A deep, powerful and slow crashing sound broke the idyllic, golden morning atmosphere. It came from the valley below us and gave us a hint: pure power was at work here.

A line of the large, grey animals was moving leisurely but steadily through the dense undergrowth. We sat down in the dry, tall, yellow grass and watched the elephants, about 200 metres away, as they peacefully breakfasted, unnoticed.

The elephant. Weighing up to 6,000 kilograms and standing at up to four metres at the shoulder, the elephant is the largest and heaviest land mammal on our planet. To reach the juicy branches at the treetops or the nutritious roots, bull elephants regularly uproot whole trees or simply break them in half. Without much movement, momentum or acceleration. Just pure muscle power and the weight of almost two and a half Mercedes G-Class vehicles. Just slowly and steadily. Knaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrk!

Around twenty animals, big and small, made their way through the narrow, dark green valley, grunting contentedly and accompanied by the slow crackling of the bushes and branches. Some stopped briefly and stretched their trunks into the air like snorkels. ‘They are sniffing the air and trying to pick up scents,’ Dylan explained to us in a whisper, leaning relaxed against a small tree. Most of the elephants, however, plodded on comfortably and slowly the column snaked up the next hill.

As soon as they are eaten, the trees release bitter substances, ‘tannins’, and communicate the ‘attack’ to the other trees in the area. These then also immediately release bitter substances, so that the elephants have to move on, as the leaves then become inedible. ‘Immediately’ is of course relative in the life of a tree. The elephants therefore have just 15-20 minutes before the first leaf becomes bitter. Until then, a lot can be devoured.

But at some point, the last elephant had disappeared behind the dome of the hill and it became very quiet in the valley again. ‘Bush quiet’. Because everywhere there was chirping, clicking and tapping and hosts of birds warbled their songs in canon. We stayed a little longer and enjoyed the atmosphere. Slowly, the sun finally got warmer, so I could stow my fleece jacket in the backpack and put on my light cloth hat, when suddenly a ‘very loud chainsaw’ ‘sawed up’ a very rough piece of wood at the end of the valley. ‘Leopard’ whispered Dylan and pushed himself dynamically off the tree.

The second ‘wilderness week’ was marked by encounters with elephants, and time and again we came across these huge, grey pachyderms. Elephants and buffaloes. While we only encountered a few animals during the first week in the wild, this time large herds of fifty to a hundred animals populated the bush, meadow and reed landscapes. In addition to the encounter on Tuesday morning, which once again made clear how powerful these animals were, I was particularly impressed by an encounter on Wednesday afternoon:

This time we were not standing on a hill and had a wonderful view from a safe distance. This time we were right in the middle of it! It all began when we were once again winding our way through dense bushland, actually looking for a rhinoceros. At least the tracks in the sand and the dung heaps told us that there must be a lot of activity here from these chubby-looking but very nimble animals.

And sure enough, we suddenly heard a cracking sound about thirty metres away, followed by a grey shape appearing just above a bush! A white rhino?

‘An elephant!’ Dylan indicated to us with a hand signal, placing his palm spread behind his ear and wiggling it slightly. Yes, that was great, but actually I was a little ‘over elephant’, we had seen so many of them by now. But what followed was something I had never experienced before:

After the first, obviously young elephant, another followed. And another. And another! It didn’t stop at all! A huge herd of elephants suddenly and leisurely passed us at a distance of about thirty metres. Unlike the herd on Tuesday morning, this herd had approached us mostly silently through the bush. But that was over now. The herd made two circuits around us and a seemingly endless line of elephants now trod in a semicircle around us, while we stood motionless in the middle and felt smaller and smaller.

‘What do we do if the herd completes the arc and traps us in the middle and then spots us?’ It shot into my head as we were completely surrounded by cracking, smacking and low humming noises. The low humming sound was relaxing and cosy on the one hand, but on the other hand it was threatening and frightening. However, none of the animals had noticed us yet – or indicated that they had.

We were all as quiet as mice. Nobody moved and some didn’t even dare to breathe properly. I tried to take a few photos with the camera, but firstly the animals were too close and secondly the branches of the bushes confused the autofocus so much that I couldn’t get a sharp picture. So I just let the camera drop slowly and enjoyed the situation, the presence, the sheer, impressive strength.

The strength of the elephants? Definitely their sheer power, their enormous size. As a sign of strength: calmness, slowness – and deep, powerful tones.

The second ‘Trails Week’ had been very impressive again. Impressive in terms of colours, flora, fauna, experiences and also development. Despite a certain routine, my enthusiasm for the impressions was still high and I would love to draw colourful word pictures again, but this would probably be a bit repetitive.

The general procedures were also repetitive this week. As a ‘train’ of up to fourteen people, we travelled through the landscape from sunrise. From hill to hill and plateau to plateau. Always on the lookout for one of the Big Five. The ‘small stuff’, which I was also very interested in, was once again a minor matter. The aim was once again to fill the list. We already had the necessary ten ‘encounters’, so now a few hours had to be generated. But Dylan had a surprise for me: I would come back here for the NQF2 short course, which I also wanted to take later, and THEN it would be mostly about the ‘small stuff’.

