there are a number of local artisans hoping to coax a sale of aesthetic stone treasures or pottery.  The most unique artist, though, is a man who has learned the art of growing bonsai trees.  In hollow logs or around boulders, he has carefully nurtured figs, jacarandas and baobabs into their miniature adult forms.  Many of the trees are over 6 or 8 years old, showing true tenacity and patience.  There’s something quite appealing about owning a portable baobab tree…

A little recap: Zimbabwe entered hyperinflation in early 2007.  In mid-November 2008, the highest monthly inflation rate was reached at almost 80,000,000,000%, equivalent to a daily inflation rate of 98%*.   The highest denomination note ever issued was for 100 trillion dollars.  These figures are truly mind-boggling for most of us, but can you imagine actually having to try and live under these circumstances.

The reliable source of all wisdom, Wikipedia, states that “hyperinflation becomes visible when there is an unchecked increase in the moneysupply (or drastic debasement of coinage) usually accompanied by a widespread unwillingness to hold the money for more than the time needed to trade it for something tangible to avoid further loss”.   Bill Gates was the first ever trillionaire, but the average man on the street was a Zim Dollar trillionaire by this point although the notes were virtually worthless and becoming more so the longer they remained in the piggy bank.

Anyway, not to dwell, the Zimbabwe Dollar ceased to exist when the US Dollar became legal tender in January 2009 as the preference for greenbacks became more evident.  Since then, the economy has stabilised and the shops have re-filled.  Only paper money is in circulation, but the prices of goods are seldom in round figures.  This means that at when paying for your groceries at the till, there is often a credit of a few cents.

Here’s where dentists can thank their lucky stars for inflation, because, often finding their customers unwilling to forego those few coppers, the cashiers have adopted the habit of offering sweets, chocolates or lollypops (in compulsory day-glo colours) to make up the difference.  So, the tooth fairy is still in business and the rest of us have to don our running shoes that much more often to retain a waistline.

*Hanke, S. 2009.  Professor of Applied Economics, The Johns Hopkins University

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to become a guilt-inducing spiel on the plight of sub-Saharan Africa.  It has struck me, though, how contradictory the seasons are in Africa.  Did you know, for example, that the rainy season is typically when many rural families are at their hungriest?  Think about it – the harvest from the previous year is dwindling and the seeds sown early at the onset of the rain are yet to mature.  The larder’s empty.  To add insult to injury, the pesky rain brings mosquitoes bearing malaria, and a myriad of other illnesses that affect both people and cattle (which are vital for ploughing and carting stuff around).  AND to make matters worse, this is the time when the whole family really need to be at their physical peak as the daily chores ratchet up considerably.  But, even with all that hardship and misery, everyone prays for the rain, dances to the rain gods, observe fasts and ceremonies in order to coax that rain to come.  Because it is indeed a lifeline.

Now, on the other side of the coin, rain is the most incredible party livener in some of Africa’s wildest places.  Take the Okavango Delta, the largest inland delta in the world.  Every year between December and late March, the banks of the Kavango River are swollen by the drenching storms in Angola.  No one tells nature’s intricate tales better than David Attenborough and in his recent series Earth’s Great Events, he catalogues the awakening of the Delta in all its magic.  It’s impossible not to be reluctantly heart-warmed by images of elephant calves experiencing such a water-fest for the first time.  The slick catfish emerging from months of hibernation encased in the earth are slightly less cute, but no less extraordinary.

After the rains in June – July, the deserts of Namaqualand (northwest corner of South Africa) wild plants lying dormant under the sands explode into a dazzling floral display that your grandmother’s curtains would be proud of.  I still vividly remember witnessing a rich grassy pasture spring up overnight in the red rock mountain desert of Damaraland, Namibia and how extremely out of place it looked.

I guess what I am pontificating on is that when you visit a continent like Africa, nothing can be taken for granted.  It’s really very cool to let your curiosity wander further than the “postcard” image of the continent because there really are some very surprising things to be found.

And by the way, don’t forget the milk.

For one, the San do not traditionally have possessions.  They use natural resources if they need them for food, clothing and housing but not for profit.  Don’t get me wrong, they are not bunny-hugging vegetarians and like their rare steak, but they are profoundly grateful to any animal that gives up its life so that they can eat and are careful to give thanks to the ancestors if they are lucky enough to score.  They are nomadic; they never stay very long in one place thus reducing the impact on their locale and always moving where there is food aplenty.  In the course of moving they will often get a tad thirsty (remember that they live in a pretty hostile desert where there is not so much as a cold coke in sight).  So they habitually bury ostrich eggs filled with water so they can be sure of a quick sip on the fly.  Fortunately, not only do they know the indistinguishable landscape like the back of their hands, but they possess memories like elephants and will always recognise that tell-tale stick marker poking out of the ground.

Those who have had the privilege to track an animal with the San hunters tell how they can lope at a steady pace for hours and hours, beating a rhythm with their sticks.  Their understanding of the animal enables them to anticipate its movements and follow footprints over rocky ground even when none are visible.  Impressive endurance athletes, they have the capacity to run their prey to exhaustion, whereupon they employ a well-aimed poison-tipped arrow to swiftly finish the job.

The San are still seeking to pursue their peaceful existence in the eastern part of Namibia and the Kalahari in Botswana.

In actual fact, this is the most evident the police have been in my short stint in Harare.  The beautiful wide, tree-lined avenues that make up a great deal of the spread of the town are notably quiet.  One or two vendors take their lives into their own hands at the neurotic traffic lights selling airtime vouchers or the bright pink “Fingaz” as the Financial Gazette is dubbed.  The roads in Harare are generally in good nick although with the onset of the rains, pot-holes are becoming more common.

