Little Africa
Mail on Sunday, 7 May 2006
Wendy Gomersall spots some of Zambia’s smaller – but no less bewitching - wildlife on a walking safari in remotest Africa
A SLIGHT rustle in the tall, dry grass to our right brings us to an abrupt halt and, like the zebra, puku and wildebeest around us, we're all suddenly scared and stare anxiously in its direction.
It's amazing how quickly our little herd of humans has bonded; how, automatically and en masse, we now just know when we need to be still, tread carefully, stop chattering; like twitchy impala, we've developed some kind of group telepathy, a slightly raised eyebrow or exaggerated opening of the eye replacing snorts and tail wagging as methods of communicating that something's most definitely up.
Is it a pride of stalking lionesses, a leopard maybe, or grumpy Cape buffalo preparing to trample all over us? Whatever it is, we can only watch and wait...
Go on a game drive in Africa and basically, you park your butt on the seat of the four-wheel-drive, then simply sit back as you’re ferried about in search of animals.
It’s still thrilling of course, and you can get very close to them. But wildlife remain pretty unimpressed by your presence; they see you all, tourists and vehicle, largely as one great lump of unimportance. Your existence as an individual is not registered
But go on a walking safari and animals notice you. Suddenly, you’re connected with, and part of the natural world, not some separate being observing from an elevated platform of assumed superiority.
Suddenly, you’re back down to earth, part of the pecking order - and, scarily, you’re all too aware of just how defenceless our human bodies are.
But with the realisation of vulnerability comes the kind of adrenaline rush that attracts people to extreme sports.
What’s more, you get to see little Africa, not just small animals and insects, but life in exquisite detail – the perfect pawprints of a tiny elephant shrew, intricate skins that snakes have shed, a single brilliant blue feather of a kingfisher…
Robin and Jo Pope run one of Africa’s oldest and best safari companies, based in Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park, which itself has been hailed as the continent’s finest wildlife sanctuary. It represents the kind of untainted, raw Africa early explorers like Livingstone must have encountered on their first forays. These days, though, you don't have to rough it at all.
At Robin Pope Safaris' three small, highly personalised but very comfortable camps - Nkwali, Tena Tena and Nsefu - they offer a proper, gutsy safari experience: awesome animals aplenty – elephant, buffalo, zebra, giraffe, hippo, lion, leopard, baboon, hyena – in a remote, unspoilt environment.
As on most safaris, there’s ample opportunity to go on game drives; you are surrounded by animals – but not hordes of other tourists – at all times.
But Robin Pope Safaris is also renowned for its five-night walking safaris, travelling between mobile camps beside the beautiful Mupamadzi river in the remote north of the park.
If you’ve been on safari before, you’ll understand how enormous the difference is, and it’s not just that your legs ache at the end of the day.
From Nkwali, RPS’s main camp, it’s a four-six hour drive to Camp One, made longer by stops for assorted animal spotting and to swat tsetse flies. (The tsetses here are absolute pains; take extra precautions, like anti-histamine tablets, if, like me, you react badly to insect bites. The strain hereabouts is not known to carry sleeping sickness, however).
Everything is already set up – walk-in tents, al fresco dining table, campfire lounge – by the time we arrive, so after lunch and a snooze, we put on boots (comfort is a must; take well worn footwear), long-sleeved shirt and trousers (to protect from spiky plants as well as aforementioned tsetses) and head out on our first wild walk.
The schedule is simple: rise at 5.15am, breakfast round the campfire. 6km or so walk, lunch, lie down; tea at 3.15pm, 3km or so evening walk, sometimes with sundowners and collected by vehicle. Shower, dinner, crash out.
A maximum of just six guests is allowed on each safari. This means we soak up an astonishing volume of bush knowledge from our expert guide Jason, and aforementioned bonding occurs quickly.