The landscape often changed a lot during the tours. Sometimes we went over open, stony, somehow surreal, dead ‘moon’ plains with dried-up tree skeletons. Sometimes we roamed through yellow, dry grassland and dense, man-high yellow-green reeds. We crossed dry riverbeds and repeatedly squeezed through dense, green-brown bush or silver-red thorny land. The predominantly muted colours varied from red to yellow, brown to grey-black and dark to ‘light olive’ green.

The background noise we created, especially in the undergrowth, was enormous, although no one was talking. Cracking, clattering, stumbling, coughing, crackling. We heard it all. The fact that our huge group even saw any animals at all was remarkable, to say the least. But the result at the end of the week was not too bad:

In 30 hours and after 43 kilometres, we were able to enter 23 qualified ‘encounters’ in our logbooks, i.e. animal encounters within a certain maximum distance. This meant that I had a total of 63 hours and 36 animal encounters and had thus fulfilled all practical requirements for the Apprentice Trails Guide.

Besides the dominant elephants and buffalos, we encountered lots of impala, nyala waterbucks, wildebeest, zebras and even a few rhinos.

under the stars

The highlight was once again the ‘Sleep Out’ under the open sky, with a view of a wide river. Unfortunately, we could hardly see any stars this time, because the weather was rather overcast overall and rarely cracked the 25-degree mark. For hiking, especially in hilly surroundings, that wasn’t so bad. But at night, the temperatures often dropped to 9-12 degrees. Not my favourite camping temperature, as I realised once again.

Apart from the temperature, the sleeping situation was not quite as great this time either. I had acquired a tent whose floor was not only sloping in two directions, but also had strong ‘waves’. It didn’t matter to me, who was now a little jaded. Only my back found that somehow unfortunate and acknowledged these circumstances with morning back pain.

But despite my backpack, the movement of the day helped to relax me again, and so it was a constant up and down, until last night, the sleep out. There the ground was pleasantly flat and the night under the clouds was – perfect!

The night watch was uneventful despite the imminent new moon and clouds, with the darkness that goes with it. Only once did a distant roar of a lion break the nighttime silence. But during the last ten days here in the bush, we had only been able to see the ‘king of the savannah’ by its tracks and roars. What a shame.

But there was still a small highlight on the way back from the sleep-out to camp, and it was only revealed by a change of perspective: in a tree, on the bank of a river that we had regularly passed by during the last few weeks, we discovered the torn remains of an impala. The bones and brown fur hung macabre from the upper branches and revealed: a leopard had enjoyed a bloody feast here, with a magnificent view.

We had a similar intense ‘almost’ encounter with the shy animal on Tuesday, after the leopard’s roar. On our way to a highly frequented fresh water source, we were suddenly enveloped in a strong, sweet, ‘popcorn scent’. ‘Leopard,’ Dylan whispered again, before we set out to find the sweetish source in the green, thorny thicket. Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful.

Camplife

This time, we knew what to expect of the camp and its state, and our newly ‘acquired’ degree of ‘callousness’ was clearly evident when we arrived on Monday and encountered a bathroom that was (hopefully) covered in brown mud and had a broken toilet seat. I didn’t get upset, I didn’t care.

Also, they had found out the week before that one of the two showers could actually be supplied with hot water – provided that no other tap requested hot water at the same time. Then the small gas boiler was already overburdened and went into a ‘denial mode’. ONE shower for fourteen people. I had put the whole endeavour in the context of a training session anyway, so my decision was quickly made: I just kept showering with cold water – but without waiting and when I wanted. I had also carried through with my plan to reduce my belongings even further and this time I had only brought three pairs of boxer shorts and three pairs of socks, as well as a T-shirt, a shirt and a pair of trousers. This meant doing laundry every day, but it worked very well. Test passed. Can be applied like this.

What was a little annoying was the fact that this time three participants had arrived with nasty coughs and bad colds, but I had learned from that too. In my opinion, the only possibility for transmission was the cutlery and crockery. Otherwise, we were only out in the fresh air and didn’t touch any door handles or other typical carriers. So I simply washed the dishes thoroughly again myself before use – and lo and behold: it worked. I was able to experience the week without symptoms. Wonderful.

Even the left side of my neck didn’t hurt anymore! I had looked at my backpack again and noticed a slight imbalance in the setting. Slight. Let it be 0.5 cm. But this ‘little thing’ was enough to harden the left side of my neck. ‘Once again, little things,’ I thought. ‘It always comes down to the little things!’

Overall, I felt very comfortable in the wilderness again! Being on the road, on foot and in such impressive nature in particular, did me a lot of good and produced a profound, calm contentment in me. Well, this time too, I was looking forward to a warm shower and fresh clothes at the end, and this time too, by the end of the week, I felt that five days in the wilderness in a row was enough. I didn’t want to become a forest gnome who lives permanently in the forest and is satisfied with the water of the morning dew. Civilisation has its advantages, but I had grown fond of the wilderness.