Welcome to the Camp!

My first tale is my first night in the African bush. I was only 14 years old.

First let me situate you. We find ourselves at Karongwe Private Game Reserve, Ecotraining Camp, in South Africa. The camp has 4 “huts” and around 20 tents.

Ecotraining Camp at Karongwe Game Reserve. Blue dot was my tent!

Day 1, 14th of August 2012. It took almost 5 hours to arrive at the gate of the reserve. Right on the gate there is a warning sign saying “Warning! 10000 volts!”. That’s how much volts it is needed to stop an elephant…to be honest, to discourage an elephant. It won’t stop it. That would kill a man easily. So do not touch it.

As we entered the reserve we were welcomed by a big male giraffe. He was so beautiful, much darker in comparison with the females. I couldn’t hear a thing with all the cameras going off. Each person must have taken like 100 photos of the giraffe, me included.

The Male giraffe (giraffe camelopardalis giraffe) that came to say “welcome”.

After this welcoming, we saw a Land Rover defender approaching, there was a young man driving it. It was Mark, the backup guide. He came to collect us. It was a huge Land Rover. All opened with 9 sits on its back, 3 in each row. In front of the car there was another seat, the tracker seat. As we got inside the car, I went to the back of the landie. It is very bumpy on the back.

We drove 10 minutes until we arrived at a weird road that would go around. There was a big board saying, “Welcome to Ecotraining Camp”. I was looking around and saw nothing. I was like:

-Camp? What camp?

Then the board had all the warnings about safety procedures and responsibilities.

As we were offloading the car, the manager came to welcome us, a young lady called Olga. She greeted us with a big smile. She started saying that because we were so few students, 7 in total, each of us could have its own tent. She called my name and said:

– João you are in tent number 1.

I said:

– Ok.

Then I returned to the car to grab my bags. Now remember I had no idea what I was coming to, so I had a huge bag around 32 kg and a backpack, and another bag with all the things I had bought (one month without going to the city, so I needed to buy some supplies of candy and chocolate).

I was skin and bones. I did three trips to my tent! The first one I took the backpack and the food to the tent. I started walking down the path, it was a path with sand and rocks on the side, and then I saw a hut.

The 4 main huts at the camp. Kitchen at the right; office and bathrooms in front; Ping-pong table at far left; classroom at the left.

– Awesome – I thought.

It was like a traditional African hut, with a hale roof on it. That hut was the kitchen. Then I saw the other three huts. The first tent on the path to the left of the kitchen was mine.

– Man, I’m lucky – I said.

Right in front of my tent was the campfire, right next to the river. My tent was big.

Tent number 1

The inside of one of the tents!

Two beds and a stance, all for me. I dropped the bags and went back for the big one. I think the big one was heavier than me!

The manager called everyone for the camp briefing. She started by asking:

– Is everything ok with the tents?

We all replied:

– Yes. Amazing!

She then explained how the rules of the camp worked. All the food is to be stored in the kitchen, otherwise monkeys, squirrels and every other animal will take it and eat it. She told us that we have 3 ladies working at the camp. One in the kitchen, one for cleaning the tents and the other one would help the other two. She then explained about the safety procedures in the camp.

– No running, no adventuring to the river without the guide or anyone, no walking in the middle of the night alone, no food in the tents, we have resident hyenas that come to the camp to forage for food.

She then said:

– We also have a resident Nyala male and his name is Nelson.

After signing all the contracts and forms she turned and said:

– Almost forgot. There is no electricity in the camp and no phone reception. We have a generator that only works two hours per day. One hour during lunch and one hour during dinner time.

It sounded awesome to me. I was so in! We all sat and started to talk, getting to know each other. We talked about who we were, what were our jobs. Then one of the students turns to me and says:

– So, you are only 15?

– Yes – I answered.

– Your parents are crazy letting you come to this place all alone- another said.

– Not as crazy as me- I replied.

After lunch we went to rest for a little bit from the journey. I went to unpack a few things and get ready for the first safari.

To be honest my memory of this safari is very blurry. I wish I had written a journal when I was there, but I was too busy living life. We drove, and we saw a lot of game (term for animals). We had our sundowners at Sundays Rock. A beautiful rock with a fantastic view. It’s the highest place on the reserve, well at least in the South of the reserve. We had to do a little bit of climbing to get there but man it was worth it. The view was just breathtaking.

Sunset view from Sundays Rock.

We started driving towards the camp, but something caught the attention of “John”, the instructor. Not in the bush, but on the radio. “tau” and “simba”, were the words I could hear. “John” spoke on the radio, the language was Afrikaans, and then turned to the back and said:

– Lions are in the South guys! We are going to where they were spotted the last time.

Our eyes shined with delight. The sun was already gone but it wasn’t night yet. It was that time in between. It’s not dark enough to use lights, but not bright enough to see well. It’s the last minutes that the diurnal animals use to look for a safe place to spend the night. It’s the time nocturnal animals start to awake.

– There – Mark said.

I could only see a reflection of one eye. Johann drove us closer and what was one eye suddenly became 8 eyes.

– This is Zero, the male lion – “John” said.

Zero the Lion!

He was beautiful. He had a long dark mane, darker than normal lions. Next to him, three lionesses. We stayed with the lions for almost an hour.

We drove back to the camp. The night got cold very quickly. In the African bush, even in winter the days are normally warm, but the nights…. Oh, the nights are as cold as freezing ice. We returned to the camp and it was all dark. You could only see the lights from the kitchen. Everyone took their headlights or flashlights to get off the car and go to their tents.

As I was walking, I started seeing that there were some strange tracks in the path. New ones. I turned left to go to my tent and saw this beautiful fireplace. It looked so cool. Olga was there. She was drinking a beer. The thing I love in the bush is that you don’t need your phones. The stars are everything you want to look at.