When I opened my eyes in my tent on Wednesday morning, a miracle had actually happened! I didn’t have a single tick! But I was still sick. A sore throat and headache told me I was getting a cold – of all things now! I was about to curse my immune system when I realised that I wasn’t the only one who was suffering. One of the participants had brought the ‘plague’ from Kuleni to the camp and was now happily spreading her viruses throughout the camp, so that three other participants were already suffering alongside me. ‘Well, if some people here think they have to participate with a cold, then I can do it too,’ I thought defiantly and threw two Ibuprofen down my throat. There was no way I was going to miss out on the wilderness because of a little cold.
Apart from the cold, I felt really good! I had raised my mattress at the foot end with all sorts of stuff and created an almost horizontal surface. So the night was wonderful. Rarely had I slept so well lately as here in this tent in the wilderness.
When we left the camp at 6:30 a.m., my backpack suddenly felt really light. I had already considered leaving the camera at home this time, since I wouldn’t be able to do anything with the photos of the animals in the bushes anyway. ‘Think of it as practice. Later on, you’ll have to carry everything all the time – and maybe there will be a spontaneous opportunity for a good photo here after all,’ I persuaded myself and decided to take the camera with me after all.
It was quite fresh at 12°C, but very nice. A lovely, pleasant light lay over the landscape and I was really looking forward to this day!
We turned right at the camp and headed south. After only a few metres, we came across some fresh buffalo dung. The tracks led into dense scrubland and so our ‘train’ once again snaked between the bushes and thorns. Suddenly, a sweet, familiar smell hit my nose: rotting! Something was lying dead here somewhere. Dylan and some of the others had also noticed the smell, of course, and so Dylan corrected the direction until we were soon completely surrounded by the smell of decomposition.
The smell became stronger and stronger, but we couldn’t find the carrion. When we approached the reserve fence, Dylan stopped the search. ‘I don’t want to get too close to the fence so that the anti-poaching unit is not led onto the wrong track by our footprints,’ he said, and turned 180 degrees. So back again.
After a few metres, we did find something dead: snake bones. Quite a lot of them. Almost the whole snake. ‘This is really something special,’ Dylan explains. “If the snake had been killed and eaten by a predator, the bones would not be lying so close together here, but scattered across the area. Sometimes snakes die because they’ve overdone it with a meal. But then the bones of the meal would also be lying around here. I think this snake is different. It probably got sick and died on its own,” concluded Detective Dylan.
We continued to wind our way through the undergrowth, passing some abandoned wooden structures that had probably once been gate entrances. The whole reserve was not even eight years old and had been used as farmland for many years before that – like so many of the reserves here. Slowly, very slowly, I began to doubt the ‘wilderness’ in these reserves. ‘They may be huge and the animals are largely left alone and wild, but strictly speaking it’s just another kind of huge zoo,’ I thought, and came to the conclusion that I had to go to another area for my motives. An area in another country. To where the animals were still truly free and not accustomed to the harassment of safari vehicles.
Of course, it is much easier to take good photos from the cars. The animals hardly flee from the cars anymore and the lions I photographed on Sunday in the Imfolozi Reserve were lying less than three metres away from us. You have to manage that on foot – and especially in the real wilderness! But then, when you do manage it on foot, it is somehow more genuine, more authentic, more honest and much more valuable! The photos that are taken in this way require skills and knowledge. They have taken a lot of sweat, muscle power and above all willpower and demanded sacrifice – and behind each of these photos is a latent danger of injury or death. But most importantly, behind each photo there is a real story. That is what I need for my subjects. Not twelve hours of ‘ass flat’ and maximum knee pain from sitting in the car so much.
It was finally getting warmer, so that during a longer break on a hill I was able to zip off my trouser legs and stow the fleece jacket in my backpack. I had always smiled a little at the ‘zip-off trousers’ wearers, but now I was convinced of them myself. Under these circumstances, 10°C in the morning and 27°C at noon, they were just perfect! I poured some warm water from my huge thermos flask into the thermos cup, let my gaze wander over the diverse horizon and spotted four buffaloes a kilometre away. It wasn’t an encounter, they were too far away for that. It was still beautiful though.
