Two weeks before I stayed at Plains Camp, a natural bush fire halted metres away from the closest tent.
Fires are Mother Nature’s way of rejuvenating herself, but also of making you appreciate an experience you might have been denied.
Plains Camp is nestled in a grove of thorn trees 30km inside the Kruger Park and looks out across a tufty expanse of game-dotted grassland. The amenities are modelled on a bygone era of safari chic when moustached, pith helmet-wearing colonials ventured into Africa, bringing European comforts with them — and sparing no expense as they did so.
Our arrival coincided with the rain, which swept in from the south. It pounded the heavy-duty canvas lounge tent, ripping open the window flaps and sending us scurrying (gin and tonics securely in hand) to the more sheltered dining tent for a hearty farm-style dinner.
When we rose in the cool blue dawn for the first game walk, the damp sandy pathways crunched crisply underfoot and the bush around us was fresh and alive.
Mark McGill is the trails ranger for Rhino Walking Safaris, which operates the camp. He knows his craft inside out, having worked in the Kruger for the past eight-and-a-half years, some of it with the park’s anti-poaching unit. But he’s not the cocky kind of ranger who will ride roughshod over park rules and bush etiquette to deliver the Big Five to his guests on a plate. ‘The animal always comes first. If it doesn’t like us being there, then we leave,” he told us.
He is careful not to stoke unreasonable expectations: ‘There’s no guarantee that we’ll see rhino,” he said, ‘and sometimes I think we should have called ourselves Impala Walking Safaris instead.”
But see rhino we did — not on foot but from the bush-pimped comfort of the Plains Camp Land Cruiser during evening game drives. On one occasion, we neared a bend in the road and saw what looked like the shadows of two cars approaching from the opposite direction.
Instead, two white rhinos hove into view, like a pair of Soviet-era T-34 tanks, the bigger chap chasing the smaller one the hell out of his territory. Although their rolling gait and chunky butt cheeks looked hilarious, there was murderous intent in the eye of the dominant male. Perhaps it’s not always a good plan to see rhinos on foot, I thought, as we pulled away.
Walking is a different game-viewing experience altogether. In a vehicle you can daydream about the promise of cold beers and hot showers back at camp. On your feet in the bush, however, you can’t afford to. The fauna has horns, the flora thorns and you need to be alert or run the risk of proving Darwin right about natural selection.
There is one big advantage to walking, though. You witness the symbiotic complexities of the ecosystem at eye level and in detail. For example, McGill showed us a giraffe shin bone lying in the grass that had been gnawed on by supposedly herbivorous impala and porcupines. ‘Calcium,” he said, by way of explanation.
A short while later he strode up the side of an anthill, checked a hole for black mambas, then told us to hold our hand over it. An upward draught of surprisingly hot, humid air attested to the subterranean activity of several thousand termites. Unable to break down the vegetable matter they collect, the termites create the optimum conditions with which to utilise a fungus that can do some of the digesting for them.
Daytime temperatures in the Kruger hit the 30s with ease. Add humidity from the overnight rain and we were only too glad to return to camp by mid-morning.
The heavy rain during our stay prevented us from experiencing a unique aspect of the Rhino Walking Safaris experience — sleep-outs. Guests arrive at elevated wooden platforms before sunset, having walked from Plains Camp carrying a change of clothes, a pillowcase, a sleeping bag and refreshments in a light rucksack. Sundowners follow, then dinner prepared over an open fire, while you soak up the sounds of the bush around you. After a night out under the stars, you return to Plains Camp on foot the next morning.
There was much to see and savour on the early morning walks we did manage, although an uncanny feeling always lingered that we had been seen by more wildlife than we actually saw.
A slap-up brunch down the hatch, we spent the rest of the day holed up in the cool of our tents — which are magnificent, by the way. I loved the earthy, understated wood and brass fittings and shaving in a copper basin was a novel experience. Hot water for showers is piped in from a gas-fired heater hidden around the back.
Another way to keep cool is the plunge pool, where I sat neck-deep with a beer balanced on the edge as I watched my fellow members of the animal kingdom wallow in their plunge pool — the water hole — across the plain.
The absolute highlight for me, though, was during one evening game drive, when we passed a small bush fire on our outward-bound journey. When we turned back, though, the wind had whipped up a towering inferno that glowed with sublime menace against the underside of the low thunderclouds skidding overhead.
Considerably inconvenienced, and in some danger, McGill turned the vehicle around and found us a spot where we could crack open the cooler box, the biltong and the dried fruit, and wait for the fire to exhaust itself.
When life is regulated by an alarm clock, the green-orange-red of the traffic robot and a stream of work-related deadlines, it’s a delight to bugger off to the bush for a while and wallow in a world where nothing goes strictly according to plan.
Lionel Faull stayed at Plains Camp courtesy of Rhino Walking Safaris/Isibindi Africa