A roaring success
wasn’t too sure about a safari – then the lions popped up and made it...
IT’S our very first game drive at Marataba and we’ve stopped by the river, the sun low in the sky, when Jomi, our guide, hears baboons we’d seen earlier on the savannah ‘alarm calling’. We bump back along the track and spot them high in the trees, still and staring. We follow their gaze and there, sauntering side by side, are e two huge male lions. Just a matter of feet from us.
Initially, I’m petrified, hardly y daring to follow them with my eyes lest I attract their attention. I’m scared they’ll leap at the children, or worse, at me, e, but they amble right past ourr open-top vehicle.
Just when I think we’ve had a lucky escape, we begin to follow them, at what I’m assured is a safe distance. I slowly relax; x; it’s clear they’ve no interest in us. And being so close to these amazing animals is a huge thrill. They exude grace and understated power as they pad through their territory, so clearly in command.
By now the baboons who had announced the lions’ presence are some distance away. One lion disappears into the bush. We follow the other round a bend, and there in front of us stands a herd of impala. For a split second they’re oblivious to the danger.
Suddenly the serenity of the evening is ripped apart. Impala snort in fear and flee, leaping through the air to escape.
The scene looks like an ancient cave painting. Behind them, the lion we’d lost sight of charges out of the bush. It’s a pincer movement. One impala scampers on the uneven ground, the lion hooks an enormous, extended paw across its back and drags it down into the dust. The chase is over in seconds.
The light fades and the lion drags the dying impala under a tree. His
hunting companion lies some way off, allowing the victor the lion’s share. We were dazed but exhilarated by what we’d seen as we made our way back to the lodge – the stark reality of life and death.
Our beloved pet labrador, Blue, had died a few weeks before and the family had cried for days, and we were still in mourning. Now we’d seen another animal lose its life – in a brutal, if efficient way. Thankfully, it seemed I was the only one who noticed the parallel, and the three boys were so engaged with the drama and excitement of the kill that I’m not sure they quite saw it from the impala’s perspective.
So, what an incredible start, particularly after I’d spent the fourhour car journey from Johannesburg managing the boys’ expectations and telling them they’d be lucky to glimpse the back end of a buffalo through binoculars at 500 yards. This was not a safari park but ‘the wild’ (by supper they were messaging lion pictures to their mates and rolling their eyes at me).
THE scene of our very own David Attenborough experience is Marataba Private Game Reserve in Marakele National Park, near South Africa’s border with Botswana. Marataba Safari Lodge lies on an ancient trade route and the scenery surrounding it is almost as dramatic as the wildlife. The winding Matlabas River cuts through the rolling plains against the backdrop of the Waterberg mountains. It’s so beautiful that if we’d never seen an animal, I would have happily driven around for hours at a time.
Not that there was any chance of that: every game drive provided a wildlife spectacle, from herds of prehistoric-looking wildebeest to photogenic zebras and baby giraffes. We also glimpsed a critically endangered black rhino and watched families of white rhino grazing on the plains.
On the river we saw hippos, so graceful in the water and so comically ungainly on land, while kudo and waterbuck drank at the water’s edge. Everything was enhanced by our guide, Jomi. He entranced our
boys with tales of the bush. He taught them to track animals and recognise their prints and (clearly knowing his audience) their dung.
The boys came back enthusing over poo while we’d had a few hours relaxing by the pool.
Marataba Lodge is a study in safari chic. Calling our accommodation a ‘tent’ is like calling Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck food ‘pub grub’. They are canvas and stone villas with private terraces, raised to prevent unwanted visitors – comforting as you lie in bed listening to lions roaring in a territorial turf war.
The food is as good as the best wineries around Cape Town, but here you watch elephants drinking at the watering hole while you eat Springbok Benedict on the terrace. The experience was absorbing and immersive, there’s nothing that stops you thinking about your inbox quite like the mock charge of a young bull elephant.
Before Marataba, we’d spent a few days on the southern coast of South Africa at a place known as The Crags, near Plettenberg Bay. We stayed at Hog Hollow, a beautiful country lodge, friendly and contemporary. Our villa had spectacular views over mountains covered in green forest leading down to the ocean. Shane and his team overwhelmed us with their hospitality and barbecued us prawns by the pool to enjoy when we returned from horseriding. It would have been tempting to chill at the lodge or the beach, but our boys had a long list of ‘must sees’ that turned out to be well worth it.
At various wildlife sanctuaries we held snakes and learned about monkeys, apes and lemurs that had been caged or illegally trapped. At Jukani Wildlife Sanctuary we saw Siberian tigers and black leopards, endangered African wild dogs, cheetah and honey badgers. Our guide had grown up with a pet cheetah in his bedroom, which took the boys’ lobbying for a new puppy to a new level.
At the Elephant Sanctuary, we met elephants who’d lost the tips of their trunks in poachers’ snares in Botswana or were missing tusks.
At home, conservation is often on the fringes of our consciousness; here it’s in sharp relief. There’s a daily fight against poachers and a danger we could sleepwalk into a world with no rhinos or cheetahs. Even the African lions are under threat, their numbers having halved since the 1980s.
When you spend time in this stunning part of the world, you realise how precious it is and just what the good guys are up against.
When our kids grow up, I don’t want them to look at photos of this trip and say: ‘Ah yes, that’s when there used to be lions in the wild.’