BACK THE IN DAY
to get through muddy sections.
Mealtimes were far from luxurious. Koo, Langeberg and Spekenham donated canned food for our trip: fruit, beans, peas and viennas. In a desperate attempt to create some variety, Kobus bought a goat in Angola for R1. We made stokbrood that we cooked over the fire every night, and we sporadically encountered spots where we could buy Cuca beer, a potent local brew.
Our duties involved mapping out unrecorded Bushman paintings in the Brandberg area, and other miscellaneous tasks for Louis’ thesis and the anthropological department.
We spent three nights at Ruacana Falls on the border between Namibia and Angola. It’s incredible to think that we could camp wild practically anywhere in those days. I’ll never forget those nights next to the Kunene River, or the fact that water was so strictly rationed further south that we had to brush our teeth with black coffee on occasion. On our way back through Namibia, we ran out of diesel. We had calculated that the bus would get about 6 km per litre – but that was on a good road. On the sandy tracks around the Kunene, it was another story altogether. Luckily, we were near Ombalantu
(now Outapi) and the Finnish nurses at the local clinic happened to have diesel available because the Finnish government had donated a generator just days previously. I don’t know what would have happened to us if they hadn’t been willing to part with some of it!
These are the close scrapes that Kobus and I talk about to this day. But, as they say, there is no adventure without a small element of danger.
The bus made it and we returned to Stellenbosch on 12 January 1964. We’d driven 4 400 km without a single flat tyre!
y wife Leoni and I spent the first week of 2020 in Satara rest camp in the Kruger Park. Late one afternoon, we drove to the Ngotso area north of Satara (towards Olifants) because it’s known for its leopard sightings. We had heard that there was a male leopard, a female and a young leopard in the area.
The wildebeest in the park had started to give birth in December so there was no shortage of prey. We found the young leopard soon enough and watched as she tried to catch a wildebeest calf. The adult female was resting in a culvert under the road and the male must have been around, but we didn’t see him.
The calf was lying down under a tree about 200 m from the young leopard. It was next to the S147, a one-way dirt road off the H1-4 tar road. The leopard stalked the calf but when she got close, she noticed that the calf wasn’t running away. Confused, she lay down about 3 m from the wildebeest and the two watched each other for quite a while. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a clear photo of this interaction and we had to leave to make it back to camp before the gates closed, so we didn’t see how it turned out.
Early the next morning, we returned to the same area. The carcass of a young wildebeest hung from a big apple-leaf tree – we suspected it was the calf from the previous day. The male leopard was in the tree, but there was no sign of the young leopard and the female.
About an hour and a half after we arrived, a herd of wildebeest came to drink from the stream. The male leopard immediately climbed down the tree and started to stalk the wildebeest through the dense bush. Moments later the herd scattered and after five minutes the leopard appeared with another dead calf. When the leopard reached the tree, it stopped to rest and then carried the carcass up the tree with brute force . It put the carcass in a fork in the tree. Barely an hour later, more wildebeest arrived to quench their thirst and the male leopard caught calf! This time he stashed his catch under a bush next to the road. We returned to camp around 11 am and left behind a whole crowd of people with long lenses trained on the sighting.
When we returned around lunchtime, there were three carcasses in the tree!
A few days later we passed through the area again and watched a lioness catch two wildebeest calves and an impala ram in the space of two hours. We didn’t get any photos because it happened so fast and we weren’t in the best position.
We regularly visit the park, but these sightings were unusual. It was one of our best visits yet!