A LITTLE crowd of people stood eyeing each other covertly at the domestic terminal of Jan Smuts airport in Johannesburg. We were all going on safari and we were wondering who would be our fellow big game spotters. Was that woman in the backless lame trouser suit and the glitter spotted high heels, going to our camp? Please may she be. She looked even more incapable of dealing with the bush than I was myself.
Please may the people with the industrial strength camcorders not be going to the same place. Please don't let me lose the two gigantic Swiss men with scarlet faces, and still drunk from a wine tour down south - lasting some days and nights but they had no recollection of how many of either.
It was all sorted out when we got to Skukuza, a place about the size of Maam Cross. There they sat, the handsome young rangers in their shorts and their tanned legs, with a sense of glowing health and being at one with nature. Their Land Rovers had the names of our camps on them. I lost them all to Sabi Sabi or Kirkmans or Harrys. The woman teetered off on her heels, the Swiss lurched into their jeep and the couple with the videorecorders knocked most of their travelling companions in their jeep senseless.
We were going to Mala Mala, a private game reserve of 45,000 acres. The luggage was stacked in the back and I was holding on for such dear life and so tightly that I didn't notice anyone else at all in the Land Rover, although I know there were about five of us.
We plunged into dense undergrowth and pitted roads, and the handsome ranger told us that he wasn't our Individual Ranger, he was just doing airport duty today, but that our Individual Ranger would look after us when we arrived.
We went through what seemed like the roughest and wildest, terrain I had ever known, plunging down into river beds, negotiating perilous corners where half the road seemed to have, been eroded. Then I learned that this was the main road. Compared with what lay ahead, this was the N7 of Africa.
It was at this stage I learned that this was the main road. Compared with what lay ahead, this was the N7 of Africa.
They stood in a line, the handsome Individual Rangers. We got Jamie (23) - Hollywood looks, crazy about animals. I was about to go to my but to lie down and reconsider the whole thing but Jamie said that when we had freshened up he would take us to lunch; as an Individual Ranger, he would serve us from the buffet and get our drinks order from the bar.
I felt that the drinks order might well startle the innocent face and pink liver of Jamie, who ate a lot of fruit and salad and drank guava juice. But he delivered it manfully on all occasions. Then we got into his Land Rover and were introduced to, Eric, Jean and Astrid, our travelling companions. They had been on several drives already and seen incredible things. Since coming to Mala Mala 24 hours ago, they had become old Africa hands.
None of them looked ashen or mentally unbalanced, so I decided to avert my eyes from our Individual Ranger as he loaded his rifle in case of emergency, and believe that this was indeed something we would all get through very well and possibly even enjoy.
On the back of the Land Rover sat Jim, the tracker. He was from the area and he would know if there was a lioness behind a bush or a pair of warthogs having a bath. About five minutes out, we found an elephant. A huge thing with great flapping ears and a trunk that was making fairly swift work of a large tree and most of the neighbouring bushes. I was hoping it knew we came in peace and love and that it would not stand on us. Or playfully turn over the jeep.
"What would you actually . . . er . . . do if it charged at us? Would you, er, shoot it?" I asked. This lovely, ecologically sound ranger wouldn't shoot a big beautiful elephant in its own home base? And if that was so why had he the gun fixed to where the windscreen would have been had there been one? "No, if it charged we'd go away. Sharpish," Jamie said, and we all felt a surge of pride and bravery.
I was quite satisfied with seeing one elephant very close up, but Jim the tracker said that there were three or four more nearby and suddenly we left the road and I thought my last hour had come. We plunged straight into trees the size of the lilac bush back home - the one that I sprinkle bottles of mega vitamins on, and pause daily to admire its mighty growth. We just drove through trees like that. I'm not joking you, we went straight through them. Sometimes they bounced back up again, sometimes they didn't. But I reasoned that if we hadn't done that, maybe an elephant would have eaten them for his elevenses. It was very hard to get used to. The tracker was right: there they were four more elephants, ludicrous and wonderful, looking at us with mild surprise, no fear and thankfully nothing skittish in mind.
THE rangers have radios in their ears and they tell each other when they sight things. They go out in small numbers, to avoid everyone arriving at the same time.
So we heard that there was a leopard nearby and there it was, slinking along. You couldn't quite touch it from the Land Rover but if you leaned out it would know you were there. I leaned in. Far in. The leopard lay down and rolled in the dust with its paws in the air. I never saw anything, so endearing. For a moment I loved the leopard. Then it tensed up and went hunting the beautiful impala, the deer with the black stripes on their bottoms and the justifiably frightened eyes.
I got this terrible urge to shout out to the impala, and tell them there was a leopard on the way and to run like mad. I whispered this urge to my Individual Ranger, but Jamie said that would be a terrible thing to do, we had no right to interfere in the life of the jungle. We were only there to observe it. I was a bit glum about that, but to show you what a weak hypocrite I am, I have to tell you that I ate impala for dinner that night, with saute potatoes and a salad.
We, were absolutely exhausted and Jamie, the Individual Ranger, escorted us home, a camp rule. Wild animals come in, so guests aren't allowed to wander out of their huts at night. Indeed a wildebeeste had left an enormous sign of his having been there, practically at the front door.
When the call came at 5.30 in the morning I thought it must be a joke but it wasn't, strong coffee and into the jeep for the dawn drive, a real time to see the animals. The place was alive with them. For four hours we eyeballed lions and zebras and jackals and four different elephants. And loads of baboons.
There were, dusk drives, there were torrential downpours of rain, and paths in the bush became sliding mud rivers. I was soaked to the skin on three separate occasions. Then I saw two rhinos having a bath in a mud pool which wouldn't have fitted something half the size of one of them. I saw and smelled a kill and watched the lions eating what they could and the vultures looking on anxiously from above.
Today ranger Jamie and all the other Individual Rangers are taking other people around Mala Mala, bordering the Kruger National Park near the boundary with Mozambique.
It was as great an outing as I've ever had any February. I'd love to be there this morning to know what's going on.