No Scaredy-Cats Here

Every once in a while, everyone who spends time in the Africa bush witnesses something that absolutely astonishes them. When you get there for the first time, everything does that as you just cannot believe how amazing all the animals and their interactions with their habitat are. Gazing up at an elephant that is dwarfing your vehicle and the surrounding trees is something that really needs to be experienced first-hand. The sense of perspective an encounter like this offers cannot be topped by anything I know, except of course if you are approaching said elephant on foot on a walking safari, that’s a few other stories! But seeing all the animals, breathing in the smells of the bush, the freshness of the grass, the earthiness of the mud, hearing the exotic sounds of the birds that somehow sparks some recognition deep down in your psyche making you feel more at home, more alive than you ever have before. I would say that I speak for myself but time and again I have guided people and shared these experiences and they have had the exact same feelings as me, a deep connection to nature and a longing to see more. 

So then people spend more time in the bush and are privileged to see things that are actually very rare to see. On every safari I’ve guided, we have witnessed at least one thing that I have never seen before, every day is different, every drive or walk or boat trip is different. Each of these encounters, and all of the ones I’ve been lucky enough to see before, I cherish and they all fuse together to make an unforgettable experience. Occasionally, there is one sighting that takes everyone’s breath away. It might be because of the drama of it, the rarity of the species involved or how the entire story plays out. Sometimes it is all three of these.

I started my safari guiding career in an area of South Africa called Zululand, on the north-east coast. This is an area rich in biodiversity and was a fantastic place to start guiding. Having already spent a lot of time in the bush in various different areas of Botswana and South Africa, I thought I knew quite a lot. But spending all day every day in the bush opened my eye to all the different interactions that happen. And staying in the same reserve for a while allowed me to get to know individual animals and form bonds with them. I started seeing more and more as I became a better tracker and more in tune with the bush and the animals’ habits and personalities. There was one male wildebeest that held a territory on the northern section of the reserve, you knew you could find him with 100% certainty because he guarded his little section of the bush with his life, waiting and hoping that one day some female wildebeest would wonder through to his patch and he would finally be able to pass on his genes. Unfortunately for him, his ‘patch’ was probably the least desirable square of scrub with little vegetation in the whole reserve. He is probably still a bachelor now! 

Once I had got to know a lot of the bigger, easier to find animals, is was the smaller and medium sized rarer ones that became the proverbial pot-of-gold at the end of the rainbow / search. And of these, the smaller cats were a favourite of mine. There are two species of medium sized cats in the wild in southern Africa, the serval and the caracal. Servals prefer grassland where they can hunt small rodents, reptiles and flush out birds. Caracal tend to live up to their Zulu name (Indabushe – pronounced In the Bush, Hey!) and stick to thickets, bushes and all round difficult places to find them / great places for them to set up an ambush for slightly larger prey of birds and small mammals up to (usually) the size of small antelope. Seeing either of these species is a special occurrence and even now I get overly excited whenever we find one of these beautiful and elusive cats. 

A quick side note to this story, if you are a photographer or interested in photographing your safari, or anything you are doing in nature, never ever ever leave your lodge / base without your camera. Even if it’s an overcast day and the light doesn’t look right because you never know, you might just find something that is so special it doesn’t matter if it’s not in perfect light. Trust me, always take it.

This particularly astonishing morning started very un-astonishingly, with overcast grey skies reminiscent of my native United Kingdom making it feel a far cry from the sub-tropical African bush that I was actually in. It was waking up to this early morning greyness that made me think the flat light wouldn’t make any photo opportunity worth trying for this morning and so I made the erroneous decision to leave my camera behind as I got the vehicle ready. Picking up my guests we headed out into the reserve to see what we could find. Having been kept awake by lions the previous night I hoped that we could find them so they could redeem themselves for causing me a sleepless night. During my hours lying awake, I had at least been able to get a direction on their calls and their movements, it sounded like they were headed upstream along the dry riverbed. So it was down towards this riverbed that we headed, breezing past various colourful birds that all seemed to have been painted a couple of shades duller due to the lack of morning sun. 

As we neared the river, we came across a heard of beautiful impala, an antelope species about the size of a big deer and weighing around 50-70 kgs when fully grown. They often get overlooked on a safari as they are quite common (because they are really successful) throughout Africa but I feel they deserve more respect than they get. We stopped to watch this herd as another benefit of spending time with a prey species is that they can alert you to the presence of any predators, but only if they have seen them. Within a few minutes of stopping to watch this graceful heard of female impala, they exploded. Taking off in all directions; something had caused absolute pandemonium and I had no idea what it was. The only impala left standing in the place where there had been a herd of more than twenty had its neck angled towards the ground and a funny ginger smudge on it. After a split second of processing what we were seeing I realised that a caracal had pounced on this impala and now had its significantly bigger adversary by the neck. In what must have been less than a minute, the caracal had subdued the impala by crushing its windpipe and hanging on for dear life while the impala was kicking and writhing trying to get rid of it. Once dead, the caracal took some time to get its breath back, assess the situation to see if the noises made had attracted any of the bigger predators that would scare it away and look for an exit strategy with its meal of a lifetime. 

