Another update from the bush... 5 Sept 2008
Just another little update from Arathusa... It's very very hot again today so I'm in the reception area, with the air conditioning on whilst Nathalie is having a 3 hour nap (she'd sleep as much as a lion given half the chance - and that's 18 hours in case you wonder!).
I went on a bush walk this morning... not as exciting as the game drives with the vehicles as you don't want to get close to the animals. In fact, you usually walk around to look at the smaller things that you'd miss from a vehicle, such as paw prints (our guides can identify SO many) or to study the scene of a kill... what happened, where the leopard put its claws, what prey did he kill. Real detective work but experts can read it as easily as an open book. It's pretty amazing.
I should have grabbed my note book a lot earlier because we have done 5 game drives so far, another 5 to go and we've learnt so many interesting facts and yet remember so few. Thankfully because guests come and go every day a few questions are being asked regularly.
For instance, did you know that leopard urine smells like pop corn? We were trying to track one this morning and the smell was the first give away that we were close as they spend a lot of their time walking up and down their territory marking it. Or that baby baboons hold onto their mother's belly and hang upside down when they are less than 5 weeks but then climb on her back when they are over 5 weeks. Or that you can guess a lion's age by the colour of its nose (if it's pink, it's under 5 years old). Ditto for giraffes... their faces turn greyer and their coat darker as they get older. And for animals that have maines (spelling?) like zebras and giraffes, if it is up and straight it means it's healthy and fit, if it starts to flop, it means it's sick or old. He also had dozens of interesting facts on themites and how incredibly organised they are (keeping their home a constant 25-30C regardless of the seasons) and that their queen will have 20,000 eggs per DAY. Then the whole colony takes over. They even have a 'garden' area underground where they grow fungus to help break facaes faster, etc. I mean, you'd look at a thermite and assume it has no brain but it's just the opposite. Leopards are very very smart too and they often use our vehicles to enhance their hunting skills. He even proved it to us this morning: a female leopard had started to stalk a prey and was left in 'standby' mode, paw up in the air and the moment he turned the engine on, she took a couple more steps. Then he turned the engine off and she stood perfectly still again. As if she'd sussed out that the engine noise would drown out the noise of her paws on dry grass. And can you guess why buffaloes are the most dangerous of the big 5 ? Simply because unlike the others, they will give you NO warning before they attack. An elephant will emit a sound and flap its ears, a lion will groal and swing its tail vividly to give you the chance to retreat, leopards will hiss, and I can't remember what rhinos do, but buffaloes are just totally unpredictable so people are not given the chance to get out of their way.
Our guide told us that once he was on a bush walk with 2 guests and it was summer so the grass was quite high (right now there's hardly any grass at all). Suddenly they stumbled across a lion with its kill and he said you have to really keep calm. This is the GOLDEN RULE. He made sure his guests walked backwards and kept making eye contact with the lion. You do NOT run no matter what. It's the worst thing you can do. You just show you are submissive by walking backwards which is all they care about. Lions usually will only attack when they have something to defend anyway - it could be a female during the mating season, or a cub or a kill. The rest of the time, they usually sleep. Though obviously you wouldn't take a chance by stepping outside the vehicle. So long as we are *on* it they just analyse the unit as one big thing, they know it's not a predator and our sense is partly disguised by the smell of diesel.
But by law rangers have to carry a rifle with them every time they go on a bush walk and there is a LOT more to the job than just learning about trees and animal behaviour. They have to know all about first aid and take shooting lessons regularly. They only have 3 bullets but it's usually enough. He said that they are taught *where* to show and to go straight for the brain as, especially in the case of an elephant, a bullet wouldn't be enough otherwise. There are also very strict rules as to when they are allowed to shoot. For a lion, because it will give you warning first, you must not shoot unless it is less than 10 meters away. If it is at 15 meters, you have to keep calm. If he shot one at 15m, our ranger would lose his licence.
South Africa is also very very strict about poaching and they have anti poaching patrols driving around the game parks regularly and everybody coming in (including the staff who work at the lodges) have to pay in a fee that helps fund the anti poaching patrols. Penalties are very high.
