IT seemed hours before we saw anything else and, by then, Deidre had gone to sleep.
The secretary bird was either mad or myopic. He was putting his whole heart and soul into his mating dance, but I was the only spectator.
There was no sign of a lady secretary bird and he was addressing his whole attention towards a dead tree stump.
When we got there, we found that Satara was a dust bowl. Not many tourists ventured into the interior of the Park in those days, and ‘facilities’ was an unknown word. There was borehole water, but lighting consisted of a paraffin lantern (sign for one each at the gate) and a quick lesson from a game ranger in how to operate it.
The staff were fantastic, fully appreciating the trek their clients had made to get to them and the chef of the little restaurant was a genius. To cap it all, it was culling season, so we ignored the contents of our food box and lived like kings for two days on such delicacies as roast leg of impala, and buffalo steak monkey gland.
Comparatively speaking, Satara was rough, tough, wild and untamed.
The fences were not all that they should have been and hyena raided our dustbin during the night. The week before, a leopard had been seen prowling around the huts. Our first night we heard the hideous death-shrieks of a zebra – taken by lions right outside the camp gate. A decided improvement on the clanging of the emergency bell of the Hillbrow Fire Station. We were definitely in Africa now, but we still hadn’t seen an elephant. So we made a day trip still further north.
Olifants Camp is set on the edge of a steep escarpment, with a commanding view of the river and the opposite bank and the view was well worth the long drive.
Zebra, giraffe, buffalo, waterbuck and the elusive elephant all did their own thing on the far bank of the river, while we watched them through binoculars and read all about them in the book.
On the way back, we met the elephant. Somehow wild elephant seemed much bigger than the ones in the zoo, but they were busy tearing up bushes and took no notice of us. So, after some hesitation, I drove past them.
There are a lot of misconceptions about elephant, one of the main ones being that it is the male that is dangerous. Of course, you do get the odd rogue bull with toothache, but he is a solitary character and nothing to do with the matriarchal society of the elephant herd.
Here, grandmother rules supreme and all grown females are liable to take exception to anyone they think might endanger the young.
It was not until I was halfway past that I realised that they were not only to the right of us, they were to the left as well. I was driving slap through the middle of the herd and even I knew that was a foolish thing to do.
We got out of there pretty fast. Discretion is – and always will be – the better part of valour. Particularly when it comes to elephant!
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