I thought I was hot stuff in 1983 after visiting Kruger National Park in South Africa, probably the most famous game park in the world. It’s been a long time since then but some of my most tellable stories over the years came from that experience – and I don’t mean the animals – I talk about the people I met there. There were the crass Americans, the rude Germans, and the bitter expat Rhodesian driver. Back then the roads were dirt, the vehicle open, and no “disclaimer” agreements needed to be signed first. Frankly, I can’t remember what animal life might have been present – way too many game parks since then and all memories run together.
Over 25 years later, I visited Kruger again, this time with my wife, Gwynne, and children: Heath, Heather and Haven. Kruger was a parking lot: asphalt, curio shops and posh resorts – all full from a state-sponsored convention of travel agents. The “game” animals consisted primarily of human acclimated types: springbok, kudu, baboons and monkeys. We saw a single zebra, a single croc, and a few hippos and giraffes - nothing else… Except a leopard! Of the “Big 5” (now the “Big 6” including the newly added hippo), the leopard is by far the most difficult to get a sighting n the wild. My kids didn’t have my preconceptions and expectations so their opinion of the game sightings was satisfactory, but then again, they didn’t know just how special our leopard was.
However, for me, the people we met create the best memories: a newlywed couple on the first night of their honeymoon who chatted with us around the campfire, love in their eyes, mooning over each other; the bullshitting night game driver who upon hearing about our good luck spotting a leopard, wove an elaborately preposterous story of how we had just missed a cheetah that had killed a kudu and in turn been killed by a leopard who dragged both carcasses up a tree; and the old Game Walk guide, the one who examined every piece of animal dung for our edification, allowed soldier termites to pierce deeply into his soft thumb pad with their pinchers, and knew every track by species, ex and age of the animal that left them, and whose ultimate goal in life was to track a bear in the United States. These are the “game” sightings I’ll always remember.
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