For ‘Backcountry Hiking Safari – Part 1’ see Previous Blog Post.
By guest blogger, and modern-day adventurer, Robert Fields.
The Trails Guides in the Lowveld (geographic region, which includes greater Kruger National Park) are usually western educated white South Africans or black Shangaan tribesmen educated by the National Park service and a lifetime in the bush. These men work together and share knowledge with eachother and both camps are incredible. They are gun-carrying, action, bird-nerds, equal parts Indiana Jones and John J. Audubon. They carry binoculars and they can stop a charging elephant without firing a shot or give you the Latin name of a blade of grass. Not only do they have deep and broad knowledge of the savanna ecosystems, but they are beautiful and articulate in their interpretation, poets even.
The Shangaan guides are natural storytellers with a slow rhythm to their speech and they use pauses and repetition for dramatic effect. They smile and laugh as they talk. Their stories possess a strange and beautiful eloquence when they speak English that must come from their translating Tsonga thoughts into English words. They can tell tales that will bring you to tears of sorrow, laughter or both. The white South Africans have an incredible degree of scientific knowledge and decades of experience and skill passed down through their professional associations. Nowhere on earth have I encountered guides with such deep professionalism. These guide communities have created systematic protocols and best practices to keep guests comfortable and safe in the bush. They are consummate professionals, and their skill and confidence will make even the most hesitant and nervous walker feel safer for their presence.
All of these men and women have broader skill sets than I have ever encountered in guides anywhere. Marksmen, trackers, birders, botanists, geologists, zoologists, and skilled in all variety of bushcraft, local history and anecdotes. Many of them can track a lion or elephant for miles and approach it without the animal’s knowledge. Virtually all of them can identify any bird or bird sound encountered. They have deep knowledge and interpretation of animal behaviour and of track and sign. They can go ten levels deep into a hyena scat, a termite mound or geological dykes. Their interpretation wows and amazes. I have heard a guide give an answer to a question that came off so eloquently I thought I was hearing something rehearsed or memorized only to have the same guide riff into a completely different and equally compelling direction when asked the same question by a different person on another day. I never met an Indio in the forest that knew the Latin names of the trees. I have not encountered a botanist that can track a lion or a hunting guide that goes deep into geology. I have met amazing guides in amazing locales all over the world, but none like in the Lowveld and incredibly these men, the most amazing guides I have ever encountered, are matched to the most captivating ecosystem I have ever had the pleasure to exist in.
So, there you have it. A backcountry walking safari with the most iconic animals on earth and a legitimate element of danger. And it is a return to our birthplace where having evolved with man, and with grass to eat for miles, the biggest and most diverse menagerie of wildlife on earth still roams free. This wild abundance makes visible the interactions of animal and plant, predator and prey, and gives us a glimpse of nature and ecology that is rarely so clear. Nature is unveiled. And to help us see and understand and appreciate the immensity of the wild happenings all around us are guides that are a match for the landscapes which they navigate – a rich repository of knowledge and experience passed down through generations, a profound respect for the environment, and an extraordinary ability to track and interpret animal behaviour. With their presence, we become not just observers of the wild, but participants in its intricate dance.
Animal paths criss-cross each other everywhere in great numbers, variety and confusion. It is not possible to call something a human trail and expect a person to be able to follow it. Myriad trails weave in all directions. If you mark a trail with a post, a rhino will ball-scratch it into oblivion. Nail a blaze to a tree a curious baboon will rip it off, or an elephant having a rub will cover it in mud, or perhaps the elephant will simply pull the tree from the ground and toss it.
On one of my first walks in the veld with my friend Brenden Pienaar from Lowveld Trails Co. we came upon a leopard track in a fine dust that was so detailed and perfect he said it could be only minutes old. We followed the tracks as silently as we could for a few hundred yards and stopped at the sound of impala coughing an alarm. The impala stood rigid and alert looking not at us but to our left. After a few moments there was another alarm and they bolted leaping and pronking and moving through the mopani trees in a graceful pell mell. My heart raced. We advanced but did not manage to glimpse the leopard. That evening, miles away, while setting up a camp along the Letaba river far from any buildings or roads my girlfriend and I sat watching a newborn hippo following after its mother as she fed. Suddenly Brenden who had been preparing his sleeping spot was on all fours low behind us and in a low whisper filled with urgency and excitement, he said, “I see a leopard tail sticking out of the reeds. It is going for the hippo calf!” For the next 30 minutes we sat and watched a leopard stalk and maneuver around a mother hippo and eventually attack the calf. It was absolutely incredible.
On an exceptionally good day during a four-week Apprentice Trails Guide Course we had a scrub hare run through our quiet line of walkers. It was sudden and unexpected and as we were shaking our heads and smiling at each other a jackal on the scrub hares trail ran right through us. We continued and happened upon fresh rhino track which we trailed until we found a mother and calf. Considering wind and sun we maneuvered ourselves into a position of safety on a termite mound where we could view them unobstructed. While we quietly watched, the cries of lion cubs playing came from the bottom of a donga behind us. Being a class of guides and not guests it was permissible to investigate. We unexpectedly walked up to the edge of the donga right where this lioness happened to be and were charged twice before we were able to back away. It was terrifying and thrilling and the roar of that lioness was the clearest message I have ever heard and understood, and I obeyed. On the way back to camp we walked into a herd of several hundred cape buffalo. It was an exceptional day, but the exceptional days are not infrequent in Africa.
I think this is something that people are yearning for, that they want to hear and we think it could help make our world a slightly less shitty place. I have been full-time dirtbagging around the world for 27 years and this is the most important story that I never read in Outside Magazine, or Backpacker, or Fields and Stream or National Geographic. Different versions of the story belong in all of those magazines because it is so big. It is as big as the world, and nature, and the circle of fucking life because that sort of is the story. I am likely an extreme example but I can honestly say that if I had read this story 20 years ago it would have changed my life for the better. My experience has been that big.
This story is broad and deep. Some version of it is for everybody, no matter their ability, age or interests. We would love to provide you with some advice and/or direction, and get you involved and show you the African savanna in the right way, on foot with the best guides in the world.
