I found this funny story on www.4x4community.co.za, told by forum member Botsboy:
Sorry, this isn’t a typical trip report, but rather a recounting of a recent experience I had in the *CKGR which I thought I’d share with my fellow forumites.
Feeling all intrepid and bush wise I set off on a 4 night completely solo trip around the *Central Kalahari Game Reserve. I had a great time, there had been a lot of rain so game and predators were prolific. I’d seen cheetah, lion and had a leopard around my camp for two nights (Sunday Pan 03). This alone was pretty interesting as he was the most vocal leopard I’ve ever known. All night and into the mornings this leopard was continually coughing and sawing around camp. Judging from the sound he kept on doing circuits around the site and was probably no more than 50 – 100m away at any given time. Also special was that I was completely alone, the nearest occupied campsite being 20km away. When I asked about this behaviour with a couple of guides when I got home, they told me the likely reason for this behaviour was that he was annoyed by me being in his territory! Whoops. Oh and I say “He” because the tracks through and around camp were very, very large.
Fast forward to my last day... after packing up early to avoid being caught by a storm I left camp around 6am and drove down to Deception Valley proper where my plan was to stop and make tea and a sandwich before leaving the reserve. Driving down I saw lots of lion tracks but little else, a brief circuit of the pan showed up nothing, and after having had such good game viewing previously I wasn't particularly searching for anything. I pulled into an unoccupied campsite (Kgori 2), leapt out of the car, stretched, had a pee, completely un stressed about anything. Then I strolled round to the back of the bakkie (truck), opened the tailgate and started pulling out gas bottles, tuck boxes etc and busied myself making tea and a sandwich.
At some point something made me look up and coming towards the front of the bakkie was a full grown male Kalahari lion. Okay, he saw me, I saw him, I just stayed calm. He stopped and sat down a few metres from the driver’s door. No worries I thought knowing that if he caused trouble, I’d simply slip round to the left of the car and jump in the passenger side. So, having sorted out my retreat and with one eye on Mr Lion I carried on making my tea. At this time I heard a vehicle approach from behind me and turned slightly to see it was a game viewing vehicle from one of the lodges. Paying them little attention I carried on with my task when all of a sudden a piercing high pitched (male) German scream of “Lion, Ze Lion ist HERE!!!” broke the silence. Figuring “ze German” had just spotted “my lion” I carried on spreading my bread, checking my tea (cool collected bush savvy AFRIKA MAN that I am), only to be disturbed by an even HIGHER pitched screech from self same German man. “Ze lion ZE LION, watch out ZE LION!!!” which I found vaguely annoying until.... I suddenly realised that Mr German was not pointing at “my lion”. He was in fact pointing at another Mr Lion who was casually approaching me from the passenger side of my car...it was at this point that perhaps a little bit of pooh came out...
So stuck between a Lion on the right and an approaching lion on the left, blocking my retreat, I no longer felt like Mr cool, calm collected bush savvy AFRIKA MAN. However I somehow remained cool calm and collected, spreading my sandwich (for about the 100th time) knowing that - no matter how tempting it seemed right then - running and screaming like a little girl was not the solution to this particular problem. Fortunately for me at the very last moment the lion on the left turned and ambled past the front of the vehicle, brushing it hard enough to make it sway, joined his companion and off the two went, leaving behind a somewhat rattled camper, an astonished German, and a heavily buttered sandwich.
Moral of the story? Never let your guard down in the bush, listen to German tourists (might battle with this one), keep calm and most importantly, feel privileged to be able to have these experiences. Oh yes and always carry your camera with you, I’d left mine on the front seat hence no pics. Now if only I could trace the German, he must have some interesting ones...!
What to do when neither flight nor fight is an option... This reminds me of the story of Terry the Lion which I will tell in a next post.
Take care.