This ambush had played out only 20 metres away from the road which ran along the dry riverbed and very close to a dense thicket that I suspect the caracal had used as its cover for the attempt at breakfast. I cannot tell you how astonishing it was to witness this medium sized but powerful ginger cat catch and take down a full-grown female impala, but what happened next really made me think this whole thing was a dream. Just as me and my guests had settled down from seeing the action to biding our time for the caracals next move, I caught a glimpse of something moving along the road towards us in my rear-view mirror. Coming towards us was the reason for my tiredness that had long since disappeared to be replaced by the adrenalin from watching the caracal kill. Three big male lions, each of them around 12-15 times the size of the plucky caracal where headed straight for us, and it! Lions like to walk on roads as it is an easy path through the bush with no thorns to prick their feet and no bushes to have to plough through or go around. So along the road they came towards us. I moved just off the road so we were out of their way but could still see what happened when they got to our ginger friend. I felt so sorry for the caracal, it had probably never caught anything as big as the impala in its life and possibly wouldn’t again! I could only see this going one way, the lions would see either the cat or the dead impala, thank the caracal for handing them a light breakfast on a plate without having to do anything for it and that would be that, the caracal would have to run and the lions would get their share. 

This caracal had not read the script. As soon as it saw the lions, it astonished me again. It went and sat right on top of its prize, making it more visible if anything and refused point blank, to move. You could see the stubbornness in its eyes. As if to say ‘I’ve been plotting this kill my whole life, there is no way I am going to lose out to a bunch of lazy lions just because they are bigger than me’. And there it sat, like a statue, as the lions slowly sauntered within 30 metres, then 25 metres of it until they passed so close we were all sure one of the three lions would see or smell something. We sat there with bated breath, and the lions continued on their quest. They never even suspected a thing and went on patrolling their territory and trying to find an easy bite to eat, unawares they had missed the easiest opportunity they were likely to find. Once they were out of earshot, our brave caracal decided maybe it was time to live up to its Zulu name and take cover. It hopped off its prize, repositioned it and dragged it with incredible strength into the nearby dense thicket. We almost cheered with joy knowing that it was about to get the meal it deserved. Any caracal that can take on a full-grown Impala and stare down three male lions is definitely NOT a scaredy-cat.

A is for Aardvark

A is for Aardvark

You may well have heard of an aardvark considering it is at the very front of a dictionary as the first word in the English language, but very few people have seen them while on a safari. This is the story of how I saw my first, and second, aardvark.

I moved from the UK to South Africa to study at Rhodes University in the Eastern Cape. Being able to study Zoology in Africa, I mean, what better place? I was in my element. Part of my student visa that was granted stated that I had to keep up the good grades in my studies and not fail any of my courses otherwise my visa would be revoked, and I’d be on my way back to a wet and windy island that is the UK. Fair enough, don’t fail and I can stay in the continent I felt right at home on from the first second I arrived. However, the problem with this is that there are so many incredible places to explore, experiences to have, animals to see and things to do. Basically, there were a lot of distractions from my studies. Luckily for me, such was my passion for the subject that I soaked up it all up very quickly. Good thing otherwise the SA government would have had me on a plane quicker than you can say ‘Howzit, let’s have a braai!’. 

I quickly started filling my time between lectures following and identifying all the amazing and exotic birds I was seeing and finding chameleons in the shrubs. This was great to fill any free time around the university campus, but I soon wanted to venture further afield. Driving just out of town took me quickly into the arid interior of South Africa, and I had been learning about all the interesting animals that called this habitat home. Creatures like caracals, cape foxes, aardwolf and bat-eared foxes (as strange and cute as they sound, they are somehow even more so in person!). The problem with finding all these interesting new animals was that they are all mainly nocturnal, an adaptation to the water-scarce environment as moving around at night means they are cooler and therefore waste less water through evaporation. 

My solution – night drives! I started heading out around dusk, having bought a high-powered spotlight to use from the car - not thinking at all about how this might look to the local police. I quickly got pulled over and questioned by a police officer. He seemed to think I looked like someone scoping out a quiet house out of town to go and rob, or that I was a poacher looking for animals for bush meat (at least this accusation was in the right ballpark - I was looking for animals, though in reality this accusation couldn’t have been further from the truth). I carefully asked his permission to let me show him my camera as I was looking for animals, but only to capture them on film. Having just seen an aardwolf (small stripy fox-like mammal), I thanked the stars that I had some photos of it so I could show him exactly what I was doing. On seeing the pictures, he relaxed, which meant I relaxed, and we started talking about the animals he had seen out on these roads after dark. Turns out he had seen aardvarks on this very road a few times. 

Aardvarks had quickly become the number one target to see for me as they are rare, shy and mainly nocturnal as well as being really unique animals with a long pig-like snout, big bear claws, a long tail and a big stout and round body roughly the size of a big dog. Or a small pig. Their name in Afrikaans literally means ”Earth Pig”. Armed with my new information and the very comforting knowledge that I wasn’t about to be arrested and thrown into jail, I kept looking. Evening after evening, week after week. I had seen and photographed all the other animals I wanted to find but the rare aardvark kept eluding me. In all honestly, my nighttime excursions to try and find an aardvark were starting to affect my grades, as I would be exhausted in the day having spent hours out after dark looking for my new nemesis. I couldn’t keep this up much longer as I had exams coming up, and the possibility of deportation if I didn’t take them seriously.

