Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
As you can imagine Angela and I have visited a few parks on our trip around Southern Africa. Here are some of the game viewing rules that we derived from watching the behaviour of that particularly dangerous animal Homo Sapiens Touristicus Stupidicus.
1)Always approach wildlife at a speed 20+kph faster than the park speed limit. This ensures that the animals scatter in all directions before you arrive, and that any nearby cars and their occupants will be coated in a fine layer of grit once your dust cloud has settled.
2)Park so that you block the view of the most number of other vehicles, or park behind them so they can't leave without asking you to move.
3)Leave the engine running and the windows up, that way none of the smells and sounds of Africa will intrude on your game viewing experience.
4)Never stay more than two minutes at a waterhole if there is nothing there, just in case something arrives and you have to stay.
5)In the unlikely event that something has survived your arrival at the waterhole, produce the world's smallest camera and take copious shots of that blob in the distance, guessing what it was will be fascinating back home.
6)Never bother to wonder why everyone has their binoculars trained on one spot, it is coincidental, they are not watching a cheetah with cubs.
7)Drive a vehicle that has been designed to cope with large potholes, mud, sand, and corrugated gravel roads. Any ordinary sedan car, preferably with minimal ground clearance, will do.
8)Never look up in the sky. Remember the mantra "birds are boring" even if it is a martial eagle with a 6ft wingspan catching a guinea fowl in it's talons, or a lanner falcon hitting a pigeon at 80kph.
9)When taking a comfort break do it in the middle of the waterhole car park so that you can leave the toilet tissue in full view of the next visitors.
10)Never get out to stretch your legs unless there is a leopard in the tree above or a very large lion under the nearby bush.
11)Waterholes look very similar to ashtrays so feel free to throw your cigarette butts out the window. Cleaning up your litter provides local employment, assuming they don't get bitten or eaten by something with big teeth!
12)(Applicable to South Africans only) Always drive with your two year old son holding the wheel, his reactions will be faster when the elephant charges.
13)(Applicable to tour guides only) Always adopt such an air of superiority that people are frightened to ask what you have seen. Remind people of the park rules at every opportunity. Watch all wildlife with an air of bored indifference even if your guiding and driving licences were forged last week and it is your first time out of Jburg.
14)(Applies to Angela only) Never tell Ralph you want to go to the toilet until a) you are desperate and b) the wildlife viewing is fantastic at that moment.
15)(Applies to Ralph only) Don't drop your camera beanbag out the car window unless there are two leopards nearby, one on the ground and one in the tree above.
16)Finally, never stop people to ask what they've seen or to tell them about the lion kill on the detour road. Neither you nor they have flown 8000 miles and spent a fortune in the hope of seeing wildlife, have you?
- comments