Here Comes Treble: Diary Of A Game Drive
...As we rounded a bend, we came across a young elephant tussling with a tree. He ripped off a branch, turned, flared his ears and threw it in our direction, before stomping silently away. A sulky teenager...
Isabel Bradley and her husband Leon go on a game drive through a private game park in Limpopo Province, South Africa.
Read Isabel's vivid account of a charging elephant, plummeting monkeys, promanading zebra - and you can imagine yourself right there, face to face with wildlife.
“Look – an oriole!” Leon exclaimed as a streak of yellow flew past to disappear in a stand of trees.
“Ah,” said Ben dryly, “but is it a TV oriole?”
There were puns, quips and humour in abundance as, from the safety of our game-viewing vehicle, we searched the concealing bush with eager eyes for glimpses of elusive wild animals. We were at a private game park in Limpopo Province, South Africa, ten friends enjoying each other’s company while escaping temporarily from everyday life in Toronto, Johannesburg and Cape Town.
The previous day, a storm had swept the game park: lightning sent static sparking through the high thatch of our lodge; an angry wind blew waterfalls of rain under the eaves to puddle on the floors; thunder rocked the building and surrounding hills.
Now, as we drove, each new leaf was a jewel in the slanting sunlight, silver, emerald and gold. Two klipspringer – tiny antelope – posed for a moment on tiptoe before vanishing; a trio of kudu does watched us, gentle brown eyes ringed with velvet-dark lashes, ears glowing translucent and pink with the sunlight behind them; and look, there – a zebra-crossing! Well, a herd of zebra was crossing the road ahead. Starkly-striped black and white youngsters frisked, while their elders, disdainful and wary, manes in stiff brush-cuts, turned geometrically painted faces to watch the strange four-wheeled, multi-headed creature in their midst.
European bee-eaters flew high, chirruping and chirping against thin clouds combed across the sky like strands of hair over a bald, blue pate.
As we rounded a bend, we came across a young elephant tussling with a tree. He ripped off a branch, turned, flared his ears and threw it in our direction, before stomping silently away. A sulky teenager.
A little later we stopped next to another game vehicle, which contained several ‘lesser-spotted, red-faced beer drinkers’. One man’s face was like a cartoon, with beetling black eyebrows crawling above glaring eyes in a red face with a huge nose. A short conference between the guides, a wave and vehicle and passengers were gone; only the gentle rumble of our own vehicle’s engine disturbed the evening silence.
We passed a rhinoceros, peacefully mowing the grass on the plain. He was muddied to the shoulders after wallowing in a nearby mud-hole. An ox-pecker, brown with bright red beak, seemed to whisper secrets in the rhino’s ear, while his mate meticulously picked ticks, mites and other parasites from the large animal’s gently-swaying rear.
We watched as several giraffe picked their elegant way across the dam wall with their odd lateral gait, heads swaying on impossibly long necks; darters paddled in ripple-circles on the water, and wattled plovers shrieked above the surrounding plain. Nearing the air strip, we saw warthog and wildebeest at the windsock.
Later we stopped for sundowners, sipping chilled French chardonnay in the African bush, stretching our legs while flying insects bombed into us and crickets chirred in the grass at our feet. The sun sank towards the horizon among smoky clouds; pink and orange flamed across the sky, brighter and brighter, reaching out to the moon riding high and white in the east.
As poetic images filled my mind, describing the beauty blazing around us, Rebecca remarked with ecstasy and longing, “Oh, it looks just like a tender, juicy steak!”
Babblers babbled as the sky flamed in ever more surreal colours; frogs peeped, crickets creaked, and Herbert packed the cool box back onto the vehicle. It was time to move again, under a darkening sunset that was eventually swallowed by night.
Again, we rounded a bend. David was wielding the spotlight, which was used to search for game in the dark. It surprised the young elephant we’d met earlier; he was once again next to the road. Ears flapping, he raised and curled his trunk, then trumpeted, a loud and terrifying expression of exasperation, and began to charge. Quite calmly, David switched off the lamp, and Herbert drove on, leaving the animal standing in our dust, shaking his huge head.
The headlights lit a rock in the road – which turned its head, eyes gleaming red. Herbert gently parked the vehicle next to the feathered rock; it was a night jar, drawing warmth from the sun-soaked road. “I am a rock,” sang Rebecca, photographing the beautiful brown bird as it lay quietly in the dust, “I am an island…”
As we navigated the last twist in the road before coming to the lodge, we were startled by a troop of monkeys which plunged from a tree a metre away from us, squealing, shrieking and plopping onto the ground before running into the trees.
“It’s raining monkeys!” sang Rebecca – a song for every occasion.
David quietly quoted the Monty Python interview with a sheep farmer: “They don’t fly, so much as plummet!” The image of winged sheep plummeting to the ground merged with the sight and sound of monkeys falling from the heights of the trees, and we all became quite hysterical.
His passengers helpless with incomprehensible laughter, Herbert drove the vehicle through the gate and into the lodge grounds, safe behind the electrified fences. Another magical game drive was over. It was time for supper.
Until next week, ‘here comes Treble!’
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