Most mornings, we run around the quiet lanes in areas where both black and white reside as neighbours, and most folk we pass call a friendly greeting.  While there are stories of the odd opportunistic burglary (to be expected in a country where there is 80% unemployment), there is no tangible hostility or threat.  It seems that people are just getting on with the business of living and trying to provide for their families.  Despite his unfortunate name, my friend Hardlife tells me that although things are still tough, this year has been a great deal better than the last few.  Fingers crossed that things are looking up.

By way of brief introduction, I have recently joined the Natural High team as their little outpost in southern Africa.  Brought up in Kenya and having spent a good amount of time evading my parents in pursuit of adventure in east and southern Africa, I have spent the last decade working in the travel industry.  I am delighted to be back under the big skies after two years studying and working in London.   From Harare, Zimbabwe, I will be seeking out those amazing experiences that give Natural High its name and will be providing firsthand information about the whys and wherefores of Botswana, Namibia, Zambia Mozambique and Zimbabwe.  So, for those of you who may be thinking of venturing south in search of the diversity, spectacular scenery, culture and wildlife peculiar to this part of the world; I look forward to helping you plan your trip.

Right…back to business.  We thought that since pretty much everything that you have heard about Zimbabwe is likely to make you run in the opposite direction, this is a great opportunity to give you a regular snippet of observation and insight about the country itself which may make you think again.

I only arrived yesterday after travelling so far, but the amazing thing is that in some ways I am not very far from London at all.  For example, I am currently living on Oxford Road which runs perpendicular to Cambridge Road.  Not far away is King George Road which leads to Kensington shopping centre.   On the other side of the ridge the roads take their names from the Irish and round the corner many hail from north of the border.    While many of the streets in the centre of town now bear the names of heroes of the independence struggle, there remains a little piece of England in Zimbabwe.  Watch this space for more titbits as life in Harare unfolds.

I’ve been reading Clive Spinage’s excellent book  “Elephants” this week (and highly recommend it).  Strangely the book fell open at the chapter that describes – in detail – the lavatorial habits of the animal.  During the course of my reading I calculated that an adult bull elephant can reasonably be expected to produce over 300 pounds of dung every day.

Let’s just be clear about this.  That is as much as the giant Russian boxer Nikolai Valuev weighs.  In turds.  Every day.

Another way of looking at this is that each bolus is roughly the size of a small loaf of bread and there may be anywhere between 5 and 10 loaves weighing in at about 20 pounds total per movement.  So with 15 – 20 movements per day that’s an awful lot of loaves.  More than enough, in fact, to fill several baskets.

Bearing in mind that a population of about 35,000 elephants, such as you might expect to find in a park such as Tsavo, would be depositing several thousand tones of dung on the land every day (AND that so far we’ve only considered the elephant’s contribution – let’s not forget all the other species) it becomes evident that the task to clear all this up is nothing short of eye-watering.

Being a dog owner myself, and knowing that one is kept quite busy cleaning up after a Jack Russell, two  questions spring to mind.

1. Who or what is clearing all this up? and
2. Where can I get one?

Of course the answer to this question shines a light on a process that is at the heart of the life of any African park. And it’s an impressive one when you consider the impact, largely unseen, that it has on the entire ecosystem.  Consider any tranquil view of the African bush.  Calm, serene, unchanging?  Not a bit of it.  Zoom in just a little and you’ll see a frenzied hotbed of activity as one mammoth and un-ending poop-scoop operation goes on. Day in, day out.

The agents of this activity are, predominantly, two types of insect.  First are the dung beetles, of which there are numerous species, but of which most have just one goal in life: to spend as much time as possible up to their ankles in dung, head down. The second is the termites who live in astonishing concentrations below ground, but swarm to the surface each night to harvest food for their underground fungus gardens.

Between them, dung beetles and termites move a truly staggering amount of matter from the surface, to below ground – Spinage reckons that each year, termites alone carry 9 tonnes of elephant dung below ground, in EVERY square kilometre.

And in one of those fantastically elegant moves that Mother Nature seems so adept at, many objectives are satisfied at one time; insects are fed, the soil is fertilised and, perhaps most importantly, millions of seeds, held in their own little package of manure, are planted each year.

Shouldn’t we be looking to dung beetles and termites to solve some of the problems associated with climate change and overpopulation? Or at the very least introducing them into Hyde Park?

Some countries are more accepting of foreigners and their compulsion to frame anything in sight for posterity; however, many official buildings, government offices, airports and border posts are considered off-limits and you should be wary about reaching for your camera in case you are mistaken for something more sinister than an innocent traveller.

In his fascinating book, Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond hypothesises that the development of human societies was largely dependent on the availability of large mammals which could be domesticated. Societies which lacked these animals were more likely to remain as small bands of hunter-gatherers, as they lacked the easy provision of meat, as well as milk products, fertilizer, land transport, leather, military assault vehicles, plough pulling and wool. Humans who had access to cows, sheep, horses, llamas and the like tended to form larger and more stable societies; ones without tended to exist in a more hand-to-mouth way. And this would seem to be true for sub-Saharan Africa: until the introduction of cows and horses, societal development was considerably less advanced than in Eurasia and Central America.

But wait, you say. What about elephants, hippos, buffalo, zebras? Surely they could have filled mans’ needs? The argument hinges on the distinction between being able to tame them, and being able to domesticate them. Elephants can be tamed but not domesticated, for instance, and the hippo is pretty resistant to either. Man is still trying to breed animals like the eland in South Africa, with a remarkable lack of success. And perhaps the best example of an animal almost impossible to domesticate is the zebra.