My flatmates had by now taken an interest in what I was doing. Though they weren’t quite as passionate about finding an aardvark as I was, they did agree to come and help out with the spotlight a few times. Just before exams were about to start, we headed out one evening so we could all have some time off revising. The only bad thing about them coming with me was that they would try and call it a night long before I wanted to. We headed out and saw some cool animals like a huge male kudu (big antelope with long spiral horns) and the rare cape fox before the boys got bored and asked to turn around. Fine, I should be studying anyway I thought. As we headed back and were just about to crest the top of a hill, a big round bear ran across the road in front of us. I did a double and then triple take and slammed on the brakes. The animal was now furiously digging a hole to escape into next to the road only a few metres away. I threw open the car door and bundled out, forgetting my camera in the process. As I reached back into the car, my car door swung shut. Hard. And locked. Unfortunately for me my thumb was still in the way and the door had latched on it. I felt no pain at the time, I was just trying to pull away to go and finally see the aardvark I’d been searching for. Despite my best efforts, my thumb didn’t detach from my hand but one of my flatmates thankfully opened the door from the inside releasing me to go and photograph my quarry. 

It was incredible to see one of these amazing and bizarre animals up close and personal. It was bigger than I had thought but definitely had a touch of the ‘cute factor’, with its long nose and slightly hairy body. I managed a few photos before it disappeared down the hole it had quickly dug with its bear claws, and I headed back to the car. 

Now I felt my thumb. Throbbing as if I had smashed it with a sledgehammer. Within a couple of days, the nail and nailbed had died and fallen off. Two weeks of pain for 20 seconds with an aardvark, I’ll take it! As we headed back, just a couple of hundred metres up the road I saw a second aardvark! In the UK, there is an ironic saying stating that ‘you wait ages for a bus, and then three come along at once.’ This very much felt like that. Weeks of searching and then two in five minutes. How lucky were we?! Having found my aardvark, I switched focus back to my exams and happily passed them all, meaning I had skipped deportation - allowing me to pursue many more animal filled escapades throughout Africa. Lucky me!

Man management & the Mamba

Man-management & the Mamba 

 A black mamba raiding a woodpecker nest. This is a very rare sighting in the bush

There’s always one. That’s what they say. One person who is part of a team working together that always manages to fall asleep on the job... or not turn up at all!! Having someone like this as part of a hard-working team in one of the most remote parts of Africa, where all problems need to be solved on the ground through cooperation and creative thinking is a big issue. In Botswana, the government-imposed labour laws very much favour the work force over the company, something I am very much in favour of. This is great in ensuring fairness in working conditions and pay, but not so great when individuals use this to their advantage and let down their hard-working colleagues. The attitude of ...I’m going to go and sleep under that tree while you are all working because I don’t care, and you can’t fire me... sums this up quite well.

I had just moved to the iconic and awe-inspiring Okavango Delta and was chomping at the bit to get stuck in and explore my new home. If you’ve not visited the Okavango Delta, it is difficult to describe just how indescribable it is! Picture a lush oasis rising out of the dry Kalahari sands and expanding as far as the eye can see, even from one of the light aircraft used to make your way around it. It is almost completely flat (with about a 2-metre change in height across its entirety) and this is part of the reason it forms. The Kavango river flows down from the Angolan highlands and is contained within tectonic fault lines until these fall away and release it out into the flat northern part of the Kalahari desert. The influx of water into a desolate desert provides a seasonal lifeline to many of Africa’s iconic species, and even more that have rarely been heard of but deserve recognition. I am digressing from the story... The Okavango is somewhere you just have to go and experience first-hand. The juxtaposition of wet and dry habitats densely filled with animals makes it a wildlife enthusiast’s haven. Even if you are not a wildlife enthusiast, you cannot fail to have your breath taken away by its unquestionable beauty.

So, having arrived at the first camp I was going to manage in the Okavango Delta, the most important first step was meeting the team of wonderful people who made the camp run and ensured high quality safaris for everyone that came to visit this special place. The best way to meet the team, I believe, is to get stuck in to the job and make yourself one of the team. On my first morning in camp, it became clear there was an issue with one of the septic tanks. For those that don’t know, septic tanks are where toilet and water waste is collected and stored, and bacteria break everything down over time leaving the entire process clean, with water being the by product. However, sometimes detergents or other cleaning products enter in too large proportions and end up killing the bacteria meaning the waste is not broken down and the tank fills up. One of the tanks, deep underground, was overflowing and wastewater was now seeping up to the surface. We were very aware of our environmental impact on the Delta, so this needed to be fixed fast! Gathering our team of camp hands and guides, myself included, we started to dig up the tank so we could fix it. There were seven of us, six digging down to the large tank in 41-degree heat (105 Fahrenheit) while one of the camp hands ‘rested’ in the shade. What he was resting from I will never know because he hadn’t done anything! I asked him when he was going to be ready to start helping the rest of us and the reply was somewhere along the lines of ‘I’m not going to help because you can’t make me.’ At this point one of the guides told me this was normal behaviour for him and trying to do something about it would just waste time and energy and not change anything. Fine, the priority was the hole we were digging ourselves deeper into. 

