If I could, I would go to the bush every weekend, to ground myself, to heal the pains of the week and rejuvenate my mind. After the long year that brought us a pandemic that no one ever imagined could hold us hostage, I owed it to myself to take one last trip to Moremi Game Reserve.
By 9am, we were entering the Reserve and this trip wasn’t as fun as the previous one. The weather was perfect but as we got deeper into the wilderness, the rain clouds gathered and none of was prepared. Our safari vehicle was the typical design, with no covers on the sides nor did we have any rain coats in the vehicle. Our lack of foresight. The rain poured down and at some point there was just too much chaos amongst us, everyone trying to “run away” from getting wet and me desperate for a place to hide my camera before it got damaged by the water. The ladies in the front cleared off the cooler box that had the braai meat, to keep my camera safe, they tripped the bowl of chakalaka over and it spilled all over one of the seats. There was no cloth to wipe it off and the only roll of the toilet that we had could not be wasted, just incase it would be needed later, so, they started eating the chakalaka off the seat with their hands. It was the only option they had.
The driver stopped the vehicle but I asked him not to, I remembered that someone once mentioned that you shouldn’t stop while it’s raining, rather you carry on moving forward because it would probably be passing through to where you had just come from. Shortly after that, it was no longer raining and everyone got back to their wet seat. Thankfully the canvas had protected the seats, it would have been a mess.
The sun was finally out but we all had to endure the wet clothes and seats because we still had to explore the bush. I had hoped to see the animals but it was too green and too wet that even if a lion was somewhere near by, it would have camouflaged so well for us to not even see it. The trip was painful but that V8 engine gave me hope, otherwise we would have gotten stuck somewhere on those muddy roads. We kept moving forward and in different directions, our guide/driver hoping to take us to places where there was a potential of seeing some cats, but with no luck. As we were approaching some place, I saw what looked like a blanket of rocks, until he confirmed that it was a hippo pool. There were over twenty hippos and a countless number of crocodiles in that muddy pool, all squeezed together because there was no space.
While still there, two crocodiles were rolling and flipping over in the water and the head of a hippo’s carcass emerged out. It was a gruesome sight and we watched that action for a while and later carried on with our hopeful trip.
There wasn’t really much to see and we stopped at some spot to have our braai and had to drive out the park before it closed. Just when I was about to give up and put the camera away, we saw a bateleur eagle on the grass, occupied with something in the grass. I asked the driver to stop, hoping that it would fly away but it didn’t. It was only after a little that I realised that it was stomping on some dead meat and it eventually gave us a nasty eye for interrupting its meal-time.
I put my camera away after taking a few shots of it and we headed out, through all those challenging and painful muddy roads back to where the Corona virus rule the streets.
VIXEN ON THE MOVE 