At first sight, the zebra would appear to be a  perfect candidate for adoption by man. Available in large numbers, strong, highly breedable, they would seem ideal. But the problem with the zebra is its volcanic temper. Zebras have the unfortunate habit of biting people and refusing to let go, and their temper and irascibility apparently get worse as they get older. Zebra annually injure more zoo staff than do lions. They are also nearly impossible to lassoo, as they can watch the rope and duck their head out of the way. So you can’t ride them. They are of a nervous disposition, and run at the slightest provocation, making them difficult to keep in captivity.  So, in the final analysis, sub-Saharan africa might now looked like Milton Keynes if it wasn’t for the intransigence of the zebras. I’ll raise a glass to that…

Much to my joy I found the book again recently, having not laid eyes on it for about 25 years, and gave it to my three sons.  While browsing through it, I found this truly extraordinary story:

The most intelligent monkeys are baboons.  One of the most remarkable examples was a chacma baboon named Jackie, who was probably the only primate in history to reach the exalted rank of corporal in the army – and end up with a war medal.

The baboon was discovered by Albert Marr on his farm in Villeria, in Pretoria, South Africa, a few years before the outbreak of the first world war and the two very quickly became attached to each other. The animal turned out to be exceptionally intelligent and took so readily to training that when Marr joined the Third South African Infantry Regiment he took along his companion as well.  The friendly monkey was an instant success with the soldiers, and it wasn’t long before he was made the regimental mascot.  As a result he was issued with rations, a pay book and a specially made uniform.

Private Jackie was the perfect recruit.  On the parade ground he was always smartly turned out every time he saw a passing office he would stand to attention and give a very correct salute.  He was also very proficient at lighting cigarettes for his comrades in arms.  In August 1915 the two privates salied with their regiment for the war zone and during the next 3 years the inseparable pair saw front line service against the Turks and Gemans and were also with the brigade during a campaign in Egypt.  The baboon proved to be an extremely valuable aquisistion because he was a first class guard.  With his acute hearing he could detect the enemy long before his human companions, and when he picked up anything he would either give a series of short barks or tug urgently at his master’s tunic.  In April 1918 both privates were injured together.  It happened in the Passchendale area in Belgium.  The brigade had come under heavy fire and, as the air filled with the sound of deafening explosions, Jackie could be seen trying to build a fortress of stones round himself for protection.  He never finished it – suddenly a shell exploded close by and a chunk of shrapnel hit him in the right leg, partly severing it.  The same shell also wounded his master.  Both soldiers were rushed to a British casualty clearing station where the baboon’s leg was amputated by a Dr RN Woodsend who later wrote an account of the incident:

“We decided to give the patient chloroform and dress his wounds.  If he died under the anesthetic perhaps that would be the best thing.  As I had never given anaesthetic to such a patient before, I though it would be the most likely result.  However he lapped up the chloroform as if it had been whisky and was well under in remarkably short time.  It was a simple matter to amputate the leg and dress the wounds as well as I could.”

Jackie made a full recovery and shortly before the armistice he was promoted to corporal and awarded a medal for valour.  Jackie died in 1921 and was buried on his master’s farm.

Like a lot of pilots, I have a real fascination with vultures and in particular the paradox they seem to embody. Large Quasimodo-esque creatures, ill-suited to movement of any kind on the ground, transform themselves into mesmerizingly adept pilots once airborne.

Idly watching vultures suspended in the skies above any of Africa’s National parks it’s easy to believe their lifestyle is as effortless as it looks. The truth is a bit more complicated.

Every movement has its cost, and with no ability to hunt, and no sense of smell (arguably an advantage if you live off dead animals) the choices of where to find the next meal are beyond their own control. So for a vulture, life is a little like constantly driving with the “empty tank” light on, and just hoping to find a petrol station round the next corner…

But it’s also easy to look the wrong way down the evolutionary periscope and forget that, rather than having to wrestle with a set of problems, vultures and their lifestyle in themselves represent a solution. Natural Selection’s answer to the question ”right then, how are we going to clear up all this dead stuff?”

The solution for vultures is directly linked with their distribution. For a place to be suitable for vultures there must be two things: firstly enough food, but perhaps more importantly, enough thermals or updrafts for them to be able to fly massive distances without flapping. At all. This mastery of free flight is critical, and the vulture’s dependency on it is probably the main reason we don’t have colonies of griffon vultures, instead of seagulls, living off the chips and curry in Leicester Square.

This same dependency on free flight also explains why you can expect to see no vultures in the sky before about 9:00 in the morning, and why on overcast days, tree-bound vultures, with no prospect of getting airborne, look even more miserable than usual.

There also seems to be a rather neat little equation relating to size – on one level, the bigger the bird, the more likely it is to get a share of what ever delight forms breakfast that day. But there is another catch which works the other way. The small vultures are much more agile, less expensive to operate than their 747-scaled cousins and so can afford to hang around the edges of a kill when the lions are still there. They’re nimble enough to grab the odd scrap and flap out of the way.

It’s always interesting looking at these clever little niches, but it’s also too easy to present nature as a set of neatly functioning processes, where each species performs it’s role and neatly dovetails into that of the next, like some elegant relay race.

So it’s good to get the odd reminder that occasionally the baton gets dropped. Like the day when I found the dead vulture that had asphyxiated with it’s head up a dead wildebeest’s bottom (I may have mentioned this before…). A master of free flight it may have been, but it was no match for a wildebeest’s bottom.

Birds that are habitually preyed upon by other birds in the air, get to understand that one of the safest places you can be, if there’s a predator around, is on the ground. It’s simple logic, because the attacking bird can’t afford to injure itself by flying into something solid at very high speed.

So it was a sensible move, then, when the dove pulled a very steep turn and landed in the middle of a thick acacia bush right beside our car. The only problem was that the bird it was being chased by, the African Hawk Eagle (which is a tenacious little chap and not easily persuaded to change his mind) had clearly established missile lock before the dove landed.

Its response to the nifty bit of flying done by the dove, was pragmatic to say the least.  It simply elected to join the dots between itself and the dove in the quickest possible manner. It arrived at the bush with the force of a penalty kick taken by Cristiano Ronaldo and, with a noise like someone slamming a car door, flew straight through the (really quite prickly) bush, and up to the (now running out of options) dove.