But I did have a plan. As we were all side-tracked dealing with the septic tank, the usual day to day duties were being neglected. I gave our lazy camp hand a list of other duties that needed to be done and asked him to choose one to do. I thought this would kill two birds with one stone as he would be out of our way and therefore not cause disrepute within the team working hard, and it would get done at least one of the other jobs, with him feeling as though he had chosen to do it. He chose to go off and cut the long grass growing up under the almost kilometre long walkway that ensured safe passage for the guests walking between their rooms and the main area. All he needed was a long-handled scythe and he could keep himself busy for the rest of the day. Out of sight, out of mind and so we pushed on for the rest of the day, successfully digging out the septic tank, clearing it out and re-setting it so it worked again and then covered it up under 8 feet of sand and soil again. This had taken most of the day, so all the guests had departed for their afternoon game drive by the time we finished. I hadn’t spared a second thought for our lazy labourer and assumed, as he had not come back to us for any reason, he had got on with his job, finished it and gone off to find the best shade under a marula tree he could. 

It took the guests arriving back from their evening sundowners having seen lion, leopard and wild dog (lucky does not cut it!) before we knew something was wrong. The first radio call came in that there was no water for a shower quickly followed by a second and a third. The whole camp had no water! I was trying to think, how had we caused the water shortage, we were working on the wrong end of the water system, the outflow not the inflow! It was after dark, but we needed to sort the problem. Myself and some of the other managers all headed off to one end of the camp and two of the other staff members headed down to the bottom of the camp with us all planning on checking the water pipes for leaks and meeting up in the middle of the camp. When building a camp, the easiest and safest place to run water pipes is along the underside of a structure. If you bury them, elephants can smell and hear the running water and will dig them up to get to it. So, the pipes had been fixed to the underside of the walkways spanning the length of the camp. 

The two staff that had gone to the bottom of the camp quickly radioed us that there was a big leak in the pipe, underneath the walkway close to them. We were the other side of the u-shaped camp set up but needed to get to them quickly so we could fix the pipes and everyone, including us who had been in the ‘pit’ could have a desperately needed shower. We decided to take the shortcut across the island instead of going all round the walkways, one of the other managers in front leading the way as I was the newbie. We were all people from the bush except one and so were not worried about walking through it, even in the dark. I always kept myself aware of my surroundings and was confident I would know if we were about to stumble into a buffalo, hippo, big cat or elephant. Anything else we didn’t really need to be wary about. Or so I thought. 

We had just about reached a set of steps that would lead us up on to the walkway close to the leak and in the soft glow of moonlight I saw some movement ahead. The manager leading us had just put his foot onto the first step as I uttered one word in a sharp and commanding but not too loud manner. “Stop”. The way I said it immediately resonated with him and he did, mid step. The guys behind me became panicked. ‘What can you see?’ ‘Is it a Leopard?’ ‘Are we going to be OK?!’ I mustered a muted ‘Shut up and stand still!’ At once, everyone else saw what I had spotted, a large black mamba was starting to unfurl itself and glide out from underneath the first step to the walkway. Now everyone was frozen and silent. I’d like to believe it was because they were listening to me, but it could have been pure fear rooting them to the spot. The snake slithered past us within a meter, well within striking distance but we hadn’t harmed it, trodden on it or cornered it, so I knew (hoped!) we were going to be OK. Once it had passed us, everyone rushed up onto the walkway and adrenaline coursed through our veins. Had I not noticed the movement and gotten everyone to stop, I am sure someone would have stood on the snake. Then we would have been in trouble. 

The black mamba is the most feared snake in Africa. So much so that almost every snake identified by non-experts is labelled as a mamba and so is bad news and fair game to be dispatched, in their view. Mambas are unquestionable the most venomous snake in Africa possessing a potent (mostly) neurotoxin that shuts downs their preys (or any other mammals) nervous system. The human body functions unconsciously. We do not have to think about taking a breathe. Our heartbeats are not regulated by our conscious though. It is our nervous system that regulates these vital functions and it is these that can quite quickly start to shut down after a mamba bite. Mambas have developed this venom to incapacitate their prey as quickly as possible after a bite so they do not lose their meal. It takes them quite a lot of energy and effort to replace their venom stores so they do not want to waste it unless they know they will get a meal from it. It is for this reason that mamba bites are actually very rare. As we managed to unwittingly demonstrate, they would much rather slither off out of the way than bite for no reason. As long as they are not feeling under attack, we as humans, are safe and can instead marvel at these amazing animals that deserve their place in the ecosystem just as much as any other animal. A big plus for the mamba is they are excellent rat catchers keeping local rodent populations in check.

Moving back to the task at hand, we went under the walkway to the leaking pipe, which had very obviously been cut with a scythe, and we fixed it quite easily. Whether the pipe had been cut on purpose to spite us or whether the lazy labourer was just over-zealous with his scything I will never know, but he very nearly caused a nasty black mamba bite. 

This story has a happy ending, all the guests and everyone who had dug up the septic tank got a lovely and hot, albeit slightly late shower, and all that Africa could throw at us for that day was washed off, resulting in another memorable story for the campfire.

