Tembe Safari Magic

What a weekend! On Friday afternoon we headed to Tembe Reserve Elephant Lodge. Tembe is a 30,000 hectare park containing all of the big 5 (and plenty of the mini millions). We were truly spoilt by the luxurious accommodation and the entertainment provided by the animals.

Our two days and nights in the park enabled us to go on three safari drives. Our guide for all three drives was called Patrick. The first took some beating. It is coming to the end of winter time at the moment in SA – a time of very little rainfall. This means that there are relatively few water holes in the park for animals to drinks. The principal beneficiaries of this are the lions. They are able to sit motionless around the scarce puddles waiting for their preferred meal to arrive. We arrived at a waterhole to find them in wait.

What we witnessed played out in two stages. Both were a great mixture of sport and war. The first stage was highly tactical. It involved an attempted entrapment of a young male Nyala – let’s call him Pietersen - by 4 lions led by an extremely cunning female warrior – we’ll call her Boudiccea. Female lions are the better hunters. Boudiccea is particularly formidable. Easily, she worked to position two other lions so that an unaware Nyala would walk into a space between three of them (the fourth lion was too busy feasting on an old carcass). With the trap set, Boudiccea could wait for Pietersen to give his wicket away.

Then all suddenly seemed ruined for the lions. The fourth lion, who had being paying little attention to the developing situation, stood up and walked across to the other lions. Pietersen bounded back. Boudiccea made a half-hearted charge but was easily out paced. Lions it seems are not very fast (imagine speed of a big dog, or Angus Fraser running in during his hey day). Our guide, Patrick, had been acting as commentator while all was unfolding in front of us. He had been carefully explaining each of Boudiccea’s moves. When the fourth lion stood up and walked across to the other lions, he became livid. Repeatedly he cursed him, ‘What a stupid lion! He has ruined the moment. I thought he would ruin it. He was not paying enough attention. What a stupid lion!’

Except the action had not finished. Boudiccea had not given up. She wandered over to the puddle of water and sat down beside it in an area of longer grass. Pietersen, not content with his initial foray into danger was still determined to drink. Pietersen sniffed forward carelessly to the waterhole. Suddenly Boudiccea leapt. This time the Nyala could not escape – trapped between the lions jaws. It was not immediately killed. Taking a Rumsfeld attitude to codes of warfare, Boudiccea sat down to torture her Nyala. After around 15 minutes Boudiccea seemed content that all information had been extracted.

We saw much else on our three hour drive though nothing else quite so compelling. We came across an elephant eating on his own. We came across a herd of buffalo. We also saw a couple of white rhino. I managed to clear up the answer to a question I had wondered for a long time but never quite formulated – ‘Why are white rhino called white rhino?’ Apparently they were originally called wide rhino on account of their wider mouths. Through mishearing this became white rhino. Their opposite number then became black rhino.

Our afternoon drive was less eventful. The main entertainment was provided by a pair of young male elephants frolicking together not entirely platonically. This caused great amusement among a German medical student. A more senior Italian lady was less amused (though it was unclear whether by the behaviour of the elephants or Martin).

Our drive on Sunday was highly dramatic, if bloodless. We came across a full pride of lions lazing about. We also came across a family of elephants including a couple of baby elephants. Hearts melted.

Two last abiding memories from the weekend. The first was eating a variety of new meats. May I highly recommend both warthog and Nyala. We tasted both in our evening meals. Look out for both when next in Tesco (sadly they don’t stock either in our local supermarket – I’ll tell you about Spar in another blog). More seriously, I think it is about time that the major UK supermarkets branched out in their meat selection. Far too much emphasis is placed on varieties of fruit and vegetables.

The second memory will be Mary’s attempts to correctly identify all the different deer variations in Tembe. Upon seeing each one Mary would shout out Duiker or Impala, or Nyala, or Bala, or Kudu, or water buck. This would then be followed by Patrick’s correction. All very endearing.

Finally, a note of thanks to the owner of Tembe lodge who generously halves lodge rates for medics wanting to visit. A terrific gesture of appreciation towards the work of the doctors in the area.