The dawn chorus started with offensively loud and persistent quacking from a pair of Egyptian geese – sweet music to our ears. It meant we had survived our long night of terror! As the early morning light blissfully luminated our tent, we unzipped our door, lay quietly and watched the sun rise slowly over the African bush.
Although the kids usually sleep like the dead and are impossible to wake in the morning, today we were all awake early (none of us really having actually gone to sleep). We shared exciting stories about our night time adventures – discovered who had peed right next to our tent, and who was far too terrified to emerge from their little canvas cocoon so lay with their bladder bursting until morning.
Piet informed us that we were not going to move camp (I think he took one look at the chaos that was our setup last night, and decided that it wasn’t worth trying to get all that gear back into the tiny backpacks they miraculously sprung from). Instead he asked us to pack our daypacks with food and swimming costumes and off we headed for a day in the bush.
First up, we crept back to the lion kill, this time approaching from downwind as we didn’t want to scare any lions away. There was a big male lion eating the buffalo, and we tried to get a good view of him but when he heard a twig snap under one of our shoes, he turned tail and disappeared. We went and examined the carcass up close – fascinating but very stinky. Shame, poor buffalo.
After a walk through the dry mopani veld, we reached the verdant Letaba River and watched herds of waterbuck and impala having a drink in the oasis. After a few false starts, we found a safe place to cross the wide river, dodging crocodiles and hippos.
We arrived at a beautiful fresh water spring, which is apparently well known by the animals for its pure cool water. Piet told us we would hang out here for a few hours to have lunch and relax and we did just that. We curled up in the soft sand between the rocks and all fell fast asleep in the warm winter sun. No deadlines to stick to, no cellphones to answer, no social media to check. Just us and nature at its very best. Absolute bliss!
The most dangerous animal on foot according to Piet is a hippo. They might look fat and cuddly but they are actually viciously mean and aggressively territorial. And they can hide their massive bulk in the tiniest puddle of water so it’s easy to stumble into them.
When crossing the Letaba River, we accidentally walked right into a sleeping hippo – instead of attacking us though, the poor guy got the fright of his life, fell over backwards in a spectacular splash and motored it to the other side of his little pond where he stuck his head firmly in-between the thick reeds and pretended to be invisible, despite his large rounded back sticking out like a sore thumb. He was still in the same position when we returned four hours later after our siesta at the spring – thoroughly traumatized by his close encounter with scary humans.
It started to dawn on us that the wildlife was in fact far more terrified of us than we were of them – starting with the lion this morning, animals had scattered away from us all day. So when Piet asked who was up for a swim in the Letaba River, despite my initial misgivings I found myself eagerly volunteering. Here we were, far out of our comfort zones, facing our fears and doing remarkable things – it just didn’t make sense to say “No”.
The water was icy and we squealed in shock and delight as we splashed each other and sat down in a shallow pool of the flowing river. I don’t think I have ever had such a spiritually uplifting swim – with an added bonus of feeling a little cleaner despite the lack of showers back at our base.
We walked back to camp feeling more confident about our place in this wild life, and that we would survive the night without being eaten or trampled. We sat around a fire under the stars, shared stories and watched the stars before tucking into our little tents, cozily confident that we would wake up in the morning.
Yours in Travel
Did you miss the first Kruger Lonely Bull diary?
Keep an eye out for the final post and the verdict … was this primitive insanity worth it?
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