The Invisible Leopard

The Invisible Leopard

 The irregular markings of Obi the leopards rosettes help him blend in to dappled shade.

More often than not, while guiding a safari, I receive an answer to a standard question I ask (are there any specific species that you want to try and see) that fills me with both trepidation and excitement. That answer, is my favourite animal, the leopard. The excitement comes from me wanting to see leopard just as much as, if not more than my guests, as I think they are such majestic, clever and beautiful animals that embody the true wildness I feel while out on safari. The dread comes from knowing they are probably the most difficult of the ‘usual suspects’ to find in the jungles and savannahs of Africa. 

Their magnificent coats, beautifully disrupted with black rosettes on top of their tawny, tan undercoat have the most remarkable ability to blend in to almost any background on the savannah. Couple this natural and portable camouflage with an elusive demeanour and penchant for solitude and you have an animal that is very hard to find. They exist because of their stealth. If you were to rank the large carnivores of Africa against each other in a hierarchy, the leopard is almost at the bottom, only able to overpower the lithe but fast Cheetah. Lions, Hyenas & Wild dogs will all steal a leopard’s kill and even dispatch them if they can catch them. So being able to hide from other predators is important. They are ambush hunters only able to sustain a fast sprint for a short distance, so they have to stalk their prey and get very close if they are to have any chance of succeeding. All this would lead you to believe they have it very tough in the wild and are probably not very successful. But because they are so stealthy, so clever and most importantly so adaptable, they are actually the most successful big cat in Africa and the most widespread big cat in the world. 

So, strangely the most common big cat with the most beautiful looks – that is no doubt the most sought after – is also the hardest to find. Sounds like a headache for a safari guide, right? I have been lucky enough to spend hundreds of hours with leopards in Tanzania, Botswana, Kenya & South Africa, and many hundreds more tracking and trying to find them. Through all this experience and my affinity (obsession is perhaps too strong a word!) for leopards, I have come to be really quite good at finding them – or knowing how to find them. So much so that I even gained the nickname ‘Bwana Chui’ (the Swahili translation for Mr Leopard) in Tanzania. But with all this time spent with my favourite animal, I am still fascinated and surprised by them on a regular basis. I once visited a tree the morning after seeing a leopard in it the previous evening, having looked in the tree and seen that it had gone, to try and pick up its tracks and see where it had gone. Upon getting out of the vehicle and walking under the tree, I quickly realised I had not checked the tree properly and the leopard had been well camouflaged and asleep on a branch. It literally fell out of the tree with a crash of snapping branches growling and snarling as it landed on the ground about 5 metres away from me and my failing heart! I really must double check trees that I know to have recently had leopards in before I walk underneath them, I said to myself once my adrenaline levels had dropped back down from Kilimanjaro levels. 

The time I have been most in awe of these amazing creatures, and the reason for the title of ‘The Invisible Leopard’ for this tale, came while I was guiding some great friends of mine, Helen, Wally, Kyra & Catherine in Tanzania. Soon after picking them up from the airstrip I asked the question I both look forward to and dread. We had all already completely hit it off, so I felt comfortable asking if there was anything specific that they wanted to try for. Helen replied that she had been to Africa a couple of times before but always missed out on seeing a leopard. The game was on! 

There are no guarantees in the bush while you are on a safari. But as a guide you can concentrate on certain areas / times of day / specific techniques that you think will give you a great chance of seeing a particular sought-after species. An example, if leopards are on the wish list, is to head out to a ridge in the cool, pre-dawn air and instead of just driving around, switch off the vehicle and listen to the sounds coming from the valleys below. As leopards return from their nocturnal forays, they often catch the eye of the early morning risers such as vervet monkeys and some of the many game bird species in Africa. These prey species are very quick to sound the alarm, and narrow down the search area. Once you have this vocal focus point, it becomes a lot easier to track, predict and spot the spotty cat, often wandering through the thicker riverine vegetation. 

But this is not what put us onto our elusive quarry this time. Having searched already for a couple of days, we were checking trees in an under-utilised area of the reserve when something reddish caught our eye. It didn’t look right and on closer inspection it turned out to be an impala carcass, fresh, that had been taken up an Acacia tree. There is only one animal that could have done this, a leopard. We quickly backed away to a decent distance where we could watch the tree and the carcass but where we were far enough back that the leopard would, hopefully, feel safe enough to return to its kill. We settled down to wait, all staring intently at the fork in the tree with the impala wedged in it. It looked like it might be a long wait, but we were all so focussed on this great chance of seeing a leopard that no one gaze was going to waiver, 10 eyes all with one goal, to be the first one to spot it. After about 30 minutes, my mind was playing tricks of me. Over-utilisation of my brain and wishing, waiting for our elusive friend. I had to second guess myself, was the impala still there? It looked redder on the tree earlier when we had initially spotted it from a similar distance. I turned to ask my friends ‘Can you guys still see the impala?’ Actually, no! was the unified response. Anticipation and hope quickly turned to confusion and consternation. I had been staring, right at it, the whole time! How had I missed something happening? Had the impala fallen out of the tree on its own accord? Had the leopard returned for its lunch (it was late morning by now), swished its tail at us and disappeared without any of us spotting it? Am I the worst safari guide ever?! I mean, at least if you’re not going to see a leopard, don’t dangle the prospect of one tantalisingly close to your guests… 

