Open Writing

“Herbert spotted a leopard-tortoise, medium sized and surprisingly fast in trying to hide from us. Its beautifully patterned shell gives it its name. This was an exciting new experience. In all our years of game-viewing, we had never seen this representative of the ‘Little Five’. We hoped it was a good omen for the remainder of the drive.”

About an hour later, we’d navigated incredibly steep, rocky roads, which had been eroded by recent rains. We gazed in delight at a plain on a high plateau, overlooking mountains and valleys in every direction. A pair of black-backed jackal sat in the shade of some acacia trees to our left. To the right, were huge herds of impala, zebra, wildebeest and about forty eland., A steppe-buzzard perched on a tree-top and three giraffe gracefully glided by on the horizon. The scene was idyllic.

The two-way radio in the vehicle crackled to life. Several game rangers were conversing about a leopardess and her cubs to be seen on a hillside some distance away. This news had us all sitting up straight, hearts beating with excitement. Leopards are rare to find, and once located, difficult to see, their natural camouflage is so effective. For five years, every time we’d been to the reserve we’d asked Herbert about leopard, but missed each reported sighting.

Hearing of this possibility, Herbert drove at the maximum permitted thirty-five kilometres an hour. We bounced and jostled on the hard bench seats, holding tightly to the seat-backs in front of us, or to the poles at the side of the vehicle. This was the only time, in ten and a half years of regular visits to this reserve, that we’d ever urged Herbert to ‘keep going, don’t stop’ even though we saw two exquisite mountain-reebok, cameoed against green and gold, and rumbled past a herd of elephant travelling in the opposite direction.

Leon and I had twice been privileged to see leopard at this game reserve, during of our first five years. Knowing how rare this sighting could be, our excitement grew as we listened to the reports crackling through the radio and lurched closer to the site. By the time we arrived at the ‘magic spot’, the sun was about to sink behind the hill where ‘our’ leopardess was hiding. Three other vehicles were there. Herbert switched on the hand held spot-lamp and swept its long swath of light across the hillside, criss-crossing with beams from the other vehicles.

We were all disappointed that there was no sign of the leopardess. True to her kind, she had vanished. She was either hiding, or had slipped over the top of the ridge and was hunting somewhere else. It was almost dark as we drove off at a decorous speed, looking for a spot where we could safely stop for sundowners.

The clearing Herbert chose was close-by. Leon clambered from the vehicle and dashed behind the bushes, muttering about “small bladders and chasing wild geese”. Still sitting on the bench in the vehicle, I was startled by a spider that scuttled along the seat-back in front of me, almost under my hands. I leapt up and hurriedly climbed to the ground. As Herbert took the folding table from under the seats, and set it up close to the vehicle, however, the radio crackled into life, announcing: “The leopardess is back!”

We called Leon who came into sight fighting with his zip. Herbert hurriedly put the table back in place, we scrambled to our seats and roared off, hope restored. Herbert’s fabulous driving was rewarded by the exquisite sight of ‘our’ leopardess prowling, like spotted, liquid gold, in the glow of the spot-light. She wove between trees and bushes, and several times stood, silhouetted for brief moments, on the top of the ridge, before disappearing into the night. She was unforgettably beautiful but none of us managed to get any photographs.

To our left, as we drove back to our lodge, a red moon rode on a black stave of clouds in a navy-blue sky. In the distance to our right, lightning strobed through the clouds and thunder rumbled. We snapped numerous giant spider-webs, woven across the road from tree to tree. Herbert stopped the vehicle next to one of these glistening works of art, and we discovered that many spiders were working to weave the web. As we watched, two small, pale brown arachnids swung on silken webs to the antenna on the vehicle and began weaving to and fro between the trees and us. Herbert gently detached them, leaving them swinging from the trees and we drove on. Night-jars basked on the warm dirt roads and flew up, protesting, as we approached. Sometimes these colourful nocturnal birds, hypnotised by the vehicle’s lights, continued to lie in the road so that we could pull up next to them and examine them in the spot-light.

Scrub hares hopped ahead of us for several metres in the golden stream of our headlamps, before Herbert turned the lights off. Then they veered off the road and disappeared into the grass. For the first time we saw several endangered riverine rabbits, smaller, fluffier and rounder than the hares.

