After three trips to South Africa I decided that I really did need to go on safari if this was going to be my last summer/winter there (yes, it is true, I’ve finished my program and now have my Master’s degree in education). Safari. The word brings up images of wild animals and a wilder environment. But other than that I can’t say that I really had any true idea of what a safari really meant. Honestly, it turns out that it is a lot of time spent staring out of the car window hoping your eye will catch a color that doesn’t quite blend in or that a scrap of movement will grab your gaze and cause you to speak up that you see…something…perhaps a cape buffalo? But interspersed with the almost hypnotic driving are moments of sheer wonder. When you catch some movement and realize that there is a rhinoceros just over there, and then your guide/driver manages to move the vehicle so that you are positioned to watch it emerge from the bushes and cross the road just in front you. When you see a pile of cars stopped in the road ahead of you and know they must be looking at something good, waiting impatiently for your chance, and then catching the movement and seeing, yes, it is a leopard. A leopard that desperately wants to cross the road but is nervous from the noises of some of the cars. Topping a hill and realizing all those spots you see are actually zebra grazing along the plain, and indeed they are all black and white striped including their manes (which still seems like an extremely odd color scheme for an animal, if you ask me). It is sitting at a water hole and watching a couple of hippos play around in the water. Then moving on to another one and seeing a single hippopotamus get his nap in the sun disturbed by some elephants and reluctantly splashing into the water for safety. It is breakfast after 3 hours in the car at a rest camp where a hippo family makes its way across the river, and bright yellow masked weavers snack on your breakfast bowl whether you are finished or not. It is counting yourself lucky that you’ve managed to see 4 of the big 5 (leopard, elephant, rhinoceros, cape buffalo) without much effort and even managed multiple sightings of most of them. It is your guide lamenting that because you’re not from here you don’t realize how rare and amazing of a sighting that is…the inyala…when it just looks like another antelope to you, admittedly with funny white spots that almost look like its eyes. And it is going out the last time hoping that maybe this time you’ll see a lion to complete your big 5 sightings. Staring intently out the window and find you are carrying on a monologue in your head “cat! Wait a minute. Did I just say cat? Oh my gosh…maybe it is a lion. Oh, oh, need to get him to stop the car and back up.” “Stop!” “What?” “I think I saw a cat. Back up. Back up. Right there!” And then to be even more excited when you realize that there are three young lions sitting not 10 feet from the side of the road. Sitting and smiling at you as if to say “we’ve been waiting for you.” So it turns out that a safari can have plenty of magical moments in between the staring out of a car window. And if you’re lucky you’ll see all that you’ve imagined including the giraffes, warthogs and baboons, along with a few things you’ve probably never even heard of.
Our safari was well organized by Wildlife Safaris and we were quite pleased with the tour we got out of it.
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