I released the brakes and we drifted, almost silently down the hill towards the tree. Every inch closer we got, the higher my stress levels went as I could now see there was no impala in the tree. My mind was not playing tricks on me. I had missed it. We had missed it! With a very quick scan around the base of the tree, we found the carcass again now, having been dragged into a small bush and fed on again. This leopard was literally feeding on the carcass just in front of us at the base of the tree we were staring at and we never knew. Never even had an inkling. There were scratch marks on the tree which showed us what had happened. It had returned to the tree, slinking undetected through the waist high grass, scaled the far side of the tree using it as cover from us and, with what we could only imagine was a lightning quick manoeuvre, hooked a claw into the impala and pulled it back down the far side of the tree and under the bush. At least now there was a certain sense of awe, coolness and respect for the stealth and intelligence we had just witnessed – though not quite witnessed, from the leopard, mixed in the with crushing disappointment of being so close yet so far to finding our number one target as we drove back to the lodge.

Spot the leopard. A great example of how they can elude even the sharpest of eyes.

We needed a plan, so we came up with two options, either head out to the more usual areas that I found leopards and try to find a different one, or go back to the tree with plenty of G & Ts, a bottle of wine and some freshly cooked snacks and sit it out as the temperature dropped and the sun started to set. Drinks, snacks and the added attraction of sitting near an impala carcass very easily won out so we headed back. This time eyes really wide open. As we got to the vicinity of the tree, we slowed down and switched off the engine, just trying to roll as quietly as possible into place. Eagle-eyed Catherine and Kyra on the backseat beat me to it and whispered those incredible words ‘Leopard! There! In that tree..’ In the adjacent tree to ‘impala-gate’ was a stunning and curious leopard cub. As he watched our approach, I felt a huge sense of relief as a wave of excitement and joy washed over me, extended from the four amazing accomplices behind me (ironically, you don’t always get nature lovers on safari, so guiding people who love the wild and take note of what is going on as much as I do makes it even more special). We had achieved our goal. This was quite obviously not the leopard that had carried the impala carcass into the tree in the first place, so the obvious conclusion was a mother and cub. Though we could only see the cub. He ate some more (the carcass had been put up into the new tree) and lounged between the branches as the sun slipped slowly behind him into the Great Rift Valley. At dusk, he descended the tree to come and investigate us, drinks in hand, having spent the most wonderful evening with this obliging leopard. There is an unwritten rule between guides in Africa that the first person to see a leopard gets to name it. He had never been seen before and so Catherine & Kyra got to name him. They went with Obi (short for Obi-wan Kenobi) as he was the young padawan of a clearly exceptional Jedi of a leopard, his mother. We never saw her at all throughout this entire day, though I am 100% sure she kept a close eye on us, firstly while we were watching her kill, and then an even closer eye while we were observing her cub. 

The invisible leopard, mother of Obi, shows just how frustrating and rewarding looking for a leopard is. To everyone that has been on safari and spent time with a leopard, you will realise just how special they are. To everyone that has not had that pleasure yet, whether you’ve been on safari and missed a leopard or you are yet to go on safari, I envy you. You have that incredible moment of when you first lay eyes on the dappled coat, long tail and burning eyes still to come, and it will stay with you forever. 

The eyes that look into your soul and fix you in the fraction of a second that lasts a lifetime.

The Kenyan Escape - My Covid-free Adventure

So, I have just got back to the UK after 1 month in Kenya. I cannot tell you how amazing it felt to escape the doom and gloom of Covid and politics and answer the calling of the African bush. Below I'll let you know about some of the highlights of the trip, but first I have to address the elephant in the room...

Covid-19

Covid-19 restrictions here in the UK have meant a 2 week self-isolation period for me on arrival back to the UK. Kenya and Tanzania both require a negative covid test (PCR) taken within 96 hours of arrival into the country and a passenger locator form that takes 2 minutes to fill in. That is it. From check in at heathrow on cheap, flexible date return tickets (on British Airways) through to arriving in Kenya, everything was very smooth and really easy. In detail, this is what I had to do: Book the flight tickets which are flexible dates as standard meaning you can change the dates at no extra charge with ease if needed. Apply online for Kenyan visa, all pretty straightforward but you can do this on arrival (just having it ahead of time means it's really quick when you get to Kenya). Have a Covid-19 test done within 4 days of when you expect to arrive in Kenya. This is the only possible issue I could see as some flight routes especially from the states can take a while to get you to Kenya. Though now most labs are able to get you results within 24 hours of the test being taken so this is very doable. An email receipt of results is all they want to see, but this will be checked a few times (I was checked 3 times airport-airport) so having it printed out was a good idea. At check-in in London, they gave me a link to an online locator form for Kenya. This took about 2 minutes to fill in and gave you an individual code straight to your phone. The next stage was mandatory mask wearing for the duration of the flight (except for when eating) which is not too bad, and rather that in the interests of self protection. Interestingly there has been a study on the likelihood of catching covid-19 on a flight which you can find here... Getting into Kenya was very quick and efficient. We were let off the plane in small, socially-distanced groups and then just had to produce our covid negative test results, the unique locator code from the online form (on a phone is fine) and then the Kenya visa as normal. Once through the airport you are then either in a private vehicle with the driver wearing a mask or then out into the vast open spaces and fresh air of the African wilderness.