So, we're really learning a LOT and enjoying every drive. Our guides are SO passionate about their job. Jason has been doing this for 7 years and he still loves every minute of it because every day is different. He even films the best sightings for his own records. What is incredible about this particular park is that because our vehicle is a land cruiser we can get off the road very easily to follow the leopards as they walk around marking their territory. Sometimes we 'stalk' them for a good 15-20 minutes and they look surprisingly cool about it. They don't seem to care at all... even at night when we shine a spot light on them. Often they'll even roll on their backs and look SO relaxed and happy. I was watching the tail of the one we saw last night up a tree and she never even moved it once. And anyone who has a domestic cat will know that the first tell-sign of a cat being irritated is when they move the very end of their tail. Their whole body can be perfectly still but that little end tail moving is a sure sign that 'enough is enough'. But with the leopards, nothing.
We have been blessed with beautiful leopard sightings EVERY day on EVERY game drive, sometimes up to 3 different sightings.. so that's already 10+ in the last 3 days. Unheard of.
The guides know the cat so well that they will say 'oh this female is actually the grand mother of the one we saw this morning / or / this male is the father of the female who was up the tree yesterday' (and strangely, he will mate with her too when she is ready for it). We did worry about the side effects of this but he said they have quite a diverse genetic pool here so it's not too bad. However, in the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania where most of their lions are confined within the crater, their gene pool is much smaller and they are starting to see birth defects in cubs of lions that have had 'incest' basically.
As I said, it's a completely different world here. I've just enjoyed another outdoor shower before I came over to check my emails (and my Gmail a/c is still NOT working, eeek) and it's just not something you'd do in the UK - esp. in Sept.
Not ONE cloud in the sky, just perfect. It was even starting to feel a bit warmer last night, thankfully as it's much more pleasant then.
Righteeo, off to lunch now. Beautiful large deck overlooking the pond, we always have lunch outside, warm breeze on our faces, great meals (just the right amount, not too much - you are not hungry when it's boiling hot anyway) and superb view... looking out for animals that come and go (just as I was typing this as I was told the elephants have just arrived back, hooray. MUST go and wake Nathalie up then!). It feels like a dream. Nathalie is also now adamant that *everybody* should do a safari once before dying. Strangely, we haven't even argued ONCE in the last 5 days... and God knows we've had our fair share of ups & downs... but we just laugh things off. It's like you cannot get upset in an environment like this. You feel SO blessed to BE here that you just focus on *that* and all your little troubles just disappear.
I wish I could send you the feeling via this blog! Till next time...
Just another little update from Arathusa... It's very very hot again today so I'm in the reception area, with the air conditioning on whilst Nathalie is having a 3 hour nap (she'd sleep as much as a lion given half the chance - and that's 18 hours in case you wonder!).
I went on a bush walk this morning... not as exciting as the game drives with the vehicles as you don't want to get close to the animals. In fact, you usually walk around to look at the smaller things that you'd miss from a vehicle, such as paw prints (our guides can identify SO many) or to study the scene of a kill... what happened, where the leopard put its claws, what prey did he kill. Real detective work but experts can read it as easily as an open book. It's pretty amazing.
I should have grabbed my note book a lot earlier because we have done 5 game drives so far, another 5 to go and we've learnt so many interesting facts and yet remember so few. Thankfully because guests come and go every day a few questions are being asked regularly.
For instance, did you know that leopard urine smells like pop corn? We were trying to track one this morning and the smell was the first give away that we were close as they spend a lot of their time walking up and down their territory marking it. Or that baby baboons hold onto their mother's belly and hang upside down when they are less than 5 weeks but then climb on her back when they are over 5 weeks. Or that you can guess a lion's age by the colour of its nose (if it's pink, it's under 5 years old). Ditto for giraffes... their faces turn greyer and their coat darker as they get older. And for animals that have maines (spelling?) like zebras and giraffes, if it is up and straight it means it's healthy and fit, if it starts to flop, it means it's sick or old. He also had dozens of interesting facts on themites and how incredibly organised they are (keeping their home a constant 25-30C regardless of the seasons) and that their queen will have 20,000 eggs per DAY. Then the whole colony takes over. They even have a 'garden' area underground where they grow fungus to help break facaes faster, etc. I mean, you'd look at a thermite and assume it has no brain but it's just the opposite. Leopards are very very smart too and they often use our vehicles to enhance their hunting skills. He even proved it to us this morning: a female leopard had started to stalk a prey and was left in 'standby' mode, paw up in the air and the moment he turned the engine on, she took a couple more steps. Then he turned the engine off and she stood perfectly still again. As if she'd sussed out that the engine noise would drown out the noise of her paws on dry grass. And can you guess why buffaloes are the most dangerous of the big 5 ? Simply because unlike the others, they will give you NO warning before they attack. An elephant will emit a sound and flap its ears, a lion will groal and swing its tail vividly to give you the chance to retreat, leopards will hiss, and I can't remember what rhinos do, but buffaloes are just totally unpredictable so people are not given the chance to get out of their way.