Needless to say, things didn’t get any better for the dove, and the only consolation would have been that, contrary to the Red Baron-style derring do that the eagle displayed on its way into the bush, its exit (lunch grasped awkwardly in the talons of one foot) involved a lot of roughled feathers, quite abit of huffing and puffing and a good dose of embarrassment.  Eagles are far better adapted to spectacular feats of forward flight, than backwards walks through bushes.

This little incident lasted a minute, if that, but the unexpectedness of it and the sheer drama it involved, always comes to mind when I hear people say they find birds…rather boring.

After almost 20 years, the EU apparently came to its senses this week and decreed that, contrary to their long held belief, knobbly carrots, misshapen cucumbers and other imperfect fruit and veg are not in fact the devil’s work, but legal and…well…actually quite good to eat.

As a company that identifies strongly with the knobbly carrot, we’ll raise a glass to that, but what, you may ask, has this got to do with safaris?

Well it’s just that when we all grew up, carrots used to be all shapes and sizes; big ones, little ones, knobbly ones, bent ones. Straight one’s were something of a rarity – like a double-yolker. But not any more. For the last 20 years supermarkets have only sold carrots that are straight as a snooker cue and identical in size. They’re easy to package, they’re also easy to peel and so they’re sort of convenient. The problem is that they just don’t taste like carrots.

Curiously we believe there’s a similar process at work in Africa’s safari camps. A move to make things uniform, easier to package, and a focus on things that don’t actually add up to something special. What’s more, it’s happening at the expense of some of the more creative and unusual experiences that you’re likely to find anywhere in the world.

Some of the best experiences we know are those where the physical ingredients are pretty basic. A camp in Zambia made entirely of sticks and straw, that offers some of the best walking in Africa, or a wildly luxurious camp on Lake Tanganyika made entirely out of old lake dhows that occupies one of the most beautiful locations in Africa.

We believe that African safaris are about Africa, its wilderness, its wildlife and its people. We feel the best camps are defined by individuality, passion and creativity and these are the places we’d most like to suggest to you.

So maybe the EU’s decision marks a change in people’s attitude to what defines quality…and we hope you’ll understand when we say we’d like to offer you a few carrots that may be slightly wonky and maybe a bit harder to peel, but in doing so, make absolutely sure your safari has plenty of flavour.

Oh..and don’t forget, we’re here to take care of the packaging for you.

It’s dark and I’m sitting under canvas in a wilderness area in the northern Serengeti. Game driving isn’t allowed here, in fact there’s not so much as a track, let alone any roads for almost 1000 square kilometres.

What’s more, I can virtually guarantee that there are no people other than myself, my guide Jean and the three camp members who are here with us on this safari.

Until now it’s been virtually impossible to walk in the Serengeti, but this is exactly what I’ve come here to do. For the next 3 days as we slowly explore this virgin area, the only way we’ll be getting anywhere is on our own two feet.

As I write, it’s night, the moon is a sliver of light in an inky, star-filled sky and I’m contemplating the African night soundscape. 21st century noise pollution is conspicuous by its absence, but despite this, it is far from quiet.

Interestingly there is an unmistakable structure to the noises of the bush. It’s composed of layers; at the top a high-pitched orchestra of crickets; soft but clear, and seemingly omnipresent. This layer is punctuated by another; the intermittent calls of birds – night jars, the crescendo of a pearl spotted owl and the chirp of a scops owl.

Behind my tent and not too far away, is the insistent call of a cicada or maybe it’s a ground cricket. The call is so loud that it almost sounds like someone blowing a football whistle.

Suddenly to the south is the unmistakable roar of a lion, and it’s answered almost immediately, by another to the north. They aren’t particularly close, but they’ll be on the move now, so they’ll likely get louder in the night. This could get exciting.

But beneath all the layers of sound is one that makes my hair stand on end; a low rumble, a very large sound, but so low and continuous that after a while your ears become habituated to it and tune it out. It sounds a little like the noise an oil fired boiler makes, or a far away jet engine.

But this is no machine, this is the sound of 10’s of thousands of wildebeest massing in the rolling plains around our camp, and beginning their migration north.

Not everyone would enjoy the simplicity of these little camps, but there are few ways in which you can immerse yourself in the wild to such a degree. If you’re interested in these camps, you can take a look at a few short videos which explain what the camp is like, where the Serengeti Wilderness Area is and why the camp is so lightweight.

Nothing particularly interesting there you might think, but there’s no surface water on this volcanic soil, so they weren’t drinking. It took a while to get close enough to see what they were feeding on, and it sure wasn’t leaves.

As we got closer, we could see a dark object that seemed to be the focus of their attention. Not one of the herd of 17 animals, which were strung out some 100 or so yards apart, passed without stopping and laboriously bending the twenty or so feet down to have a taste. Clearly whatever it was, was much prized.

So when the last giraffe had gone we drove up to see what it was. As we approached, the dark mass began to take shape, and before long we could see that what the giraffe had been chewing on was the long dead remains of a wildebeest.

As it turns out, the habit of straying from a strict veggies-only diet and chewing the odd bone (Osteophagy) isn’t uncommon amongst herbivores and is apparently a sign that they’re suffering from a mineral deficiency.

But it doesn’t stop there. Over the years people have discovered that animal diets are far more complex than we at first realised. We now know for example that elephants eat considerably more than just buns. And while, in the 60s, people refused to believe that chimpanzees ate anything other than bananas, their bloodlust and penchant for fresh monkey is now well documented.

But few people realise that even animals as unassuming as the duiker – a diminutive and slightly neurotic looking member of the antelope family – conceals a dark side beneath that meek looking exterior. They have been witnessed killing and eating everything from insects to reptiles, small birds and, in moments of Freddie Starr-like impetuousness, even small mammals.

