Salon Wanderlust | Afoot in the South African bush

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Winter in Prague? Share the pluses and minuses in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y
The Khan men of Agra
By Pamela Michael
In India, a moment of trust opens the door to a traveler's richest reward
(11/25/98)
The rabbis of Bangkok, Part Two
By Douglas A. Konecky
A live sex show reveals more than flesh to an American musician in Thailand
(11/24/98)
The rabbis of Bangkok
By Douglas A. Konecky
A traveling Jewish band from California meets a trio of Hasidic Jews in the teeming city of Live Sex Shows and Thai Full Body Massage
(11/23/98)
This week in travel
A new U.S. passport, a fictitious country in the South Pacific and a buyout of Reno Air
(11/20/98)
Body talk
By Dawn MacKeen
Sometimes what our gestures say is not what we mean. International business traveler Roger Axtell has learned that the hard way
(11/19/98)

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A F O O T . I N . T H E .south african. B U S H
A New Yorker ventures on a walking safari into the wild world of wildebeest, Cape buffalo and dung beetles.
BY LANCE GOULD | "Do you know why I smoke in the bush?" asks Leslie Brett, a South African safari guide, as he takes a lethal drag on his harsh Lexington cigarette.
"To scare dangerous animals away?" guesses Jane, one of the students in his outdoor classroom.
"Nope," he says, fiddling with the rifle strapped across his back.
"To see which way the wind is blowing the smoke?" I offer.
"No," he says, exhaling a substantial cloud and pausing in this Socratic dialogue. "The reason I smoke is because I'm scared shitless every time I come out here." He breaks into a naughty schoolboy's giggle.
His students laugh, too, savoring a light moment in an otherwise terrifying nature walk. Just an instant later, our guard is back up -- we're about to sneak past an active hyena lair as the nocturnal creatures sleep. The collective heart of our single-file line skips a beat as Les sharply rebukes us, "Be quiet!" Creepy whitebacked vultures circle high above us. Fresh lion tracks on the trail hint at what may lurk beneath the waist-high reeds. Even ticks, sensing our exuded carbon dioxide, leap onto our socks.
So this is what it's like traipsing through the African veld -- unequivocally frightening! It's our fourth day in the bush, but our most forbidding so far, as the lion spoor is our first sure sign of the king of the jungle's presence. It's not like I'm unprepared for a chance encounter with a lion -- I do have a notebook. Oh yes, and a blue Bic pen. It's just that, well, lions and other members of the cat family have yet to familiarize themselves with the intimidating potency of small, hand-held writing instruments.
The loud crack of a rifle -- that they know. And yet even though Les has a gun, somehow I can't help but think that hiking through the South African bush with only a pen and paper for a sword and shield has to be one of the most insanely scary things I've ever done. And it's only going to get worse: Tonight we are scheduled to sleep under the stars -- sans tents.
Oddly, we are not prisoners banished to this sub-Saharan Siberia -- we've paid to be students in this wilderness course, "Secrets of the Game Ranger." Our group of seven consists of bush guide Les, his deputy Kevin, and five students: me, a 33-year-old writer from New York; Stephen, a middle-aged architect from Kent, England; Alastair, 20, a windshield manufacturer from Liverpool; Jane, a thirty-something actress from London; and Pietro, 53, a nasty little South African white supremacist who thinks his country would benefit from a reinstitutionalizing of apartheid. We are all attempting to earn our game ranger certificates, and to do so, we have to pass Les' exam at the end of the course. Hence our studious note-taking.
We first caught up with our hosts in the Johannesburg airport. It was hard to miss them. Among the many international vacationers and domestic business travelers, Les and Kevin were the only ones wearing khaki safari shirts with matching shorts. Their ensemble also included important-looking black business briefcases -- they described themselves jokingly as "bush executives." With their trim haircuts, clipped mustaches, mirrored shades, muscular builds, brown uniforms and no-nonsense expressions, they looked more like L.A. cops on vacation.
For three days, we acclimated to the ways of the wild -- sleeping in the bush; eating ostrich steaks and impala stew; learning faunal factoids such as the fact that herbivorous giraffes will chew on bones to get calcium. Now we're ready for a more intense wilderness experience. It's our fourth day, and we're trekking in the Timbavati, a private game reserve in South Africa's Mpumalanga safari area, through thorny acacia scrub that tears at our clothes. We come to a dry riverbed, nervously spinning as we walk to preempt a blindside attack. The air is rife with the putrid smell of a rhino calf's remains. Nothing is left of him but a few bones and the remnants of his hooves -- our friends the hyenas and vultures have disposed of the rest. Any sane trekkers would vacate the premises immediately, but we've paid $1,500 to have such terrifying encounters. We press on.
We are learning those intangible facts that separate experts from neophytes, men from boys. The data to which we are suddenly privy are the trade secrets of safari-meisters: the fact that termite mounds always lean to the northwest (useful if you lose your sense of direction), or that, in a pinch, the leaves of the African wattle tree can be used as toilet paper. But I'll let you in on the biggest game-ranging secret of all: The master key to the closely guarded mysteries of the wild is dung.
Bathroom habits of the indigenous fauna are an integral part of our course. Yes, modern-day Doctor Doolittles don't bother to talk to the animals -- it's the other end that fascinates them. Rhinos, for example, will always defecate in their own personal lavatories, called middens. Ostriches, like other birds, will drop a double-dynamite combination by always defecating and urinating at the same time. This information is invaluable when tracking these creatures, or just for keeping tabs on which ones are lurking in your immediate vicinity. Dung is really quite a revealing byproduct.
N E X T+P A G E | Stalking the Big 5


