Day 102: Second Day on Timbavati — Eating Termites, Leopard Lunch and A Big Baboon Kerfuffle
Woke again at 5:30 am and we were back “on the road” by around 6:15 am as the sun was coming up.
Every time you set out on a game drive you know you’re going to see something wild, literally, but you don’t know what it will be. Even longtime guides will remark at how no two days are ever the same out here, and that unpredictability combined with the luck of being at the right place at the right time leads to constant surprises.
So it’s with that exciting/nerve-wracking mix that we’d set out each time. Like, what are we in for this time?
One funny moment: We stopped to observe five zebras — pronounced ZEH-bruhs — and when we started the engine to leave, we startled one of them so much that he/she leapt forward and let rip a big fart. And because Teddy and I are 7 years old, we laughed about it for the next three days.
For our morning coffee, Al treated us to “mocha-rulas,” aka coffee, hot chocolate and Amarula.
Al also showed us how to properly eat a termite.
James and Sydney did some jumping jacks and pushups to burn off the pent up energy.
Safari’s tough because you spend about 3 hours in the morning and 3 again in the evening sitting in a truck — and during the day you are confined to a small lodge space for safety reasons (meaning, you can’t take a walk or go for a run and these places don’t have pools big enough for laps or gyms).
That lack of running-around time plus all the early wakeup calls and late meals is hard on little kids. So James especially needs an hour to nod off in the truck, meaning he usually misses something big.
During our coffee break we also took “bush pens” aka sticks and drew in the dirt. Willa wrote “butt” (so mature!!) then got us all to draw elephants.
Did we mention guide Al is a giant Afrikaner with a love of lions, photography and Chuck Norris? We didn’t realize Chuck Norris was such a celebrity in South Africa, but he is (kind of like David Hasselhof in Germany). The meme is that he’s a total stud/badass.
My favorite: “When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he already had two missed calls…from Chuck Norris.”
Sydney, our tracker, has an anti-poaching background, which means he would be deployed for a month at a time into the thick bush (or as Al would pronounce it, the “theeck boosh”) where he and his colleagues were have to rely on serious survivor skills — eating termites and berries, avoiding predators, etc all while tracking and preventing poaching. Total badassery (look out, Chuck Norris).
We looked for and found Marula the leopard again, as well as her two cubs.
They were dozing but there was some cute snuggling/grooming and playfulness. Marula had killed an impala that morning and stored it nearby. We saw her take a few munches of its hind quarters, then walk off to find her cubs.
Leopards usually take their kills up into tress to avoid having them stolen by hyenas, etc. but Al told us Marula isn’t very good at hoisting carcasses into trees and so she almost never does it.
We saw her carefully trying to cover the carcass with grass to keep the smell and visuals to a minimum.
During the day break we had nice lunch, did school and swam. James changed into his Stormers jersey because Al mentioned he was a big fan.
Willa had mentioned that she wanted to try to find some reptiles, so on our 4 pm drive Sydney spied a big rock monitor lizard for her.
They encouraged us to get out of the truck to go take a closer look. When it skittered toward me, mouth open, I screamed and jumped into the truck.
We stopped to examine a giant male buffalo skull. Heavy!
Then we spotted our three rhino buddies — the mama and two sons (one teenage, one baby). We watched them for a while.
One kilo of rhino horn goes for about $85k on the black market — usually in Vietnam or China — so one adult rhino’s full horns might fetch $1.5M. Sickening.
James missed the rhinos because he was snoozing.
We also happened upon a large male warthog who was sitting very near us. You see them frequently but it was great to see one so close. After sitting there for a while he slooooowly started to sink backward down into his little burrow. Like, maaaaaaaybe they won’t notice me.
Our sundowner was in a dry riverbed. Not my favorite spot to stop — I prefer high ground with clear views, not sunken lush valleys!
James missed the sundowner because he was snoozing.
Willa wandered off to find frogs with Sydney and Al and came back with only a glop of mud and tales of a frog tracks.
At one point when it was getting dark and Willa was still far from the truck — Teddy and I were solo with our G&Ts and a snoozing James — we heard a troop of baboons literally going apeshit in the near distance. They sounded panicked. When Al and Sydney causally wandered back over, they said they heard a leopard too — was probably an attack attempt.
That’s when you’re like, let’s get the hell outta here — why are we standing around drinking cocktails in the theeck boosh in the dark?????
Of course we drove straight toward the noise. It had died down by the time we got there, but Sydney did find a solo hyena lying down in the road. We put the spotlight on him for a nice long look. Apparently he heard the ruckus too and came by to see if there was a baboon snack to scavenge.
For dinner back at the lodge that night? Springbok! It was surprisingly delicious. Like a very lean and tender filet mignon.