But for most of them their luck runs out when (or more accurately if) they hit the ground again. Virtually all of them end up inside something’s stomach and of those that aren’t eaten, every single one of the males dies, while a massive percentage of the females dies also. At first glance these creatures seem to be the embodiment of the word “ephemeral”.

So it comes as a surprise to most people when they learn that, of the tiny percentage of females that survive to become queens, some can live for more than 15 years.

When you think of the scale of risk that exists in the African bush, it seems hardly possible that ants could live for quite so long without being trodden on, drowned, burned, accidentally swallowed or actively preyed on. But the majority of queens in all ant species live for at least 5 years, pumping out thousands upon thousands of offspring over the course of their sedentary lives.The record for an ant (in captivity of course) was an astonishing 29 years before she eventually died of old age, or possibly boredom.

I would think that the suffix “-phile” could be a little irksome to an animal that spends the entirety of its miserable life in some hostile corner of the world. It appears to suggest a love, an exuberance even (“I just can’t get enough of life in this geyser”) rather than just a tight-lipped tolerance of its circumstances.

One such animal is a tiny bluish-grey cichlid fish, no bigger than your hand, which goes by the catchy name of Alcolapia alcalicus. By some cruel twist of fate, this little animal finds itself living in the intensely un-homely waters of Lake Natron in Northern Tanzania.

Conditions in the waters of Lake Natron are plain nasty; even brief exposure to the water and soda crystals can cause severe burning to humans. There are two elements that are you really need to be aware of if you’re considering going to live in the lake itself.

The first is the temperature of the water – most tropical fish are adapted to live in a temperature range in the low to mid 20s Centigrade (70-80 Fahrenheit), which is like a pleasantly heated swimming pool. The temperatures in Lake Natron can reach as much as a staggering 50 Centigrade (120 Fahrenheit) in some parts.

The other is the pH (the measure of how alkaline or acidic something is). Water is at the middle of the scale at 7. A very strong acid would be at 1 and a very strong alkali at 14. An animal would normally be considered to be pretty tough if it could tolerate a pH of as much as the high 8s. Alcolapia Alcalicus lives in a pH that is frequently as alkaline as 10. That is the equivalent of living permanently in pure ammonia.

Who knows what these little fish really do with their lives, or who ever meets them, but the fact that they exist is a fantastic example of the level of surprises there are in store in the natural world. What I’d like to know is if it’s physically possible to cook one of these fish given how comfortable it is in salt and hot water.

Driving through a thick patch of this bush one day, I stumbled on the scene of a gruesome murder. As we rounded a bush, we were confronted with a very large male giraffe, his head high up in the middle of a sausage tree, just a few metres in front of the car. He was stock-still and didn’t react to the arrival of our car, which was unusual.

Something wasn’t right, but it took a few moments to grasp what we were looking at. The reason why he didn’t react was that below the shoulder…he wasn’t. Which is to say that, like a scene from a cheap horror movie, he was just a head and a long neck, perfectly preserved, stuck in a tree.

After recovering from the initial shock, my first thought was “dead animal in tree, a leopard must have put it there.” But then logic returned; just the head and neck alone of an adult giraffe would weigh far more than a leopard could carry. A closer look at the crime scene allowed us to piece together the events that had lead to the giraffe’s demise.

Just in front of the outstretched lips – tantalizingly close in fact – was a nice juicy sausage fruit. The animal’s head and neck were stretched out fully, straining to get to this morsel. But somehow, engrossed in his singular objective, the giraffe had failed to notice two things (and we couldn’t tell the order in which these two had happened).

The first was that he had inadvertently put his head through the “V” of a forked branch while trying to reach the fruit. The second was that he didn’t notice the predators, maybe lions, maybe hyenas, creeping up behind him.

Putting two and two together, we could then see that at some point (in response to a noise, a bite?) he had sharply drawn his head down and back. And that was it. It had become locked in the forked branch, like a rope in a cleat.

And the results were there, frozen for us to see, like some hideous cautionary tale. After a while we continued on our game-drive, but nobody said very much for some time.

In Katavi, buffalo feature regularly on the menu for the lion, so we expect to see the lion get ready for a hunt. Over a period of a few minutes, the buffalo, who haven’t seen the lion, saunter closer. This is looking exciting.

But another minute passes, the lion haven’t moved and are still looking pretty relaxed.  Now the lead buffalo is no more than 50 yards from the first lion. Both parties seem to be playing it cool. A further minute and this is looking a little unusual. The first buffalo shuffles right past the first lion, no more than 3 feet away from him.

At first I’m convinced that both animals ignore each other. But then I swear something passes between them. Stop the tape, rewind…Blink and you’ll miss this, but unless I’m much mistaken the two animals seem to exchange an absent-minded nod, like old men passing in the street.

To compound this bizarre mutual disinterest, the other buffalo arrive and, as one, walk right up to the lion and stop. The lions stand up and what follows is a strange piece of choreography as all the animals arrange themselves as follows: Buffalo – Lion – Buffalo – Lion – Buffalo – Lion. Literally shoulder to shoulder.

Once so arranged, all animals (with impeccable timing) look to camera, and I’m starting to feel quite strange. And finally, all but holding hands, they exit screen right. Together. Looking like a group of old age pensioners at a tea dance.

OK, so it’s clearly to everyone’s benefit to know when you’re not hunting – saves everybody rushing around and wasting energy, but there was something else going on here. These animals knew each other and knew they were off duty. It was a bit like watching Brown and Cameron walk out the House of Commons together chatting.

Perhaps it’s just me, but one of things I most want to encounter on a safari is “differentness.” I’m not simply after more of what I get at home, which is why things like sleeping in a tent, or under the stars, or trying new foods are so appealing.

