Staff Photographer
‘Listen, I know you think we’re blowing smoke up your arse,” says Iain, my host. “But you have had an amazing safari. I guarantee you will not see those things again. It’s like you had some effect on the animals.” Jacques, our ranger, isn’t saying anything. He can’t, he’s smiling too hard.
Three days earlier, before being crowned Doctor Dolittle, I arrived at Mount Camdeboo — a 14 000ha malaria-free private game reserve in the Great Karoo, a semi-desert region.
Safari didn’t mean much to me but stereotypes: braying men in Land Rovers or angry baboons attacking the family car. “It’s become too much about things like Egyptian cotton sheets,” says head ranger Erhardt. Perhaps I looked panicked, because he quickly adds that it has those luxuries. “But it’s about the wildlife, really.” Five minutes before my arrival, he says, he plucked a cobra out of reception. I definitely do look panicked this time.
Within minutes, ambling through the acacia trees, we come across two buffalo. “Two minutes in! You can go for days and not see them,” says Jacques. “Disease free, which is quite rare,” says Iain. “We’re proud of that.” Minutes later we add vervet monkeys, kudu and hadedas to the list.
“Yep. This is what it’s all about,” says Iain, as we stop for sundowners. I see what makes this location unique. Three-mile horizons and bushy plains are one thing, but here, hugged by the Sneeuberg mountains, there is a pick-and-mix of habitats up to an altitude of 1 520m. Finding a safari in the Great Karoo is rare — but also to have the possibility of seeing game on a high plateau makes this special. There is a feeling of being truly alone, something Iain cherishes from his visits to this place as a child, when his late father, Logie Buchanan, purchased land here in 1996. “This is what I mean by exclusivity.” Jacques pours me a drink, and I enjoy the whistling of an unseen bird.
“What is that bird, Jacques?”
“That bird is a frog.”
At 5.30 the following morning, the mist is thick. We climb out of the valley to open ground — and to the cheetah. We track her on foot, popping the silence with our footfalls. She is mobile, maintaining a comfort zone between us and her cubs. Without vision across the plain she is especially cautious, and Jacques coos “Hey girl” to keep her reassured of our location. With the mist added to her camouflage, she’s like a phantom. You have never been scrutinised until you have felt a cheetah doing it — it’s a physical sensation.
Suddenly Jacques tells us to freeze. We are advancing on what reveals itself, as a patch of mist dissolves, to be an agitated rhino being mock-charged by the cheetah’s cubs. Jacques (unarmed) is not happy with us adding a third party to this stand-off. We back off. Thank God for the mist, and the fact that this two-ton, 60kph beast’s eyesight is even worse than mine.
The next thing that appeared out of the fog was brunch. “I’ll talk you through the normal view from here. It is stunning,” says Iain as we dined in a cloud. It was a great piece of stage management from the chef, Ignatius. Every meal, from five-course tasters to bonfires and braais, takes place in a different setting on the reserve or at the three renovated Dutch Cape farm-houses. Each has a pool, dining patios and gardens, and combines a traditional rustic style — in keeping with the settler heritage of the properties — with luxury. Stunning photographs of the Karoo, sofas and walls of books give what Camdeboo prizes: the feel of a home. At £167 per day, including safari, it’s good value too — this type of experience typically costs £100 more per day in the Eastern Cape.
What isn’t stage-managed is the animals. Any perimeter creates a “managed” environment, but the commitment to natural ecology here is strong. The rangers, not just “jeep jockeys”, play a passionate role in the conservation of the land. After a 17-hour day of tracking and teaching, Jacques, so excited at having seen a fish eagle, went back out into the night to admire it. Plus there’s a push for integrity over sensationalism — to return this land to the natural, diverse condition that has been scorched by aggressive farming; to keep to indigenous animals, including rare breeds such as the mountain zebra. We did see the cheetah and her cubs against a blue sky, from about 15m — but even a partial glimpse in territory she can call her own beats patting a controlled animal. Shockingly, at the time I was admiring her, news broke that the cheetah had made List 1 of endangered species.
In three days we added to our list of animals we’d seen: mountain zebra, black wildebeest, giraffe, buzzard, pale chanting goshawk, southern boubou, wattled starling, baboon, glossy starling, tortoise, rock kestrel, brown hooded kingfisher, spring hare, steenbok, eland, hartebeest, blesbok, mountain reedbuck, gemsbok, terrapin, boubou, red-winged starling, drongo, mouse bird, fiscal shrike, black eagle, grey-wing franklin, bokmakierie, ostrich, rhino, cheetah, nightjar, jackal … I fed baby meerkats, had a stand-off with the buffalo and recorded two tortoises having it off.
Finally, on a night drive, a rare aardvark. It disappeared down a hole, only to shoot back out in a panic. It wasn’t us that spooked him: the hole was already in use by a warthog, now peering out at us, metres away. But it was Jacques’s face that was the picture: if he didn’t have ears, his head would have fallen off. —