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Photo Journal
Story by Nathan Hindman
Photos by Tyler Wirken
Click on any of the images
below to view them at full size.
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| Being Picked up at Jo'Burg Airport. |
A rental 110 waiting at the airport. |
Picking up the Defender 110s. |
It’s two o’clock in the
morning and I’m lying in my roof top tent staring
at the canvas ceiling. Despite the comfy mattress
below me, I can’t seem to get to sleep. Perhaps
it’s because the normal background noise of
city life in Colorado is gone; replaced by the blood
curdling shrieks of jackals. Then again, maybe it’s
the nearby lions having a territorial disagreement.
They can’t be more than a quarter mile away,
but their deep baritone voices which echo across the
savannah sound like they’re right outside the
tent. Come to think of it, lions outside my tent might
be a big reason I can’t sleep. They’re
a stark reminder that we’re halfway around the
world from Denver, Colorado camping on the edge of
the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. Sure, when
I get home this is the stuff of great anecdotes and
party stories, but right now it just scares the hell
out of me.
Although my company, Pangaea Expeditions,
had organized this two-week expedition into the bushveld
of southern Africa, this was my first time visiting
the continent. Graham Jackson, our guide who was born
and raised in southern Africa, was responsible for
our welfare out here in the bush. It came as a great
comfort when I soon heard him walking around outside
the campsite checking to make sure that everyone was
all right and comfortable with the noises outside
our tents. “It’s OK,” he reassured,
“it’s just a couple of lions.” Great,
just lions! For a second there I was worried that
it was a giant predator higher up on the food chain
than me, like a LION!
The
night before, we’d slept in the comfort of a B&B on the
outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa. There, it was easy to forget
that you were in Africa. The friendly people and plethora of chain
stores and malls made it seem like any other major metropolis in
the world. But here at St. Clair’s Camp, just a few miles
inside the border of Botswana, there was no mistaking it—we
were in the classic Africa of legend, the Africa you usually only
see on the Discovery Channel. |
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| Inspecting the 110s. |
At the B & B in Jo'Burg |
A group photo prior to departure. |
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| Heading out of town. |
At the B & B in Jo'Burg |
A group photo prior to departure. |
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| Extinct volcanic cones dot the horizon in Botswana. |
Moonrise at St. Clair's Lions Camp. |
The grouppacks up to loave the Lions
Camp. |
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Bushveld
wisdom dictates that if you don’t bring any food into your
tent and you zip all the door flaps up before you go to bed, you’ll
be OK. You can go to sleep relaxed and calm knowing that lions
and other animals don’t really know what to make of a rooftop
tent- they think of you, the tent and the vehicle as one and the
same, and thus a larger entity than them- not prey. Real world
experience however is not quite so calming, as testified the next
morning by the mass of people huddled around the coffee pot, hoping
for a caffeine buzz to keep them awake after a sleepless night
listening to “those noises”.
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| Big lion yawn. |
The king of the jungle looks on. |
Local kids inspect Tylers telephoto
lens. |
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| A male lion at St. Clairs. |
Lions relax in the morning sun. |
Local school kids look at the lions. |
| After
the ingestion of large amounts of caffinated beverages, our group
was to begin its first day truly in the wild. Our journey would
take us another 250 km along the Kalahari to Khama Rhino Sanctuary,
one of the few places left in the world where both species of
rhinoceros, black and white, still roam. Once hunted to the brink
of extinction by poachers for their horns, the rhino population
is slowly beginning to recover. Khama is now home to about 28
white rhinos and 1 black rhino, just one small chapter in what
will hopefully become the success story of the rhino. |
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| Local transportation in Botswana. |
The intrance to Khama Rhino Sanctuary. |
Night time game viewing drive in Khama
Rhino Sanctuary. |
| Our
late afternoon arrival to the sanctuary meant that everyone had
to quickly settle into the campsite and prepare for a nighttime
game drive, a rarity in Botswana. Nearly all parks and preserves
in the country prohibit driving after dark, since the glaring
headlights and loud lumbering vehicles disrupt the habits of nocturnal
animals. However, in a few parks, Khama being one of them, sanctioned
night drives in park owned vehicles driven by the park rangers
are permitted. These drives offer a unique view of the bush and
give you the opportunity to see the “other half” of
Africa’s animal population. Among the sightings this night
were hyena, aardvark, aardwolf, impala, as well as a mother rhino
and her baby. |
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| Morning at the campsite. |
A morning game drive. |
The roof top tents in full regalia.
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| Packing up the roof top tent. |
Dave is waiting for animals. |
Carrie hangs out the side of her 110
ala Dukes of Hazard. |
| After a cold night camping
(May is the beginning of winter in southern Africa,
and night time temperatures sometimes drop into the
low 40s) we woke up early for a morning game drive
on the way out of the park. Gone were the hyena, jackals
and leopards of the night; in their stead, herds of
gazelle and zebra descended en masse to the watering
holes. Our first daytime game drive of the trip was
truly jaw-dropping. Seven Land Rover Defender 110s
lined up end to end, and perched on top of each truck
were the respective passegers with cameras, binoculars
and video cameras in hand. We simply sat there panning
back and forth as if unable to decide what to pay
attention to. Directly in front of us, a heard of
impala, but there to the right a few wildebeests grazing
beneath the meager shade of an acacia tree. Further
off to the right a group of ostriches intermingled
with zebra while to the left a lone giraffe made an
appearance in the clearing. It was like watching Animal
Planet in 360 degree 3D TV.
In
one moment the countless hours sitting in an airplane crossing
the Atlantic, the frustration of getting sixteen people through
the border into Botswana and the exhaustion from a sleepless lion-filled
night suddenly melted away. In it’s place, the sheer elation
of a lifelong dream fulfilled and the wonder of seeing the curious
animals roaming their natural habitat. |
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| Impala's distinctive "M" marking. |
Ostrich and Zebra graze. |
Zebras on the grasslands. |
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