After the break, the train laboriously wound its way down the very steep slope and came to a halt in front of a fallen tree. Elephants like to knock over trees because it makes it easier for them to get at the green leaves and tasty roots – and also because they can. ‘Do you see these two piles here?” Dylan said, pointing to two distant dung heaps. ’Elephants empty their bowels every 45 minutes. That means this elephant has probably been at this tree for at least two hours, because there are two dung heaps here. This is also a good way to estimate the distance of an elephant during tracking,‘ explained Dylan. ’This tree is also an EVENT. Whenever there is eating, sleeping or marking, it is an EVENT. We call them events because they are relatively easy to spot, as there are always many tracks. From the events, you can then pick up a track and follow it.”
Next, we came across a handful of marble-sized, egg-shaped, black-matt structures lying in a small hole in the middle of a trail. ‘Well, what is it?’ Dylan asks with a grin, prompting Otter to break one of the ‘eggs’. Not that easy. They were very firm and resembled in their structure almost brittle lava rock. After a few attempts Otter managed to break one open, but he was not much the wiser for it. The inside was similar to the outside, but additionally peppered with small, shiny dark brown ‘crystals’. We were at a loss.
‘That’s aardvark dung,’ Dylan solves the mystery, sending Otter into a state of euphoria. Otter looooved aardvarks, but had never seen one live and obviously never held its dung in his hands. Aardvarks, as they are called in German, feed mainly on termites, and the shiny ‘crystals’ were the remains of these termites. ‘Turn your binoculars around and you’ll see more,’ Dylan tells us, revealing a trick. And sure enough, an inverted pair of binoculars can be used as a microscope!
Aardvarks love to dig, much to the chagrin of many farmers. The animals dig large holes to sleep or to get to their beloved termites. They obviously don’t go to this effort when defecating, because aardvark dung is usually found just below the surface in small, shallow holes.
Our ‘train’ continued, past fresh elephant tracks and buffalo dung, until we finally stood on a hill, directly on a steep slope, looking into a valley. In front of us, a huge reed landscape opened up again and directly on the slope, on a wide strip of sand, countless elephant tracks could be seen from up here, zigzagging through the sand.
From afar, a white pickup truck suddenly approached at a high speed for these ‘road’ conditions and stopped approximately at our level, just under 400 metres away. APU, Anti-Poacher! Dylan quickly took out his phone and was apparently connected to the people in the pickup truck shortly afterwards. At least I heard his voice both next to me and from the valley. After Dylan was able to convince the two armed animal rights activists that we were not poachers, we were just about to leave when a helicopter swept over us.
‘They count the animals and hunt poachers,‘ Dylan explains, pointing into the shadow of a tree. ’Let’s rest here for a while. A helicopter usually scares the wild animals a lot. It’s advisable to take a short break in such cases. Then everyone can calm down again and be relaxed if they meet one.”
This time, we took our next rest, an extended lunch break, on a hill above the river. The view was phenomenal, the area was mostly flat and the sand in the river bed was peppered with tracks of every species that lives here.
‘This is actually a great place for a sleep-out on Thursday,’ Dylan suggested, and we all agreed. The place was really perfect!
While the others sought relaxation in the shade of a ‘shepard tree’, I looked for a shady spot with a view of the riverbed and attached my tripod to the camera. Lying in the shade, I now peered intently through the foliage, hoping to catch sight of thirsty animals.
Just as I had imagined it: remaining calm, becoming one with nature, to take the ‘one’ great photo for my art. I felt great and in my element – until suddenly the cold ‘kicked in’. The 28°C midday heat and the lying position in peace had done me in and now I was lying in the shade, was incredibly tired and had a severe headache. ‘Shit! Such a beautiful moment! It’s probably better if I get some sleep,’ I thought sadly, leaning back and closing my eyes.
‘Kirk, are you coming? We want to go!’ I woke up from my midday nap and wanted to hastily pack up my things when Wynand stopped me. ‘You can leave everything here. We’ll be right back. Dylan has spotted some elephants on the other side of the river!’ I jumped up, popped two fresh ibuprofen and grabbed my camera. ‘Let’s go!’
