Sitting here now looking at this blank page i really wish i had kept a diary of all my bush experiences from day 1…but i didn’t, i didn’t keep any sort of diary or record but the memories are so good that to a large extent they are still as fresh as a daisy in my mind and i should not have any problems remembering and writing them down .
From here on in i will have great fun logging all my safaris and bush experiences even if no one but me ever reads them. They say that the secret of writing is to practise like everything else, which is good as i have plenty of things that i want to write about to give me that practise.
I first came to South Africa in June 1981, it seems like an eternity ago now that i have written the date, but in many ways, it seems like yesterday. It is another story altogether as to why and how i came to be here, i was 25 and as wild and free as they come. I certainly didn’t come for the bush even though i had known and enjoyed the wilderness in other parts of the world, in fact i did not really discover it for several months after i arrived. I knew all about the night life though!!…wine, woman and song. Life experience and adventure is all i was really interested in…maybe i wil tell those stories later, i certainly had it all.
I guess it must of been towards the end of 1981 when i first experienced the true African bush, although during my early days in Johannesburg i had a few trips into the countryside in the surrounding areas where i had my first taste… baboons, snakes, crocodiles, buck and other wildlife as well as, of course, the rough, rugged but exquisitely beautiful countryside.
I was on a road trip to a place called Phalaborwa, far in the North East of the country on the edge of the Kruger park and nestling into the surrounding bush. I used to love driving up there, through the Drakensburg , places like Long Toms Pass, the Blyde River canyon, Pilgrims Rest, Gods Window, all long way round routes, but it really didn’t matter then, everything was exciting and new and i wanted to see it all. Whether i took the Northern route through the Magoebaskloof and the sub tropics of Tzaneen or the Eastern way over or around the mountains and up through the bush lands of Hoedspruit, it was always a fantastic trip, and i made it many times in my first few years in the country.
I often stayed in a place called Hippo Pools in Mica which is about 50 Klicks south of Phalaborwa, either camping on the banks of the Olifants River or staying in one of the small old rondavels that were available at about R2.00 per night!!…in those days about 65 English pence and at todays rate about 15 pence!! Seems strange when you cannot even buy one egg for that amount today.
Hippo pools is a wonderful spot, far off the road which in itself was just a quiet bush road in the middle of nowhere, one travelled for several klicks along a bumpy dirt track that was heavily corrugated by wind and rain and twisted and turned every which way in order to reach the old homestead, talk about Out of Africa.
A lovely old Afrikaanse couple lived there, seemingly stuck in a time warp, especially to a London boy like me. They were tough old folk, make no mistake. One night the old man shot at me with his rifle because i was taking some firewood from his stack around midnight, i am not sure to this day whether he really thought i was a thief or whether he knew it was me and was just giving me a fright. Whichever it was, I’ll never forget the sound of that bullet zipping over past my ear!!…i was camping down on the river bank that night and woodless, i legged it back to camp pretty rapidly i can tell you. I had a couple of ‘mild’ run ins with them over a three year period.
It was a gorgeous spot though, although i say they lived in a time warp, they had put in a huge pool which was well maintained and perfect for the temperatures up there. Even in the late evening it was a beautiful place to have the chance to swim or just get wet. Underneath the syringa trees outside their stoop the old lady would serve homemade lemonade or tea, and often i would sit there drinking lemonade playing with the ‘resident’ monkeys. Naughty as hell, you had no chance eating there as the buggars would pinch the food off the plate at the slightest opportunity.