	T A B L E_T A L K Winter in Prague? Share the pluses and minuses in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y The Khan men of Agra By Pamela Michael In India, a moment of trust opens the door to a traveler's richest reward (11/25/98) The rabbis of Bangkok, Part Two By Douglas A. Konecky A live sex show reveals more than flesh to an American musician in Thailand (11/24/98) The rabbis of Bangkok By Douglas A. Konecky A traveling Jewish band from California meets a trio of Hasidic Jews in the teeming city of Live Sex Shows and Thai Full Body Massage (11/23/98) This week in travel A new U.S. passport, a fictitious country in the South Pacific and a buyout of Reno Air (11/20/98) Body talk By Dawn MacKeen Sometimes what our gestures say is not what we mean. International business traveler Roger Axtell has learned that the hard way (11/19/98) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		A F O O T . I N . T H E .south african. B U S H A New Yorker ventures on a walking safari into the wild world of wildebeest, Cape buffalo and dung beetles. BY LANCE GOULD \| "Do you know why I smoke in the bush?" asks Leslie Brett, a South African safari guide, as he takes a lethal drag on his harsh Lexington cigarette. "To scare dangerous animals away?" guesses Jane, one of the students in his outdoor classroom. "Nope," he says, fiddling with the rifle strapped across his back. "To see which way the wind is blowing the smoke?" I offer. "No," he says, exhaling a substantial cloud and pausing in this Socratic dialogue. "The reason I smoke is because I'm scared shitless every time I come out here." He breaks into a naughty schoolboy's giggle. His students laugh, too, savoring a light moment in an otherwise terrifying nature walk. Just an instant later, our guard is back up -- we're about to sneak past an active hyena lair as the nocturnal creatures sleep. The collective heart of our single-file line skips a beat as Les sharply rebukes us, "Be quiet!" Creepy whitebacked vultures circle high above us. Fresh lion tracks on the trail hint at what may lurk beneath the waist-high reeds. Even ticks, sensing our exuded carbon dioxide, leap onto our socks. So this is what it's like traipsing through the African veld -- unequivocally frightening! It's our fourth day in the bush, but our most forbidding so far, as the lion spoor is our first sure sign of the king of the jungle's presence. It's not like I'm unprepared for a chance encounter with a lion -- I do have a notebook. Oh yes, and a blue Bic pen. It's just that, well, lions and other members of the cat family have yet to familiarize themselves with the intimidating potency of small, hand-held writing instruments. The loud crack of a rifle -- that they know. And yet even though Les has a gun, somehow I can't help but think that hiking through the South African bush with only a pen and paper for a sword and shield has to be one of the most insanely scary things I've ever done. And it's only going to get worse: Tonight we are scheduled to sleep under the stars -- sans tents. Oddly, we are not prisoners banished to this sub-Saharan Siberia -- we've paid to be students in this wilderness course, "Secrets of the Game Ranger." Our group of seven consists of bush guide Les, his deputy Kevin, and five students: me, a 33-year-old writer from New York; Stephen, a middle-aged architect from Kent, England; Alastair, 20, a windshield manufacturer from Liverpool; Jane, a thirty-something actress from London; and Pietro, 53, a nasty little South African white supremacist who thinks his country would benefit from a reinstitutionalizing of apartheid. We are all attempting to earn our game ranger certificates, and to do so, we have to pass Les' exam at the end of the course. Hence our studious note-taking. We first caught up with our hosts in the Johannesburg airport. It was hard to miss them. Among the many international vacationers and domestic business travelers, Les and Kevin were the only ones wearing khaki safari shirts with matching shorts. Their ensemble also included important-looking black business briefcases -- they described themselves jokingly as "bush executives." With their trim haircuts, clipped mustaches, mirrored shades, muscular builds, brown uniforms and no-nonsense expressions, they looked more like L.A. cops on vacation. For three days, we acclimated to the ways of the wild -- sleeping in the bush; eating ostrich steaks and impala stew; learning faunal factoids such as the fact that herbivorous giraffes will chew on bones to get calcium. Now we're ready for a more intense wilderness experience. It's our fourth day, and we're trekking in the Timbavati, a private game reserve in South Africa's Mpumalanga safari area, through thorny acacia scrub that tears at our clothes. We come to a dry riverbed, nervously spinning as we walk to preempt a blindside attack. The air is rife with the putrid smell of a rhino calf's remains. Nothing is left of him but a few bones and the remnants of his hooves -- our friends the hyenas and vultures have disposed of the rest. Any sane trekkers would vacate the premises immediately, but we've paid $1,500 to have such terrifying encounters. We press on. We are learning those intangible facts that separate experts from neophytes, men from boys. The data to which we are suddenly privy are the trade secrets of safari-meisters: the fact that termite mounds always lean to the northwest (useful if you lose your sense of direction), or that, in a pinch, the leaves of the African wattle tree can be used as toilet paper. But I'll let you in on the biggest game-ranging secret of all: The master key to the closely guarded mysteries of the wild is dung. Bathroom habits of the indigenous fauna are an integral part of our course. Yes, modern-day Doctor Doolittles don't bother to talk to the animals -- it's the other end that fascinates them. Rhinos, for example, will always defecate in their own personal lavatories, called middens. Ostriches, like other birds, will drop a double-dynamite combination by always defecating and urinating at the same time. This information is invaluable when tracking these creatures, or just for keeping tabs on which ones are lurking in your immediate vicinity. Dung is really quite a revealing byproduct. N E X T+P A G E \| Stalking the Big 5