So it’s no surprise that experiencing a different culture is one of the most rewarding things you can do in Africa. And yet, the term “Cultural Tourism” has a hollow, almost oxymoronic, ring to it. It raises expectations of exploring a culture in depth, but all too often it only scratches the surface.

Visiting cultural centres, or watching staged performances, may be entertaining and make good commercial sense. But in the same way that watching the changing of the guards probably tells you less about British culture than an hour in a supermarket, this perhaps isn’t the best way to reveal anything particularly meaningful. Ultimately there is no getting away from the fact that this is theatre…and you’re the audience.

But of course, if you aren’t after theatre, and you don’t have much time, you have to accept the flip side. Which is that people are people. If you turn up on a day when no body feels like hunting, dancing or circumcising, things might seem a little pedestrian.

So the question is how, in only a few days, can you gain an insight into the way a culture works? Short of setting off on your own and simply moving in with a “Tribe” – Bruce Parry style – it’s not easy.

But spending a few days in a small camp, which runs in conjunction with a community is a great way to begin. Many small camps across Africa now work closely with local villages. Training staff and guides from the community and employing them to work in the camps.

The great thing about this is that you can overcome the performer / audience thing. You get the chance to meet people properly (including your guide), over time, to ask questions and to be asked questions and – in my experience this is far more revealing than any organized event.

For me a particularly memorable day was a walk with San guides in the Northern Kalahari in Botswana. We had no language in common, and while they were friendly to a fault, thankfully they we’re far too busy chatting amongst themselves to pay too much attention to us.

What followed was a decidedly low key meandering ramble through the bush, casually harvesting snacks; roots, berries and some (understandably) rather perplexed looking beetles. The walk culminated in building a fire (no matches of course) and cooking the hapless beetles (we weren’t offered any). The men who took us then spent the best part of half an hour playing something, which looked and sounded like Rock-Paper-Scissors.

But to me, this is where the interest lies. Time and again when I’ve met people with a life experience so dramatically at odds with my own, the thing that really stands out is not so much the differences, but the things which it seems we have in common.

Watching the San playing rock paper scissors, and howling with laughter every few minutes when some one was caught out, you didn’t need a common language to see that at the very least, slapstick is something that transcends cultural boundaries. Hardly an anthropological revelation, but an unusual way to spend an afternoon. You should try it.

Amongst the most outstanding examples are the Whydahs. For most of the year, these are small, humble looking little birds that you wouldn’t give a second glance to. But come the breeding season, all this changes as the male takes it upon himself to grow the mother of all tails; one that is quite preposterously out of proportion with his diminutive sparrow sized body.

There are several species of Whydah in East Africa, including the Straw Tailed and the Pin Tailed, but it’s the Paradise Whydah that is the most common and the best example. A typical sighting would be of a flock of small birds flying past, accompanied by what looks like a Ping-Pong ball attached to a pheasant’s tail bobbing around amongst them. The male’s tail is an elaborately foppish affair with a large bustle and two central feathers over 14 inches in length that trail along behind him.

The tail, which is highly visible and cumbersome must seriously increase the chances of becoming someone’s lunch, but it does show that it’s not just politicians who’ll do anything for attention.  In Darwinian terms it’s no doubt a statement of fitness (if I can fly with this thing strapped to by backside, then I must really be pretty hot.) And the evidence would suggest that it’s a stretegy that works as the Whydah is both common and polygamous; in fact he rarely leaves home without numerous females in attendance.

But like many party animals, the Whydahs are reckless parents – the female isn’t interested in raising her chicks, but instead, like the English Cuckoo, lays her eggs in somebody else’s nest, to be raised by foster parents – in this case a melba finch.

But in my experience, even a leopard can be caught napping. Going through an old diary of mine from the Selous, I find an entry for a walk on 20th July ’97; “…crept up to leopard and watched from 35 yards…out in the open and completely at ease.”

Unsurprisingly I remember this day pretty clearly. In this part of the Selous, the Rufiji River comes out of a steep-sided rocky gorge and spills into a mile wide sandy area. Here it divides into a series of islands and channels, many of which are dry, or partially dry, in July.

These sandy channels make for excellent walking. Wild melons grow in abundance, acacia trees with fat, nutritious seedpods crowd the riverbanks, and fresh water flows continuously below the surface of the sand. With these ingredients, elephant are virtually guaranteed.

Arriving by boat, we began walking, barefoot, with the wind in our faces and the sun behind us. Almost immediately, we noticed a shape about ¼ mile ahead of us on the riverbed. More through force of habit than any real conviction, I checked it with the binoculars. And for once, it wasn’t a log, but the head of a leopard.

And at that point we had an exceptional bit of luck as the leopard, which hadn’t seen us, chose to lie down flat. He happened to be at a point where the riverbed dropped quite sharply, so was out of sight.

Walking silently in sand with bare feet is actually quite easy to do, but none of us really expected the leopard still to be there when we crept up close. But I can still remember the jolt of excitement when we were able to see over the drop in the riverbed. And there he was.

We were close enough to watch easily without binoculars while he rolled around on the ground playing with his tale like a large house cat. It was only after a few full minutes – on one particularly large roll – that he noticed the humans watching him.

To say he looked mortified is a gross understatement. To the creature that invented creeping up on things, to BE crept up on is beyond humiliating. The look he gave us as he shot into the bushes – a mixture of rage and profound embarrassment – made me feel just slightly ashamed.

So you might think that to contemplate these things in a context where you are demonstrably only a very small (and edible) part of the prolific animal life would be nothing short of terrifying. And yet if I had to choose a single experience of Africa – my desert island choice – I would forego game drives, I’d even let you keep walks. For me, the choice would be an easy one – to spend the night out under the stars. Take away all the frills (well, actually let’s not be too hasty, leave the hot shower, cool box of ice, wonderful food and ideally someone to prepare it) and give me a couple of lanterns and a bedroll and let nature provide the rest.