Laikipia

Back to the trip, first stop was to head into central Kenya and an area known as Laikipia just north west of Nanyuki. More specifically Laikipia Wilderness Camp. This is a particularly good area for leopard and wild dog (much more on the dogs later!) as well as elephants and different activities such as walks and bike rides in the bush. On the first night there we were all spoiled with amazing views of a pack of wild dog hunting small antelope. Little did we know the best was yet to come. On the way back to camp after dark we spotted a leopard in the spotlight. Quick as a flash it sprinted after a pair of dik-dik (smallest antelope in Africa) but missed them. I managed to get about two seconds of it on film, but it was so quick it was difficult to tell what was going on. After the failed attempt, we followed him for another 5 minutes through the bush until he flushed an african hare from its hiding place and caught it with lightning quick, cat-like (!) reflexes. It was incredible to see a leopard kill from start to finish, something that has taken me 10 years in the bush to see properly. My luck was in this evening it seems as while he was wandering off, a dik-dik ran from its hiding place across in front of the leopard. Who swiftly took the opportunity to upscale his dinner and set off in a short lived pursuit. The upshot of this was one big male leopard with a pile of options for his dinner. He chose the larger item that was the dik-dik and slunk off into the bush to enjoy it in peace. What a start to the trip and what a way to take my mind of Covid and the various perils it has brought about.

Leopard with dik-dik kill in Laikipia

Meru National Park

Next up was a trip into Meru National Park, home of the famous lioness Elsa back in the 1950's. Meru is much hotter and drier than most of Kenya but it is a very diverse park with open savannah's intersected by rivers and the thicker, taller vegetation that grows along the waterways. There were some amazing bird species seen here with things like golden pipit and ground hornbill being highlights. There is a specific and well secured rhino sanctuary within Meru National Park meaning you are virtually guaranteed great sightings of these rare and iconic animals. We also had some good elephant sightings and saw hippo and crocodiles while fishing for dinner in one of the rivers. Proceed with caution!

Me trying to catch dinner in Meru NP, yes there are crocs and hippos watching!

We did manage to find some lions after three days of seeing tracks everywhere including going right past our camp! Though it did take hearing some monkeys alarm calling at a predator to then give us the direction to go and look in. At the end of the search were three lions, a real treat after putting a lot of effort into finding then. Possibly descendants of Elsa, or maybe I'm being a bit nostalgic. Either way, it's always a good day when you end it with a lion sighting!

Masai Mara

On to the world famous Masai Mara. One of my (new) absolute favourite places on Earth! Now I know it is never going to be as quiet as it currently is again in our lifetimes, but wow it was indescribable how amazing the quality of animal viewing and the absolute lack of other vehicles was! If travel is at all in your mind for the near future, I would say grab the opportunity to visit the Masai Mara with no one else there while it exists this one special time. Having spent a week there, I can't even come close to describing all the incredible wildlife sightings. But just to name a few: 4 lion hunts from start to finish, 1 crossing of thousands of wildebeest and zebra dodging crocodiles, 3 different cheetah, more elephants than you can shake a mouse at, a black rhino mother and calf, more hippo, giraffe, zebra, buffalo and even lions than I can count, 1 lion kill where the mum caught a zebra then went back to find her 2-3 month old cubs and brought them back to us, and then to top it all off, an hour with a very relaxed female leopard and her 3 month old cub.

Having headed out early from the lodge, we were specifically looking for leopard and headed straight to the known territory of a female we knew who had a cub. Female leopards have small territories and will stay especially close to one area if they have a small cub. Saying that, if a leopard doesn't want to be found, you won't see it (though you can be sure it will have seen you!). Our luck was in that morning as in the heart of her territory, there she was. With her cub walking along the track and avoiding the long, dew-laden grass next to them. We watched them both for almost an hour, playing with each other, grooming each other, we even had the little cub learning how to stalk some spurfowl (a small, ground-dwelling game bird) though her over-excited tail gave the game away here! I've posted the video on my instagram account, @sam_w_guide . Benja, my local guide, told me a sighting this good of a leopard for so long in a normal year would have attracted a lot more vehicles, which would potentially have changed the dynamic and the leopards may have been more reluctant to come out into the open. But as it was, we topped out at 4 cars. It really was unbelievable!!

The most amazing leopard sighting in the Masai Mara with almost no-one else there.

I have to quickly mention a real stand-out lodge here in the Mara, it has gone right to the top of my list of best lodges in Africa (slightly behind Mwiba where I was Head Guide, of course!) and that is Angama Mara. It is truly spectacular and surpassed the very high expectations I had of it. Have a look and let me know your first thoughts. They are about to launch an exclusive use mobile tented camp which will go into the real quiet and unexplored corners of the Masai Mara. I've seen the tented camp and can say categorically that it looks amazing.