On one of my very first trips there i was staying in one of the rondavels. One night there was a hell of a commotion outside in the early hours and i didn’t have a clue as to what was going on. It was quite scary actually, it could been anything from several bandits trying to break in to a herd of elephants stomping around. Peering through the corner of the back window i came virtually face to face with a bloody great Hippo!! Those things are huge at any distance but close up they take your breath away, especially if you are crouched down looking through a crack in the curtain and the thing is just a couple of metres away and higher than you with the moon in the background shining behind its head. I got the feeling that it could of just as easily barged into the rondavel through the wall. After a while and a lot of bashing about eating the old ladies flowers and plants he stomped off. I say stomped because unlike an elephant which are virtually silent when they walk, a hippo’s footstep can make the ground seem to tremble, especially in the dead of night. In the morning i discovered that he had ‘pebble dashed’ the wall where i had been sleeping, thats pretty close to nature i would say.
Many nights when we were camping ( I was always there with a sales team, normally about 5 or 6 and occasionally up to 25 strong) we would sit up long into the night around a camp fire which we would cook our supper on before proceeding to get pretty well sloshed, we would end up crashing out around the fire and sleep under a blanket of stars. One of the nicest things about night time in the bush is that there is no light and therefore the stars are clearly visible, millions of them. It is visually beautiful and spiritually comforting , a fantastic way to sleep and to wake up. Also, it was so hot up there for most of the year that after a night of drinking, waking up in a tent with the sun on it, even as early as 6.00am, was stifling and gave one the most horrendous babbalas. Fantastic nights, and i was always confident that the fire would keep the hippos and other creatures away….i had read it in a book somewhere! There was one night when we heard a hippo a little bit too close for comfort, but then again we never actually saw it, just heard it in the riverine bush, and the sound can travel quite far at night.
On most days i walked along the river for a klick or two, Often, to get rid of the hangover. About 500 metres upriver from where we camped were the actual pools in the river where the hippos used to congregate. Many times i would be on the bank above them watching them lazing about, wallowing, yawning, play fighting, snorting and generally splashing around, especially if it was early in the morning or late in the afternoon. There was a giant fig tree which i used to shimmy up a couple of metres to give me a grandstand seat. To be honest, if i had known then what i know now about hippos i probably would not of gotten so close, i suppose that in a straight line i was just about ten metres from them.
I loved those walks though, i knew there was an element of danger which was an added attraction turning every step into an adventure into unknown for me, especially as some of the Rhodesian people who were sometimes with me were either very nervous or did not come at all. Mind you, once again, i didn’t really know. I often saw buck, snakes and baboons close by and the birdlife was fantastic. It was only when i was chatting to the old Afrikaanse guy one morning when he told me some of his stories, including a couple about the ‘resident’ leopard, that i really realised the potential danger. I knew there were none of the other ‘big five ‘ though, and i was not really put off. As far as i knew, and as far as i still know today, the only time a leopard is going to attack a human is if they are very old and unable to hunt properly…unless of course one was unlucky enough to stumble onto a mother with cubs. Somehow, i always knew i was ok, but there were a couple of times when i was out walking that i felt the hackles rise on my neck and i would turn around and head back…who knows!!
The first time i really felt danger was early one morning when i had gone out fishing.
It was one of the early trips and we were in the rondavel, a motley crew i had. Quinton, a cool dude surfer who always wished he was in Jeffreys Bay, Virginia from Hong Kong who was a trained nurse who had been brought up in a true British colonial household over there and was breaking out to experience freedom, Bill, a ‘hooray henry’ antique book dealer from London who was running away from fraud charges, always with a blazer on and smoking cigarettes through a cigarette holder, And Paul, a Yorkshire lad, who was doing a ‘gap’ year or three.
Anyway, i think they had sat up late around the fire but it was one of those rare nights when i had slept early, early being before 1am back then (nowadays it can be as early as 7.30 and rarely later than 10pm during the week) I had woken at dawn and decided that i would impress everyone with my fishing skills, I did a hell of a lot of fishing whilst growing up in England. I didn’t have a rod, just a line and hook and some bread for bait. The river was flowing quite strongly and i stepped out onto some low lying smooth rocks that were just a metre or so off the bank, baited up and threw my line out. I kept getting ‘bites’ every time i cast but was beginning to wonder what was going on as i all i ever got was an empty hook with no sign of even being close when i struck. It didn’t really matter though, it was a stunning morning as the sun rose downriver, one of those sunrises that has always stuck in my mind. At one point a couple of hippos about 40 or 50 metres off to my right surfaced out of the water all of a sudden, play fighting with cavernous mouths wide open and jousting and pushing each other. It truly made me jump as i did not even realise they were there, but i was just in awe at this African experience i was having.