As a guide in the {Selous} Game Reserve in Tanzania, I was lucky enough to lead walking safaris backed up with fly camps at night. Camp was usually pitched on a dry sand river bed, and we’d aim to arrive on foot as the sun went down. The last few hundred metres was usually on sand, so we’d kick off our shoes and go barefoot, silently. The combination of the feel of the cool sand on your feet, the caramelly smell of the evening air and the inimitable stillness of the dusk is something that I will never forget. Compared to a noisy clattering arrival by Land Rover, It felt like quietly slipping into a pool without making a ripple – as opposed to hurling yourself in with a mighty splash.

When you go into the bush, no matter how hard you try, it’s difficult not to end up the unwitting centre of attention. Man has a bad track record, so in a vehicle everything stops and looks, and on foot, many of the bird calls one hears are alarm calls. Everything from Egyptian geese to mouse birds forming a bow wave of warnings that radiate through the bush ahead of you.

But there are times, when, either through expert guiding, or just sheer fluke, you get it just right. One bizarre occasion I won’t forget was on a walk in the Selous Game Reserve. Crossing a wide open plain with no cover at all, we saw two large Greater Kudu bulls emerge from the bushes 200 yards away and come towards us. They were wandering along slowly, looking bored – off duty – and coming towards us on the same narrow game trail that we were standing on.

With absolutely nowhere to conceal ourselves, we resorted to the child’s logic of “if I hide my face, I can’t be seen.” There were three of us and we simply crouched down a few metres to the side of the trail, keeping absolutely still. The Kudu sauntered along, getting closer and closer. There was no way that we wouldn’t be seen.

But, for who knows what reason, they just didn’t notice us. They ended up walking, still on the game trail, within about 15 metres of us – close enough to hear the crunch of their hooves, and almost close enough to smell. And all the while we were crouched, like a group of 5 year olds in plain view.

They walked past us and within a minute, away into bushes the far side. It was nothing more than that, nothing was eaten, killed or even chased. But for a surreal moment we had got under the skin of the wild and made ourselves invisible. It may not sound like much, but it was unforgetable. To me, this is what it’s all about and it’s what we mean by Natural High.

The pans are vast, covering 16,000 square kilometres, and are mainly made of bright white soda, dotted with the occasional black stone. The effect of this monochrome world, combined with the silence that fills your ears like a thick liquid, is one of partial sensory deprivation. It’s strange, but also cleansing; for once your head is free of the unsolicited noise that creates an almost permanent backdrop to our modern lives.

The Makgadikgadi salt pans are the last remnants of a super-lake that once covered the entirety of what is now Botswana – the sediment remaining after an enormous puddle dries out in the sun. This part of Africa is riven by rifts and faults, so while a river rising in modern day Angola used once to simply transit through Botswana on it’s way to the East Coast, a fault along the Kalahari-Zimbabwe fault line to the east created a dam that blocked the rivers exit and created the inland lake.

Further tectonic activity along the Thamalakani fault caused the area to the north west to drop. This sealed off the inlet and the die was cast. With considerable panache two staggering and unique environments were created at once – as the lake gradually dried out the pans were left and, at the same time, somewhat niftily, the Okavango Delta was created to the west.

Makgadikgadi is an extraordinary place to visit and a habitat of immense extremes. During the dry season it initially appears utterly devoid of life, but, take a spoonful of the soil from the pans, put it in a glass of water and in short order the dormant desert adapted organisms will be wide awake and having themselves a party.

Come the rains the place erupts into life and the area is host to an extraordinary and yet relatively little known migration of similar scale to the Serengeti Mara migration. Plains game floods out of the west and into the pans to gorge themselves on the new grass.

But in truth, if you’re like me, it’s really not the animals that you’ll remember so much as the intense and elemental nature of the pans themselves. It’s like spending a day on the moon.

However, the prospect of a morning snorkelling in the crystal clear waters “helping” to look for it was too good an opportunity to forego, no matter how futile an exercise it appeared. So followed 2 sublime hours the next morning. Wearing a mask and snorkel, attached to long ropes, we were gently towed behind a dinghy, up and down the shoreline of this one-mile deep lake.

This area of Tanzania is best known for the chimpanzees in the Mahale Mountains and spending time with them is unforgettable, but can be rather like finding yourself stuck on the set of a Marx Brothers film.  So if you’re anything like me, it’ll be the lake that really takes your breath away. The contrast provided by an afternoon drifting peacefully amongst the brightly coloured life of the lake couldn’t be more marked.

Nowhere have I experienced such benign water as that of Tanganyika. Clear and sweet as bottled water, perfect in temperature and home to a bewildering array of brightly coloured fish that are an evolutionary parallel to tropical reef fish.

Almost all the cichlid fish in Lake Tanganyika are endemic, and many are so pernickety that they’ll only deign to live in the mouth of one particular river on the Lake (although ironically many end up living in England as they’re highly prized as aquarium species).

Of course eventually, as midday approached, we had to admit defeat. This prop may have been invaluable, but there’s only so much snorkelling you can take and you need a really good reason to miss lunch. So, having trawled many hundreds of metres, we hauled our selves back into the boats and sat on the sides drying in the warm sunshine.

And in one of those totally bizarre flashes of serendipity that only Africa seems to be able to deliver, there was the screw. Sitting exactly below us, in clear view on a patch of white sand, not 10 feet below the surface. Lunch that day tasted particularly good, I seem to remember it was fish.

In April this year, my 4 year old son Ralph came across the second ever Matsudaira’s Storm Petrel to be seen on Kenya’s shores – this is a stunning, ethereal ocean wanderer and is hardly ever seen on the East Coast of Africa.

Ralph was more concerned by the fact that he found it in his soup, because soup isn’t easy to eat when you’re 4. But having a Storm Petrel in it doesn’t make things any easier.

