African Wildlife And Environment Issue 73

FAUNA, FLORA & WILDLIFE

cruiser or Hilux vehicles, depending on the condition of the roads where we operated. While we were still in the ‘closed in’ phase I think that many of the trails rangers used to let the trail group sit on the roof of the vehicle, giving them a fantastic vantage point, but of course this was not particularly safe, even though we only let them climb up once we off the normal tourist roads. I remember once we were driving around a corner and having a pride of lions walking down the road towards us. I

are woken at dawn by the sound of a lone, hungry hyena and the only other sound in your world is the blackened old coffee pot wheezing away on the embers, then you know you are in Land Cruiser country’. So from a young age I was hooked, and wanted the lifestyle of a ranger in Land Cruiser country! I remember spending time at Jwala Lodge in the Tuli Block in Botswana in my holidays, when I was studying for my Nature Conservation Diploma. I was asked to

whispered to the sacrificial offerings on the roof to just sit dead still and not move a muscle! As luck would have it, the lions decided that they would not simply walk past us, but would investigate us more closely. A lion can easily jump up three meters and here we had some very interested lions sniffing at the bumper, the doors, and the wheels in particular and then looking straight at the snacks sitting like statues on the roof rack. The one lioness started biting the right front wheel and I had to bang on the door to get her to move away. She then came back with reinforcements and was intent on sniffing and biting the wheels. I soon realised that discretion is the better part of valour, and I started the engine and started moving forward slowly. It was comical watching the lions because their heads were moving from side to side

drive their new Toyota Land Cruiser to get supplies at Selebi Phikwe. I felt invincible in that vehicle, and I remember driving through long stretches of thick sand in 4 x 4 and then driving like the clappers to get away from an elephant cow from a breeding herd that charged with intent! When I became a wilderness trails ranger in the KNP, we were issued with closed-in vehicles because the management felt it would be too dangerous to transport our tourists to the trails camp in an open vehicle. This logic at the time was too much for me to handle, and I remember saying to my bosses that we are walking with these same people in the KNP for three days on a trail, surely that should be seen as ‘slightly more’ dangerous? Eventually sanity prevailed and they did away with the ‘Bread Tin’ metal structure and we were issued with open game-viewing type

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