Generally, we walk in single file, escorted at the front by an armed Government scout (we have eagle-eyed Pyela), followed by a professional guide from Robin Pope Safaris (the inexhaustibly knowledgeable Jason, or even Robin Pope himself).
At the rear, back-up scout John carries a precious backpack stuffed with vital provisions – glorious homemade cake and tea-making equipment - as well as safari bits and bobs such as a panga, useful for whacking open exotic fruit like mini coconuts for us to prod and sniff.
So we set off, eyes wide, nerves buzzing, ears pricked…
Generally, we are not scared exactly – we soon learn that there aren’t ferocious beasties hiding behind each bush waiting to rip us to shreds. This time, that rustling grass turns out to be just a hornbill, far more worried about us than vice versa. But it is as if someone has turned up the volume on all our senses.
With no vehicle grumbling under you, you can appreciate the sounds of the bush, not just distant hippo honks, but the snap of dry twigs, rustle of reeds in the breeze, even the satisfying crunch of impala droppings as you tread on them.
Foreign smells regularly float up your nostrils, not just stinky buffalo, but warm grass as heat hots it up and the fragrant blossom of Natal mahogany.
You can touch: tap the tip of a porcupine’s quill; hold a messy nest blown down by the wind; wave your hand over a termite mound opening to feel damp warmth rising from inside.
Strictly under guide supervision, you can even taste: sucking a stick of grass aids concentration and stops your mouth drying out.
But most of all, you can really look – and not just at the heels of the walker in front of you! You have to be fairly steady on your pins to negotiate the uneven cracked earth and sandy riverbanks, but so what if you trip.
(An ability to stand on one leg to facilitate the removal and reapplication of boots and socks for crossing rivers is useful, though not compulsory. John has towels in his rucksack.)
On the ground, you notice the change in landscape. Africa is not all open savannah, though we do walk over familiar vast grass plains, where Jason tries to teach us how to tell kudu from puku from impala – all antelopes to me!
There are shrublands and wooded dells, too, where we pick up fascinating nuggets of petrified wood and boulder-studded hills littered with stone chips fashioned into tools by ancient man.
We see aardvark poo packed with ant shells; fluff from a bushbuck’s tail, the only evidence left from a lion kill; the dung-ball home of big black beetle; the bleached skull of long-dead zebra.
Jason lets a tsetse suck blood from his finger; Pyela shows us how to feed the nasty little flies to funnel web spiders, who gallop up from their under-earth lairs to drag them down to their deaths. Fabulous, so much more satisfying than just spraying them with insecticide.
We do see big game too: Cape buffalo, wildebeest, Roan antelope. Prowling quietly, we get quite close to warthogs snorting round some tasty roots.
In fact, so enraptured are we, we’re practically on top of the giant crocodile dozing on the bank before John lets out a warning whistle.
It does not flinch. We examine it inch by inch – with binoculars, of course: the surprising green, yellow and black colouring, the dark eye, the slight smile showing regiments of pointed teeth.
We tourists are convinced it is dead; oh no it’s not, says Jason, who proves it by taking one step forward. A chilling growl and thrash of the head has us hopping it, much to the amusement of Jason, Pyela and John.
Back at camp, the water has been heated ready for our bucket showers, and dinner is well under way. Mobile camp caterer Gina and chef Dixon conjure up wonderful food – tasty tarts and casseroles, fantastic desserts in an underground oven without thermostat; Dixon just ‘knows’ when it’s ready.
After dinner, sometimes there’s a game of cards or conversation, but tonight bed beckons by 9 o’clock.
But on the way back to our tents one night, something’s scuffling scarily in the dark undergrowth. It’s hard to see how ferocious a predator we face. Has mega-croc followed us home?
Then, a titchy-tiny furball bowls across the dirt path in front of us. It’s an elephant shrew. He stops still, caught in our torchlight - we imagine him breathing a sigh of relief, oh, it's just those humans - then bundles off into the bush, leaving titchy-tiny pawprints behind for us to marvel at all over again.
