Bush Tales
Kalahari lion in our camp! |
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Used with permission from Kristy Maher's Muddy Hyena blog We had just finished dinner. Fifteen clients from Spain sitting around the fire chatting in Spanish when one of them, looking over my shoulder says, "que es eso?" Meaning "what is that?" in Spanish. In the light of an almost full moon, I turn to see a large female lion walking around behind us, her sister following in short order as they circle around to where we are seated at the fire. Paul calmly says, everyone stand up and get closer to the fire. Somehow I recall a variety of Spanish commands, "be calm," "come over here," "be quiet," "be careful," etc. I'm not sure what it says about my personality that I remember the commands best?! But they do come in handy when a lion approaches your camp when you're on a five-day trans- Kalahari safari with Spaniards. Who knew I'd ever need my Spanish for that scenario? We all quietly draw closer to the fire and Paul instructs one of the other guides to start the car so as to intimidate them out of camp. We had suspected they might be coming to visit when we saw them just at dusk as we were driving to our campsite. One male and two females strolled down the road in front of us settling in at the junction of two dirt tracks to make their long guttural moans marking this territory as clearly theirs. If only I had had the presence of mind to audio tape their call but I was so awestruck by the depth of the tones and the vibration of my own chest that all I could do was manage to involuntarily get the hair to stand up on the back of my neck. Unfortunately, the younger of the two sisters is looking a bit "cheeky" - kind of like my mother's old cat Delilah used to look right before she pounced out from underneath a chair to attack your leg as you walked by. My niece Becca described her as "cute but fresh," and that's one thing in an 8 pound house cat and quite another in a full grown female lion. Her tail flicking a bit, eyes staring right through you, head down, ears slightly back...she seemed to be sizing us up as a potential appetizer. Paul instructs, "Slowly make your way to the vehicles. Nobody run. Just back away." We move as fast as "slowly" will allow and pile into the vehicle. Paul joins us in short order and we are on the move to "push" the lions out of camp. While one vehicle has already gone out to do this, when they turned back towards camp the lions just followed them back. We decide we need to "drive" them off farther. It is believed that animals see a vehicle as a large object (not a vessel carrying small objects that can be eaten) so the idea is that we will "intimidate them" by approaching them and flashing our high beams at them. The male lion seems uninterested and makes his way off down the road not even looking back. The younger of the two sisters, the cheeky one that came within three feet of the circle of chairs around the fire, is undeterred. She strays off into the grass hiding behind a bush until her more responsible older sister waits for her in the road, spots her, then crouched down like a house cat and springs on her. She grudgingly gets back on the dirt track and starts walking. At one point the cheeky one walks off the road into the nearby grass and plops down. Paul goes up into the grass, probably two feet from her, flashes the high beams and she barely blinks. She's got a look on her face that says, "Bring it!" We decide to go past them hoping they will follow us even further away from camp. When we've hit a stalemate and they won't go any further, we turn back. As you might imagine the excitement and tension among the group is palpable. Fortunately, they don't return to camp and when the sun comes up in the morning we all have an amazing story to tell our friends that they will find unbelievable. Not many people can say they had three full grown lions come into camp in the Kalahari! |
News Letter |
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I agree with the other guides who have written an article for Motlhose that when you are asked for a nice story to pick from 15 years guiding you have to sit back and think about it. There are numerous great stories to tell but I could only pick one so I decided to come up with one of my earlier experiences.
I was in Moremi on day five of a 17 day safari with 12 French clients and so far we hadn’t gotten any close contacts and I could feel that most clients were thinking I was greatly exaggerating the dangers of the bush.
That evening we were camping and having dinner at Xini Lagoon. The tables were half under the trees and half in the open allowing nice views of the millions of stars above us. Being French, the wine was flowing and all were happy. One couple had their 16 year old daughter with them and she felt tired and wanted to go to bed early. Up till today I don’t know why I said this but I asked her to wait and first had a sweep around with my spotlight. Commotion all over: not 10 meters from the tables 6 lionesses were walking in line towards the water, it took a lot of persuasion to keep the people seated and quiet but luckily only the last female stopped and looked us over. You could see her thinking, worth investigating ? She saw her sisters walking away and decided that on her own this was not worth it and walked of. Needles to say that dinner was cut short as suddenly all clients felt tired, no, they were not afraid, just suddenly tired ??? I must admit that I thanked the lions for giving me an early night and after dishes went to sleep also.
Early morning during breakfast we heard a male lion calling from far, we took the game-viewer and went hunting. About a km from camp we could see a male lion walking “on a mission”, but very far away. I told the clients that if we continued some 2 km the road took a bend and with luck we might get closer. So done, when we arrived on the spot where this lion was aiming for we found 3 other males already there, looking at number four arriving. On our arrival 2 lions had gotten up, giving us a frightened look but now with the males greeting, sniffing and looking for a nice place to lie down, the clients were asking to move the vehicle for getting better pictures and also the people on the right side of the vehicle wanted to see better so after telling them it would be better not to disturb the lions, I had to start and move the vehicle a couple of times to please my clients.
The lions were visibly not pleased with the movement and noise so I told the clients I was not moving any more as you shouldn’t annoy animals and added jokingly “that they should realize that these lions were only 3 km from camp and would take their revenge tonight for disturbing them”. Big hahaha’s, what-a-joker-guide-we-got-ourselves were the reactions from the clients.
That evening, all quiet in camp, dinner was again a quick business as many thought about the night before and wanted to be safe in their tent instead of around the campfire. My thanks went again to the female lions for another early night and as a happy chappy went to bed at nine.
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Client Reviews Of Kalahari Skies |
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