As non-musical guests left the lodge and were replaced by musicians, the music flowing from the lodge grew from trios to quartets, quintets and sextets. This is probably the only game reserve in Africa where, for three and four hours a day, over ten days, the sounds of Reicha, Mozart, Dvorak, Danzi and Thuille, mingle with the stuttering ‘ch-chrrrrrrrr’ of the woodland kingfisher, the ‘two-puddle-two-puddle’ liquid duet of red-headed woodpeckers(black collared Barbet) or the incredibly monotonous, descending ‘twee-twee-twee’ of the green Diederichs cuckoo echoing through the woodlands day and night.

The day after seeing the leopard, most people decided to stay, lazing at the lodge instead of going on a game drive. Leon and I and Jack-the-horn-player with his wife, Dolly, decided that we needed to jolt around in the vehicle again and set out with Herbert at the wheel as usual. We soon stopped to watch a tiny klipspringer, a small antelope that leaps from rock to rock on its ‘toes’, licking at a salt deposit. It was wary of us, but so interested in the salt that it tolerated our clicking cameras for several minutes.

We drove on, and as we rounded a bend at Fig Tree Plain, Herbert abruptly stopped the vehicle in the middle of the road, switching off the engine. For a moment we forgot to breathe, as we gazed at the miracle that was offered to us: about two hundred metres away, ambling unconcernedly up the dusty road towards us was another leopardess. We hadn’t needed to hunt or chase her.

The graceful cat left the road and moved into the bushes just in front of our vehicle, but we kept her in sight, and watched as she lay low in the grasses, long tail twitching. She was watching a small gathering of impala, zebra and wildebeest across the plain. After about ten minutes, the impala caught the cat’s scent on the breeze, and scattered. Still totally unconcerned, the leopardess stood and ambled back towards us, giving us superb photo-opportunities. By this time, three other vehicles were dotted around us, which didn’t seem to worry our leopardess at all. She came out of the grasses and, immediately behind us, crossed the road. She stood on the verge for several heart-stopping moments before melting, gloriously golden, into the trees and simply vanishing.

Two sightings of leopard in two days are more than anyone can expect in a life-time. We were thrilled and privileged indeed.

Euphoric, we drove further. We spent some quiet time with a magnificent elephant bull grazing in the late-afternoon sun. We saw lovely zebra, looking as if they’d been newly painted for our benefit. One foal ‘levitated’ across the road in front of us, giving a whole new meaning to the term, ‘zebra crossing’…

At the lodge one evening, as I sat quietly sipping sherry and recording the day’s activities in my notebook, something dark and leathery swooped down from the high, thatched roof and latched onto my leg. Looking down, I saw a bat, a little larger than the huge moths that were batting at the lights, clinging to my skirt. Its little face was ferocious, its vampire teeth seemed to snarl at me. Everyone assured me it was harmless, and the men all called it ‘cute’. My horror was inexplicable, probably linked to vampire legends. I was so frozen with revulsion that I couldn’t even squeak. Jack spoke gently to the little beast and finally detached it from my skirt, took it outside and persuaded it to fly away.

Long and lazy brunches at the table on the deck were times of grand over-indulgence and terrific conversations. For the musicians, the music was wonderful fun and soul-food of the best kind. We were told by the non-musicians that it made the time they spent lazing at the pool or on the deck with a good book, absolutely luxurious.

The animals were out in force, coming to the roads to ‘people-watch’ every time we went on game-drives. Even the rain, when it came, was wonderful – cooling and quite an adventure at night when dripping through the thatch onto my right knee. We tried to find a spot in the bedroom where the giant bed would be away from drips, but weren’t successful. By now, the thatch will have been repaired.

The ten glorious days that had stretched ahead seemingly without end, finally drew to an end. As always, it was sad to say goodbye to everyone at the gate area of the reserve. Hopefully, we’ll do it all again, with variations, next year. Some of our friends we’ll see here in Johannesburg on a regular basis, some we may visit in Cape Town or Toronto, but there is nothing to beat the magic of music in the bush.

On the ‘animal front,’ the hunt is a thrill which causes the heart to thump and the adrenalin to rush; the trophy of a set of glorious photographs shot in the wild is a wonderful way to awaken memories of magnificent wild animals, seen in their natural habitat, doing what wild animals do. You can boast about them, knowing they were tracked down by a combination of knowledge of animals and terrain and communication between game-rangers.

Observing the skills and patience of an experienced game tracker, enabling one to view magnificent animals in their natural habitat, is the privilege of a safari in Africa.

Until next time, ‘here comes Treble!’

By Isabel Bradley © Copyright Reserved