Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in Volume III of B.H. Magazine. For access to future issues – including the forthcoming Volume IV – subscribe here.
We had a barbeque the night before. Braai, they call it in South Africa. It was good. Springbok, beefsteak, fresh fish, kudu, vegetables. We dined around a fire, talking, drinking the strong, local red wine. After dessert and brandy, an armed guard carrying a rifle walked us back to our cabins. “The animals, they’re free to roam here, yaw? To hunt,” he said. “At night you can’t walk alone.”
In the morning, though, at dawn, I thought walking would be safe. I was wrong – and narrowly escaped becoming a moveable feast.
A few days before, we’d arrived at &Beyond Phinda in the northeast of South Africa. The journey had taken a full day, three flights, a long one aboard a Boeing from Singapore, and then shorter hops on progressively smaller aircraft. Finally, we landed in the bush. The 12-seat turboprop Cessna touched down hard on the remote airstrip, skimming past grazing warthogs.
The pilot cut the propellers. Their drone was replaced by the sizzling buzz of insects. The air smelled dry, grassy, and goat-like, with a hint of dung and carrion. I threw my paperback of Ernest Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa – which may have slightly influenced the writing of this article – into my duffel bag and donned a Panama hat. We climbed out of the aircraft, squinting under the sun.
Jess Botha was waiting, an olive-clad figure with an easy grin. Jess was our guide. She was very pretty with a face fresh as a newly minted coin if they minted coins in smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin, and her hair was blonde under a khaki cap.
Jess drove a long-wheelbase LandCruiser, an open-top behemoth seating about 10. Thoks Mlambo, our tracker, occupied a seat bolted to the front, binoculars across his chest. He smiled and nodded and greeted us, but he said little. The engine rumbled to life as we climbed aboard. “Which animals do you most want to see?” Jess asked.
The bush would make that decision for us. Minutes later, an elephant appeared. A young bull, ears flared, eyes wary. It stood in the path, blocking our way. Jess killed the motor. “You are lucky,” she said. We sat still, watching, shooting photos. (Do not believe Brooklyn Beckham. Elephants are both easy to photograph and incredible to see.) The bull flapped its ears, raised its trunk, took a few steps toward us. Jess turned the key and the big Toyota came back to life. She reversed, slowly at first, then faster. “Let’s find some lions,” she said as the elephant faded into the trees.
The reserve sprawled, wild and sunburnt, 73,000 acres of rough shrubbery, long yellow grass, red earth and creatures of all descriptions – from little insects to large predators. Deadliness here is not a matter of size, though. Carrying numerous diseases, the miniscule mosquito kills more Africans than hefty hippos. To guard against attracting the former, we’d been advised to avoid dark-coloured clothing. Defying my Melbournian DNA I left black garments at home and dressed like a member of the Irwin family for the duration of my stay.
As we drove into the bush wildebeests wandered into our path, their horns curved like scimitars. Buffalo grazed in the shade, their heads low, their eyes watchful. The LandCruiser rolled on, the dry grass and trackside branches brushing its sides, grazing our skin.
“Over there,” Jess said, pointing through the trees. Two lionesses lounged on a dried-up riverbank, their golden pelts blending into the dirt. Jess steered closer. Too close, I reckoned. The truck had no roof, no windows. I was armed only with a mirrorless Leica – no defence against a big cat, a fierce predator. “Don’t worry,” Jess said. “They’ve already eaten today.”
In an impala carpaccio food-coma, the sleepy lionesses ignored us. Jess explained later that the wildlife here had grown used to safari trucks. They saw the vehicle and its passengers as a single, harmless object. The rules were simple: stay seated, don’t lean out, don’t stand. I forgot once, rising to lift my camera for a better angle. Jess caught me fast. “Sit down,” she commanded. I obeyed. It’s true that a man can be destroyed but not defeated. But he can be eaten.
The lodge was deep in the forest, its cabins raised on stilts. It was called Forest Lodge. The name was fair and right and true. Handsomely decorated, comfortable, the accommodations blended into the trees. At night, we dined under the stars, a different venue every evening. We ate well, we drank well, and we slept well. (All was included. All was good.)
In the mornings, the air was cool and sharp and fresh. The sky turned pale blue as the sun climbed. One day, I left my cabin early, before sunrise. The path was empty at first. Then it wasn’t. A hyena stood in the trail. Its shoulders were high, its head low, crouched like a prize fighter. Its eyes locked on me. It was big, bigger than I expected these beasts to be.
I didn’t move. And then, I didn’t move fast. “Never run,” Jess had said. “Predators love a chase.” I walked, slow and steady. The hyena followed, its paws silent on the dirt. The distance between us stayed the same. My blood rushed loud in my ears. I took a photo with my phone, shaky, maybe my last. I was ‘living in the moment’ like we should… but at the ultimate cost? I did not know.
I thought of Hemingway’s words, “There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow. How old must you be before you know that? There is only now.” This I knew.
When I reached the LandCruiser, minutes later – an eternity later – Thoks was waiting. “There was a hyena,” I said, out of breath, pupils dilated. He shrugged. “Just one? That’s fine. Three’s trouble. Three… might attack.” He climbed into his seat, calm as ever. Thoks was a leader of his local community. He knew the nature of this land and everything that lived on it. I was a stranger, a foreigner, out of my element. I spent my boyhood in the bush – but not this kind of bush.
The safari continued. We started at dawn each day, sometimes with cold beers at breakfast time. This was good. Each drive brought something new. A crocodile, a chameleon, an eagle. We saw cheetahs, three of them, brothers moving with a lazy grace. Their eyes scanned the horizon, always alert. Zebras grazed nearby, oblivious. Impalas darted through the bush, their movements quick and nervous as teenage girls at a Harry Styles concert.
One afternoon, we stopped by a lagoon. The water shone in the heat. “Hippos,” Jess said, pointing. Their backs broke the surface, rounded and smooth. One snorted, water spraying from its nostrils. “Back up,” Jess warned. “That one’s pissed off. He’s telling you to move away.” We kept our distance. I slapped at a mosquito. Deadly creatures, everywhere.
Another day we saw hippos clash with a herd of elephants in a lake as the sun set. We drank gin and tonics, watching, awed. The soaring score from ‘Out of Africa’ played in my head. Beforehand, we’d followed giraffes, their necks swaying as they walked. We saw a mother and her calf, their spots dark against the pale grass. “Magnificent,” someone whispered. The word felt right and good.
Rhinos were a rarer sighting. Black rhinos, the rarest. On the final day, Thoks spotted something in the distance. Jess contained her excitement and slowly drove the LandCruiser up to a trio of these endangered creatures, including a mother and her calf. Remarkably, their horns were intact. Most rhinos in Africa will be dehorned, their proud nasal adornment removed by rangers to deter poachers. It was a harsh necessity, Jess said. Without the horns, the animals were safer. But seeing them like this, whole and natural, was something special.
We stayed only three nights at Phinda. It felt longer. The land left its mark, its vastness inspiring true wonder. The animals were both beautiful and thrillingly threatening, a reminder of humans’ variable position on the food chain – and how precarious our supposed supremacy actually is.
Its countryside can look much like parts of Australia, but in every sense, Africa is a world away. To employ one final Hemingwayism: “It is a fine place and worth fighting for and I hated very much to leave it.”
Nevertheless, I was very glad to make it home rather than end up a hyena snack. Fortunately, that particular dinner bell did not toll for me.
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