The day, hour by hour
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Before dawn
A soft knock at the door
Hot chocolate and rusks on the deck, the air still cold, the sky only just beginning. Blankets in the open vehicle, and the children in the front seat with the tracker before the adults have finished their coffee.
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First light
The first tracks in the dust
Giraffe moving like punctuation through the thorn trees. Elephant out of the mist. A jackal trotting along the road as though late for work. And somewhere ahead, the pug marks of something that passed in the night.
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Mid-morning
Breakfast in the veld
Laid out on open ground under a thorn tree, with nothing man-made in sight in any direction.
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Late morning
Casts, fire, and what the ground says
Plaster poured into a lion track to take home. Learning to make fire the old way, and when not to. It is the souvenir that costs nothing and outlasts everything bought at an airport.
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The middle of the day
Nothing at all
The pool, the shade, a long lunch, sleep. In early April the afternoons are still warm, the animals lie up in the heat, and the sensible visitor does the same. Younger children usually spend it hunting chameleons and dung beetles within two hundred metres of the lodge, which they will tell you was the best part.
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Afternoon
Rock art, thousands of years old
There are seven recorded San sites on this reserve, some of the paintings more than three thousand years old. A short walk with a guide to one of them, made by people who lived in this valley long before anybody drew a boundary around it, and whose children ran the same ground.
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Late afternoon
Out again, and sundowners
A table set on open ground as the sun goes behind the mountains. Something cold for the adults, juice and snacks for the children, somewhere that feels like the middle of nowhere because it is.
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After dark
The spotlight, and then the fire
Eyes in the dark on the way home — bushbabies, genets, nightjars. Then dinner at a long table under the Milky Way, with marshmallows and the questions only children ask. Do the animals get cold? Who owns the stars? Why don’t the lions eat us?
By the second morning they are calling sightings before the adults.
