Greetings once again! I’m just out of the bush for a few days and thought I would give you a little update from our last trip into the bush.

The group I was guiding was very keen on walking and as I am sure you all know by now, walking is my thing!!! I love nothing more than getting off the vehicle and exploring the wilds on foot! On the second last morning we headed south and started walking at about 6:15 am. The air was cool and pleasant and it was the first clear day we had had out if the last three. We hadn’t been walking long when we hit a group of buffalo heading north east, now this was a little strange as I had seen tracks but they were heading straight south, at any rate we viewed the herd and then proceeded to skirt the herd. We had just crossed to the opposite bank when we encountered another group of buffalo heading South, I was now a little confused. We followed the herd slowly as they headed southwards but then everything became clear as we hit more buffalo heading North East! We had walk smack bang into the middle of two herds of 400 plus buffalo as they criss crossed each others paths.

Now as you can imagine this put us in a rather awkward situation as we found ourselves surrounded by about 900 buffalo all moving in different directions. Then just to add insult to injury we came across a rhino who was also in the middle of everything and was getting slightly agitated by the amount of activity around him. At any rate we had now been walking for well over half an hour and had moved about 1km, time to get out!

Now one thing my experience had taught me is that where there are 800 plus buffalo, you can be assured there is a good chance the lion won’t be far behind. So as we slowly started bumping into less and less buffalo I started scanning the vegetation for any signs of the big cats. Well it didn’t take long but a little growl gave their location away. There not more than 20m from us were three lioness’ and 1 young sub adult male. Fortunately for us this was a group I knew very well and had encountered on foot for about the last 5 or 6 years and as such they settled very quickly and obligingly let us view them for about 10 minutes before I left them to their slumber.

Amazingly we had walked for 2 and a half hours and only covered about 3,5-4km not much in distance but in adrenalin it felt like we had walked 20 km.

On days like that I am reminded what a privilege it is to be in a position to enjoy wildlife at an arms length and be able to watch them doing their normal activities. It is only on foot that we are able to move from casual observer to active participant.

Wherever you may be I hope the Skies above you are Open!