The Walking Safari

This incredible 27 day trip across southeast Africa as included many different national parks and many game drives. Each day was a different experience and full of adventure and excitement. When we arrived at our last national park, we were given the option to do a game walk. Instead of in a vehicle, you walk through the park, or just outside of it (there are no borders around the park so the animals walk freely in and out of it). Our guide was named Conrad and our scout supplied by Zambian wildlife protection was named Jimmy. Jimmy carried a rifle and was there to protect the animals and the group. When he wasn't on a game walk, he was protecting the park from poachers and other illegal activity. Both men were extremely knowledgeable and we felt safe walking into the unknown with them.

Jimmy, our faithful scout

On game drives, you're always racing off to see the next thing, and usually big things (like the Big 5). On game walks, you focus on smaller things like insects and tracking animals based on prints and marks, and dissecting dung, and checking the wind, and more. We got to see some of the Small 5 as well. Take, for example, the antlion. It digs itself a small, inverted, conical hole with very steep sides. Then it buries itself under the sand at the bottom and waits. It doesn't take long for an ant to wander in and fall down. And once it's falled down, there is no coming back. The antlion waits until it tires itself out from trying to scrabble up the steps, then it grabs it and pounds it against the sand until it dies. We actually watched an ant fall into a hole and the antlion catch it. So small, but so incredibly interesting.

Then there is the tracking, prints, marks, dung, etc. Our guide showed us the hippo highways, where lines of hippos walked. You could tell they were hippos because of the two straight lines of beaten down soil and the grass in the middle (hippos legs don't cross over). We saw lion prints, and hyena prints, and learned about the different dung. He took apart an elephant's dung and explained how important it was for the rest of the ecosystem: food for the baboons, scattering seeds, etc. We learned that hyena dung is white because of the bones it gnaw, that lion dung is full of hair, and leopard dung is usually hair free as it will peel the pelt off an animal before it eats it if it has the time. Impalas create middens (their own little toilet piles) where they sniff each others dung to learn about the health, gender, etc. of the other nearby impalas. Who knew poo could be so interesting?




I also learned more about termites, and one type in particular: the mushroom termite. It can't digest the food it gets, so it feeds it to a mushroom it grows in its mound and then the termites eat the mushroom. They have to keep it at a perfect temperature so they open and close holes for it in the mound. The queen termite lays an egg every 3 seconds, and so the termites have set up a cooling system to lift out the hot air and circulate cooler air back in. This means that some of the termites entire job is to spit on the holes in the mound to keep the air coming in cool. What a life, right?


Now we did see some of the big animals too, and quite close. A family of giraffeswere grazing the trees and we followed them for a while. Then an elephant crossed the river and we followed him as well. In both cases we had to be very quiet and follow the directions of Conrad and Jimmy exactly. These are not tamed animals and when they are angry can be very dangerous. Mostly, Conrad informed us, the animals don't think of us as a danger and ignore people. But if the wind is wrong and the animal agitated, you could find yourself in a sticky pickle. We got the chance to sit on a fallen tree in the river and watch the elephants come down to drink. It was lovely, just sitting in nature and being so close to the animals without a big metal vehicle between us.



We finished the 4 hour walk with tea and cake, and chatted a bit more with Conrad. He said- and I agree- that after a few game drives you should have a game walk, if only to understand the smaller parts of nature that you drive right over in a car. Everything is connected and everything is important in nature and we should continue to learn about it and conserve it.