Amboseli

After the most amazing Mara experience it was off to another iconic park in Amboseli in the shadow of mount Kilimanjaro. Amboseli is all about the huge number of elephants that call the park home. It is generally a very flat landscape with the impressive Kilimanjaro looming above you, ever-present (as long as it's not too cloudy) making for some fantastic photographic opportunities. The rules in the park itself are very strict in terms of staying on the road and not being able to go on walks etc. But there are a couple of great private conservancies that border the park that have a lot more freedom in terms of photographic opportunities. I was able to get out of the vehicle and on the ground as a herd of elephants drifted past me and off into the setting sun. Amboseli as a park really is amazing, but for me it's a little bit one dimensional. If you want a fantastic elephant specific experience or the iconic views of Kilimanjaro, then you have to go. But if either of these aren't something you really really want to include, you can get amazing elephant experiences in other places. So, a photographer's dream, but not for everyone.

Amboseli elephants cruising into the sunset

Laikipia Take Two

Back up to central Kenya and Laikipia again. The drive from Amboseli and up meant I got to take in Africa's two highest mountains in one day, sunrise over Mount Kilimanjaro and then sunset glinting off a very snow-capped Mount Kenya. I met a few people who have climbed both now, a very intriguing prospect for the future for me. I digress, back to Laikipia and a personal quest for myself of seeing one of the ultra-rare melanistic (black coloured) leopards that inhabit the area. I unfortunately missed out again having visited the area last year, but two separate other groups did see one of the leopards while I was there. I'm very happy for them and not at all jealous. Moving on though onto one of the most incredible wildlife experiences of my life. The pack of wild dogs that regularly hang around Laikipia Wilderness Camp have been followed, filmed and studied for years. They are the last surviving pack from a bad bout of canine distemper that wiped out a lot of dogs in central Kenya back in 2017. So they are a special pack of the rarest large carnivore in Africa that are quite used to people and being watched and because of this, they just get on with whatever they are doing, they don't change their behaviour because of humans. One morning we found them early (though they had already hunted and had full bellies) at a waterhole where they were drinking, playing and generally relaxing after their early morning success. With the backing of Steve the owner knowing my extensive background in guiding in Africa, he dropped us off out of the vehicle across the opposite side of the waterhole and reversed a few metres back. This was so we could lie down on the ground and try for some low angle photographs of the dogs. This is not a regular occurance and was only possible due to where the dogs were and how they were behaving. It was incredible. Soon after they saw these 'new' objects on the ground they came straight over to investigate. They were sniffing around us until, curiosity satisfied, they went back to playing their games all around us. The puppies were playing and the adults were running around, jumping into the waterhole and generally having a lot of fun.

The wild dogs playing around me. There are no recorded attacks on humans.

I was absolutely in my element loving every second. They played around for about 20 minutes before slowly drifting off to find some shade to rest under for the hotter part of the day. There are a couple of photos that I am quite happy with from this experience, though admittedly I still need to go through them all properly. Below is one I am quite happy with and have entered in a couple of wildlife photography competitions. Let me know if you like it as maybe I'm a bit biased? But I do think it's good!

One of the better 'low-angle' shots I got.

Lewa and the Matthews Range

After another unforgettable time in Laikipia, it was time to head further north around the base of Mount Kenya and into a favourite park called Lewa. They are very big on rhino conservation and have been so successful they are needing to extend the park and try and drop some fences into the surrounding conservancies. The game viewing here is always amazing with rhino guaranteed, really good lions, elephant, buffalo etc as well as the special 'northern 5' of Kenya (somali ostrich, beisa oryx, gerenuk, grevy's zebra & reticulated giraffe). All of this is seen with a spectacular backdrop of Mount Kenya from quite close up. Another dream place for some incredible photographic opportunities.

A rhino known as 'Floppy' in Lewa with Mount Kenya in the background.

From Lewa it was on up further north, past Samburu National Reserve, to the barely explored Matthews Range of mountains. These are an incredibly wild and authentic range of mountains with very few people around. The communities that do live around here are the real deal in terms of continuing with their normal traditions and lifestyles. This is where the fabled 'singing wells' are. In the dry season, people dig down, sometimes metres deep into dry river beds to find the water underneath. This is mainly to water their cows and they sing to their cows who are then attracted to the wells hence the singing wells. In addition, there are some really good leopard sightings to be had but also some great elephants around. Better than this is the chance to go and explore, on foot, some really remote and unmapped wilderness areas. This is a real rarity and something I absolutely loved. There is a brand new camp, exquisitely finished, called Kalepo Camp. This really is a special place, off on it's own and with the ability to go and walk up into the mountains, explore and swim in some mountain streams and see the milky way appear over you in a dry river bed while sipping on a G&T with zero light pollution. I really found this to be a very special place.

Me exploring the Matthews range from Kalepo Camp.

Photographing the view from a room at Kalepo. The scenery is stunning.

And now I sit here, back in the UK with grey skies and driving rain thinking about this last adventure and very much looking forward to the next one and more!

I hope you've enjoyed reading a few highlights from my latest trip to Africa. Let me know if you have any questions about some of the places I went to or how I found international travel. I'm always very keen to talk about my passions; safaris, wildlife, photography and Africa. On that note, if you think any of your friends or family might be interested in reading about my adventures, please let them know where to find this. I know how much even just reading about adventures in Africa can lift spirits.