Shortly after that i finally hooked what turned out to be a yellow fish. It felt huge as i pulled it in against the current and the line bit into my hand, but there was no way i was going to let this baby go…here was breakfast and if i didn’t get him landed no one was going to believe me. It seemed to take a while but eventually i got him and although i was not able to weigh it, i figure it must of been well over a kilogram, maybe two. The thing was flipping about all over the rock and i was battling to get to grips with it in my bare feet when i suddenly realised there was a crocodile just a metre away watching me from a couple of inches under the surface!! Well, after all my scrabbling around with this fish i just grabbed it in one hand throwing it high onto the bank and simultaneously leapt back onto the shore putting the rock i had been standing on between me and the croc…must of been adrenalin i guess as the heart was truly pumping.
When i looked back the croc had gone so i guess i had made him jump too. It was not particularly big, but knowing crocs a bit better now it must of been four or five feet long i guess. It was at that point that i understood the danger of the bush, but to be honest i loved it. I figured that he had been after the fish, but even so, it made me think.
So off i trotted back to the rondavel with the fish still flapping about whilst hanging from the hook, it had some teeth which i was not too sure about!! And i had no disgorgers to unhook it… and of course it was the easiest way to carry it for a 100 metres or so. Everyone was suitably impressed when i woke them all as i stood in the doorway, beaming, with this big fish dangling from my line. I took great delight winding Quinton up especially as he had mocked me the night before saying i was never going to catch anything.
My fish preparation skills were virtually nonexistent at that stage so Quinton cleaned and gutted it while i got the fire going for a fresh fish breakfast. It was Wonderful experience to eat my first ‘African’ fish al fresco, freshly caught and cooked on an open fire but in truth i seem to remember that it did not taste so great…a bit ‘muddy’ i think.
After that i bought a rod and all the tackle which remained always in the back of the cab throughout all my travels from there on in. Actually i cannot remember catching anything else worth mentioning at that spot, although in many other places throughout SA i caught some real beauties, including my biggest ever freshwater fish which was a 44inch Barbel in the Vaal River one night, but thats another story.
There was one other time which was quite comical and a similar story, also on the Olifants at hippo Pools. It was late afternoon, a bit further downstream and i had dropped everyone one off at work and had gone back to try to catch supper and prepare the fire and braai for later. This time i had a rod out in a fairly calm stretch of water near the far bank and i had the Kombi parked on top of the bank above where i was sitting with the rod perched on rod rests. I had gone up to the motor for something when i turned and noticed another croc, but this time he was bigger and he was clearly stalking me as he was facing the bank, a metre or so out just below the water right in front of the rod. To be honest, that was largely the end of me fishing alone in known croc infested waters and i had to sit in the car for seemingly ages before i dared go down to get the rod and tackle. Even then, i virtually just threw it all on top of the bank as i kind of rushed down and rushed back up again with both eyes on the water in front of me and heart pumping. I had to sit in the cab afterwards , have a cigarette and calm down before i could pack all the kit up properly.
Over a three year period or more i probably spent a good four months camping on the bank of the Olifants at that spot so there were several confrontations and sightings of strange looking insects, spiders, reptiles, and different creatures, there and on my travels around the whole area. I went back a few times in the late eighties but by then they had built chalets along the river bank. They were nice and blended in reasonably well, but for me it destroyed the romanticism of the place and i have never been back. I am very grateful that i was able to enjoy it when i did, at a time when it was virtually as it had been for centuries.
