1. The Search
2. The Sounds
3. Walk at Sunrise
4. Chamilandu Camp
5. Stalking
6. Chindeni Camp - The Senses
7. Snorting
8. Tastes
9. The Sighting and a Bush Breakfast

The Sighting and a Bush Breakfast

I gasped. The leopard was princely in movement of muscle and ligament loping through the grasses. Elegant in all proportions, it crouched, shoulders hunched high, head out stretched and slowly, slowly creeping forward. It was tracking an impala that was well lit in the bright moon of a clearing just beyond the thicket. The leopard was patient, every fiber tensed and ready, waiting minute after minute after minute immobile. Twenty minutes went by, the leopard frozen, the impala a silent statue. A shift in the wind, the impala twitched and another antelope uttered an eery, single warning cry. The leopard sat and waited. The moon had risen an hour ago at first blush red through the trees and now white. It was a hindrance to hunt. The leopard began stalking slowly, slowly.

Too much to tell, but too grand to omit:

• Herd of 500 to 750 buffalo at dusk at a watering hole, lowing and creating dust clouds. It looked like a scene from an old western movie.
• Two groups of giraffe crossing the Kapamba River that we waded over. There we were with three Englishmen in their 60s, all of us giggling like children excited and silly and afraid of crocodiles in the clear water of the shallow river.
• Four lionesses lounging with seven cubs playing over and around and upon them on night drive.
• Two lionesses regal at daytime on a bluff n Lion resting on the banks of the Kapamba River, it crossed the waters just as we crossed. We tried to track it through the grasses, lost it and instead followed the ruckus of baboons howling at a leopard. We saw neither - but the thrill of it!
• Huge elephant spinning around at lightening speed and charging at our jeep. Carie clapping her hands and uttering one syllable. It stopped. Carie had been afraid of elephants until Debs taught her how to live with them.
• Zebra - gentle watching us, oddly striped and impractical looking but wondrous to see, long eyelashes, shy. The stripes I learned store heat (black) for the night and reflect sun (white) to cool off in the day. They became my favorite animal.
• Giant eagle owl - my real first owl sighting ever, anywhere, other than the fleeting glimpse of one flying at dusk. It sat huge upon a branch at night, speckled, round eyed.

And the Bush Breakfast:

Now that was a wildlife sighting extraordinaire: To come upon a campsite in the bush beside a lagoon where huge marabou stalks and open-billed stalks and egrets fished, and after driving for hours when the sun is coming up hot and I am so hungry I am gnawing on a stale muffin, and there before us are fried eggs, bacon, ham, baked beans, fried tomatoes and toast cooking in front of us and coffee and orange juice are waiting.

Our Scottish companions laughed uproariously and said: "Oh, how preposterous!" and "Who would ever think of such a thing!" when we stumbled unsuspecting upon this feast at 10 in the morning far from camp. "Please drive slowly so we can take pictures," they said. Yet when we were named the guests of honor, how the tables turned! Now it was "Oh, how wonderful!"
"How delicious!" How we relished it, laughed and enjoyed every moment of it.

Thank you to Duncan, our guide that day, who had gently persistently persuaded me not to sleep in that morning.

Thank you to Andy - For bringing me the extraordinary, beyond the imagined.