Setting out
We start rather late and our guides keep up a fierce pace. One of them, Samora, tells us he has 8 bullets – one for each of us if we cause any trouble. We look at him doubtfully. “Just joking,” he says.
“Are you married?” someone asks him.
“Oh no! I am 24 – I do not want to get married. I will get married when I am 30.”
“That’s what I said when I was 24,” I mutter.
The light begins to fail, they call a halt and declare the rock we are standing on by the river side the campsite.
“Sure,” I say. “We’ll go for water. What shall we put it in?”
“Use the pots.”
“Great – where are the pots?” He looks at me in puzzlement.
“You have them.”
“No. I never saw any pots. Did anyone see any pots?” I ask the others. Most people shake their heads. One person says he thinks he might have seen them in the guide’s truck on the way to the starting point but not since. Everyone checks their bags in the hope that, surreptitiously, a sly cooking pot might have crawled its way into the rucksack. Sadly, lacking (as they do) opposable thumbs, none has.
“So what are we cooking with?” someone wails. We all stare at each other.
It begins to rain. A lot. In fact, one might use the word torrential. We rush to our bags and wrap ground sheets around them in an attempt to keep things dry. Within seconds we are soaked.
An hour later we are sat around a fire trying to warm our soaking bodies and dry our sodden sleeping bags. Dinner is apples. We study the pack of mince that was to be our dinner. “We could heat stones and make burgers,” someone suggests. No one takes him up on it. I remember reading in Prince Caspian (by C.S. Lewis) how when the child heroes were lost in the woods the dwarf “had some quite excellent ideas regarding cooking”. I cannot remember what they were.
We attempt to roast an apple in foil with peanuts and sugar. Tastes OK but there is only enough foil for 2 and we burn our fingers trying to unwrap them and our tongues trying to eat them. Someone produces a metal mug – we fill it with water and in turn everyone gets a hot drink.
We divide up the night watch and one by one people climb into their sleeping bags. Most of us have also been provided with what is essentially a sleeping bag condom – a waterproof tube to pull over the sleeping bag. I climb into mine – pull the condom over it and lie back on the sleeping mat which does little to soften the rock. I try imagine what the stars would look like were they there. Cloud rolls ominously back at me.
The word “interminable” is perhaps best suited to describe the night. The rain comes and goes – sleep frequently interrupted by the “pit… pit… pit.. pit.. pit pit pit pit” of rain showers, each necessitating a tortoise-like complete withdrawal into the condom. At one point the sky clears and the moon comes out – full and bright illuminating the river valley in which we are camped and making everything seem almost worth it. Tom tells me on his watch at that point he saw rhino in the valley and heard the barking of baboons.
When Magnus comes to get me for my watch at 5am I am not sleeping. I boil some water in the now carbonised metal cup and drink tea whilst watching the sky around me turn from black to grey to lighter greyer to a slightly lighter grey than that.
Just as I wonder whether I should wake the others it starts raining again and that does it for me. The guide comes up. He thinks we should head back to base camp to dry out, get the pans and then do our walks from there – we can have a dry night in tents tonight. Everyone agrees and we pack up and head off.
Striking camp
2 hours later we are back at base camp. It is a hive of activity – tables are being set up and cooks are preparing food. The guide looks a little sheepish. He had forgotten, he confesses, that it is the leaving party of the park’s recently retired head.
One of the party looks close to tears. A couple of the others (and me I suspect if there were a mirror) look close to exploding. Three of us head to the park office and couple of kilometres away. I find the trails manager and, drawing on the heritage of my father (a strong proponent of what he called the “creative alternative”) and my silver-spoon English accent explain “how much have enjoyed all our previous KZN Wildlife excursions, so imagine our disappointment when…” She listens carefully and agrees to a transfer to the nearby
As we drive out the rain intensifies – the windscreen wipers are on maximum and I can see only 20 metres ahead. “You know,” says Olstein, “it is a very good thing that Sinodi forgot the pots.”
“Why?” I ask.
“If he hadn’t we would have been in the park – walking and sleeping in this.”
You gotta love those small mercies.
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