Our guide told us that once he was on a bush walk with 2 guests and it was summer so the grass was quite high (right now there's hardly any grass at all). Suddenly they stumbled across a lion with its kill and he said you have to really keep calm. This is the GOLDEN RULE. He made sure his guests walked backwards and kept making eye contact with the lion. You do NOT run no matter what. It's the worst thing you can do. You just show you are submissive by walking backwards which is all they care about. Lions usually will only attack when they have something to defend anyway - it could be a female during the mating season, or a cub or a kill. The rest of the time, they usually sleep. Though obviously you wouldn't take a chance by stepping outside the vehicle. So long as we are *on* it they just analyse the unit as one big thing, they know it's not a predator and our sense is partly disguised by the smell of diesel.
But by law rangers have to carry a rifle with them every time they go on a bush walk and there is a LOT more to the job than just learning about trees and animal behaviour. They have to know all about first aid and take shooting lessons regularly. They only have 3 bullets but it's usually enough. He said that they are taught *where* to show and to go straight for the brain as, especially in the case of an elephant, a bullet wouldn't be enough otherwise. There are also very strict rules as to when they are allowed to shoot. For a lion, because it will give you warning first, you must not shoot unless it is less than 10 meters away. If it is at 15 meters, you have to keep calm. If he shot one at 15m, our ranger would lose his licence.
South Africa is also very very strict about poaching and they have anti poaching patrols driving around the game parks regularly and everybody coming in (including the staff who work at the lodges) have to pay in a fee that helps fund the anti poaching patrols. Penalties are very high.
So, we're really learning a LOT and enjoying every drive. Our guides are SO passionate about their job. Jason has been doing this for 7 years and he still loves every minute of it because every day is different. He even films the best sightings for his own records. What is incredible about this particular park is that because our vehicle is a land cruiser we can get off the road very easily to follow the leopards as they walk around marking their territory. Sometimes we 'stalk' them for a good 15-20 minutes and they look surprisingly cool about it. They don't seem to care at all... even at night when we shine a spot light on them. Often they'll even roll on their backs and look SO relaxed and happy. I was watching the tail of the one we saw last night up a tree and she never even moved it once. And anyone who has a domestic cat will know that the first tell-sign of a cat being irritated is when they move the very end of their tail. Their whole body can be perfectly still but that little end tail moving is a sure sign that 'enough is enough'. But with the leopards, nothing.
We have been blessed with beautiful leopard sightings EVERY day on EVERY game drive, sometimes up to 3 different sightings.. so that's already 10+ in the last 3 days. Unheard of.
The guides know the cat so well that they will say 'oh this female is actually the grand mother of the one we saw this morning / or / this male is the father of the female who was up the tree yesterday' (and strangely, he will mate with her too when she is ready for it). We did worry about the side effects of this but he said they have quite a diverse genetic pool here so it's not too bad. However, in the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania where most of their lions are confined within the crater, their gene pool is much smaller and they are starting to see birth defects in cubs of lions that have had 'incest' basically.
As I said, it's a completely different world here. I've just enjoyed another outdoor shower before I came over to check my emails (and my Gmail a/c is still NOT working, eeek) and it's just not something you'd do in the UK - esp. in Sept.
Not ONE cloud in the sky, just perfect. It was even starting to feel a bit warmer last night, thankfully as it's much more pleasant then.
Righteeo, off to lunch now. Beautiful large deck overlooking the pond, we always have lunch outside, warm breeze on our faces, great meals (just the right amount, not too much - you are not hungry when it's boiling hot anyway) and superb view... looking out for animals that come and go (just as I was typing this as I was told the elephants have just arrived back, hooray. MUST go and wake Nathalie up then!). It feels like a dream. Nathalie is also now adamant that *everybody* should do a safari once before dying. Strangely, we haven't even argued ONCE in the last 5 days... and God knows we've had our fair share of ups & downs... but we just laugh things off. It's like you cannot get upset in an environment like this. You feel SO blessed to BE here that you just focus on *that* and all your little troubles just disappear.
I wish I could send you the feeling via this blog! Till next time...
posted by Sylvie at 11:28 AM
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