We were staying at Funzi Keys on the south Kenya Coast, on a clear moonless night, having dinner under the stars on the beach. One minute there were only croutons in the soup, the next there were croutons and a stunned Matsudaira’s Storm Petrel.

We could only assume that that the bird must have flown into a pane of glass in the inky darkness. A terrible injustice to be wreaked on a creature that must have crossed many thousands of miles of ocean to reach this point.

However, as a result of the collision, and while my other two sons got over their disgruntlement at not having sea birds in their soup, I was able to pick it up and inspect it as it recovered. I had absolutely no idea that a sea bird could be quite so beautiful and so delicate.

In virtually every respect, this bird had far more in common with a swift than a sea gull. It was miniature, measuring not much more than the length of my hand, with long slender wings. It appeared in the candle light to be soot black all over, with a forked tail, and miniature, black webbed feet on the end of legs no thicker than a matchstick.

It was only after it had recovered and flown away, that I found the bird book, and saw that there were only a couple of sightings of this bird recorded in Kenya. The picture does it no justice, entirely failing to capture its extraordinary other worldy nature. My first instinct was to wish I’d photographed it.

But on reflection I rather like the fact that it disappeared back into the night sky that produced it as if by magic. Unrecorded. Un “ticked”. Maybe the night sky is full of them, but nobody knows they’re there.

Incidentally – if you want to see what they look like, there is a picture of one at www.oceanwanderers.com/WPO.html, but it looks a bit like just another sea bird here.  Perhaps it needs to have been in your soup to see its beauty.

He has two characteristics that are particularly of interest; the first is that his teeth have evolved – or perhaps devolved is a better word – to a set of simple little pegs, which would struggle to draw blood from anything much bigger than a guinea pig.

The second is one of the most remarkable hair-dos you are likely to encounter in the bush. When startled (which is much of the time) the Aardwolf has a plan; he turns side-on to his would be attacker and erects a voluminous mane of hair that runs, like a massive permed hackle, down the length of his back.

On a good hair day, this can have the effect of increasing his apparent size by a staggering seventy percent. Given the very low number of Aardwolves you do have to ask how effective this tactic is, compared to a more conventional policy of running away.

If you’re looking to encounter animals such as the Aardwolf, Porcupine or even the highly elusive Aardvark, there is a happy and unexpected consequence of the green season and the longer grass associated with it. Like people, animals don’t like to get wet if they can avoid it. The way they get around this is to travel down the tracks and roads. Between December and May it’s not uncommon to round a corner at the end of the day on the way back to camp, to find a strange looking animal from the crepuscular world staring back at you.

Fish eagles are a good example. They have an interesting way of dealing with their slippery prey, which they grab in a spectacular fly-past reminiscent of aerial pig-sticking. The fish is dealt with in one of two ways depending on its size. Smaller ones are plucked clean out of the water, held sideways tight under the tail of the bird and carried away in flight. Larger ones, which can threaten the harmony of the flight, are lifted onto the surface of the water and then planed – much like a rather animated water ski – to the edge of the water to be dealt with on the bank.

Perhaps most spectacular of all hunting methods amongst the birds of prey are those that habitually catch other birds in flight, either by a blindingly fast and accurate stoop or by rapid pursuit. These are most notably the falcons – such as Peregrines, Lanners and Hobbies – whose speeds have been commonly estimated in stoops of up to 200 miles per hour.

The ornithologist Leslie Brown illustrated the extraordinary accuracy and speed of such birds in an event he witnessed involving a lanner falcon and a bee eater (itself no slouch). The falcon successfully caught the bee-eater which was rising on a spiral course in the opposite direction to that of the falcon. So the falcon had not only to allow for the erratic course of the bee-eater, but also to deal with the fact that it was approaching its prey with their combined eye-watering velocities.

Pound for pound this must be similar to riding downhill on a bicycle as fast as possible and attempting to catch a greyhound running towards you. With one hand.

We were sitting on the edge of the Mwagusi River in Ruaha, having a spot of breakfast and waiting to see more than 1000 buffalo come to drink, when I was startled to hear a loud rustling noise behind me.

Expecting to see an irate buffalo, I turned and instead saw the baboon – a male about the size of a Labrador – still clutching a half eaten palm nut. With a determined pedalling motion he free-fell the full height of the tree before hitting the ground with a sickening thump. Apparently this wasn’t a planned descent.

Amazingly, the baboon connected with the ground, compressed like a squash ball in one of those slow motion films, and then popped onto his feet and ran away. Positively radiating embarassment, but apparently unharmed.

The bush is full of bizarre and unexpected occurrences. Talk to any guide – in fact anyone who’s been on safari – and they’ll have numerous stories like this, often far stranger. But the reason I mention this is that it illustrates a point that I think it’s difficult to appreciate until you’ve been on safari. And it’s the reason why we keep on about getting the best guide you can, having a private vehicle where you can, and just not trying to fit too much in.

The really exciting thing is that absolutely no body can predict what you’ll see on safari, but if you give your self the time – and this particularly goes for the next few months between December and May – what’s certain is that your expectations will seem like monochrome in comparison to the technicolour of your experiences.

And then one day, just when you think it can’t get any drier, the whole place changes over night. Dusty brown turns to vibrant green and the whole animal kingdom breathes a sigh of relief. If you haven’t experienced Africa between November and May, then you have a treat in store.

Of course, while the Serengeti migration is in full swing, with hundreds of thousands of wildebeest, zebra and gazelles heading into the southern plains of the Serengeti, many other places won’t have the sheer volumes of game that you’ll find in the dry season.

But the game is still there, and if you’re interested in a bit more than simply numbers, this time of year can be magical. Look out for newly hatched crocodiles, miniature and perfect in every detail, organic “Christmas trees” formed by clusters of fireflies under the branches of certain bushes at dusk and insect life that looks like it came straight from the pages of Edward Lear.