African Safari - July '13 - Day 4 in the Bush

The late night induced silence this morning in the Landcruiser was unceremoniously disturbed by Alex yelling, "Stop! Hey look it's Mr Fogarty". After bringing the vehicle to an abrupt stop our attention was drawn, with Alex's help, to a small dung beetle attempting to push a rather large ball of rhino dung out of a kudu spoor (hoof impression - for the uninformed). It did indeed resemble the profile picture of the Bishops Prep rugby, waterpolo, Xhosa, Afrikaans master. And for those of you not in the know about the mighty little dung beetle one may be too hasty to regard this analogy as a disparaging one. Needless to say, dung beetles are incredible little creatures although they may spend much of their life in the poo (so to speak) or merely in search of it. Not unlike many humans, the female entices the poor male on, often climbing on top of his carefully rolled and relatively large ball of dung, in which she intends to lay her eggs. All the while the male attempts to impress her with his strength by rolling the ball in a direction, now made impossible by her looming, protruding presence, added to the otherwise perfectly cylindrical shape of the ball. So the harder he tries to go in a direction, the more he finds himself going in a circle.. I'm sure he mutters as he comes around again, "god I'm sure I've been in this sh#t heap before". The beauty of having brought our boys up loving and appreciating the bush, the more it's the little things that we spend time exploring and fascinated by, be they beetles or birds, intricate spider webs, mongoose or other small critters that one can miss if one isn't attuned to them.

Male dung beetle battling away with female hitching a ride

Somewhat reminiscent of that poor dung beetle, I managed to get us a bit lost this morning, taking a route that we'd never explored before (which is something I love to do). I don't generally mind getting lost, so long as I can eventually work out where the hell I am. But this time even the vegetation eventually looked odd and unfamiliar. The worry for me was that as I pretended to be fully in control and knowing exactly where I was, there were cacti succulents growing on the side of the dirt track which made me think that we'd moved beyond the Tropic of Capricorn. Christina intuitively (obviously) spotting my rather quiet demeanour as I blundered on ahead pretending to be cool about it all, on spotting a giraffe, commented rather flippantly, "Perhaps we should ask him for directions..?". But I don't entertain that sort of thing, that would be defeatist, and so I blundered on until the vegetation changed back to something more familiar, thank god, and a track I recognised became visible on a distant hill. I should know better than to not have my most reliable navigator, Dylan, by my side.

This evening we decided to keep our sundowner drive closer to home, due to our rather long expedition this morn, and so headed for a relatively nearby waterhole. As it is with the wild, all is not what it seems, and many a tourist has found that out the hard way, never to live to tell the tale from the tail, you understand.. As we went about pouring our whiskies, wine and cool drinks, whilst passing the snacks between the 3 rows of seats, 5 magnificent white rhino appeared from nowhere for their own evening sundowner drink. Meantime two side striped jakkal (foxes) lay undisturbed in the long grass for ages, only to be almost trodden on by a poor, unsuspecting herd of wildebeest making their way to the same waterhole. Then all hell broke loose as one bull rhino charged at full speed after another and some wild grunting and smashing of horns ensued just out of site, but the clashes were unmistakable.  "That's all very well until someone gets hurt", I'm sure I heard my mother mutter.  Some serious Aspirin would be required a little later, I have no doubt.

Now back at the lodge, having had our boma braai and usual stargazing routine with great wine and some entertaining stories, a distant lion is roaring to our right, some way away, followed by that earie ongoing roar-pant whilst a hyena is giggling in the distance behind us. The river seems louder but the hippo are eerily quiet tonight..

White rhino join us for a sundowner