It was 1 p.m. and boiling hot. ‘Boiling’ mainly because the heat was beating down on my sick head like a club. But the heat wasn’t just getting to me; it was also getting to my fellow students, some of whom were now red-faced, and even to the elephants. They were standing mostly motionless in the shade of a large tree, just wagging their ears and turning their backs on us, of course. After fifteen minutes, we broke off. ‘They’re taking a break too now. Maybe they’ll come over to our side across the river later,’ Dylan said, leading the panting troop back to the shade under the tree.
‘Kirk, are you coming? We’re leaving!’ I woke with a start.
‘Huh? Déjà vu?’
‘What’s going on?’ I asked, rubbing my eyes. ‘The elephants are in the river now. Hurry!’ I quickly packed up my things, threw my backpack on my back and stumbled to join the train, which had already started to move slowly. The mood was now fundamentally different. Everyone was totally euphoric and excited. When we came to the shore, we took off our boots again, threw them over our necks and waded along the river again, while about 600 metres away, three elephants began to cross the river slowly and comfortably.
Luckily for us, the grey pachyderms took their time, so that we had already covered 300 metres when Dylan showed us the hand signal for ‘stop’. Exactly where a buffalo had been lying on Monday, there was another buffalo today, enjoying the cool water.
Dylan indicated ‘waiting’ and then beckoned me over. ‘Why don’t you take a photo of the buffalo in the foreground and the elephants in the background?’ he whispered to me. “Of course! Just both at once probably won’t work,” I thought, having the depth of field of the telephoto lens in mind. We crept a few more metres forward when suddenly, next to us, a loud crackling and rustling sound could be heard as a large water monitor struggled out of the reeds and fled in panic from us into the somewhat deeper water.
Dylan looked after the animal for a moment, but didn’t seem particularly impressed, and pointed to the sleeping Dagger Boy again. ‘All right, I get the message!’ I thought, and got started. However, there was not just one buffalo, but three, now blocking our way to the elephants, about 50 metres away. Dylan gestured for us to wait and sat down in the shallow river, ignoring his trousers. ‘Well, let’s wait then,’ I thought, and one by one the others also sat down in the cool river with their shorts on.
When the last elephant disappeared into the undergrowth on the other side of the river at around 2:25 p.m., we decided to retreat as well. But Dylan still had an ace up his sleeve: he whipped out his phone and started typing frantically. When he saw our questioning faces, he grinned suggestively. ‘Actually, we can’t go to the elephants now, because we would have to pass a lodge where guests are currently staying. But maybe the guests are on a game drive, in which case we could go past there,’ he explains the situation to us.
The Arrival
The arrhythmic movement and the increasing cracking of the reeds allowed only one conclusion: an elephant was on the move here! And indeed: a few seconds later, the grey hump of a young elephant bull could be seen at a distance of about 100 metres, before it disappeared again into the dense reeds. ‘Oh, that’s it?’ I grumbled to myself when, less than thirty metres in front of us, another tree began to crack and another elephant bull entered the stage. This time there was no shrub between us and the animal, and the wind was in our favour, so the elephant didn’t even scent us. He began to strip the tree in front of him with relish and I calmly took out my camera and took close-up shots of the head of one of the Big Five for the first time since we had been on foot. Great! ‘It’s a good thing I brought the camera after all!’ I praised myself internally and shot one crystal-clear close-up after another.
Not a minute later, there was another cracking sound close to us and the last, presumably 25-year-old elephant bull trotted from the reeds into the undergrowth. ‘Wow! This is really a hive of activity,’ I thought and began to grin happily.
Everything was sticky, dusty and dirty. My nose started running, my throat and head ached and I had a huge hole in my stomach. But none of that mattered. I felt good and the encounters in the bush, the colours, the nature made up for everything many times over. Yes, I even have to say that the rudimentary, rough, I slowly started to like it! I was grateful. Grateful for the experiences here in the bush and grateful for the experiences in Bhejane Camp. Only in this way had my comfort zone been massively expanded after just three weeks, and I had already become somewhat numb, accustomed to making do with little comfort and hygiene and always having some kind of critter around me. It had made me more resilient, which made me stronger and was an excellent, ‘gentle’ preparation for a time when things would get really rough!
But it had also become clear to me that I definitely had to go off ‘alone’ again. Without a large group and with plenty of time – maybe in Botswana? The animals there are said to really live in the wild!
But above all, one thing became clear to me on this return journey: I had arrived!
