“Thank you again to all of you for coming on trail. Thank you again to our brothers and sisters the animals for letting us pass through their home. Today we go back to our home…or at least, we think it’s our home. But do we really belong there….or do we belong here, among the animals?”

We started walking back to where we started our trail several days before. I felt sad that the trail was coming to an end. I didn’t really want to go back to ‘normal’ life. I told Niki, and she said she felt the same way. Others in the group were quiet too. The wilderness had stamped its eternal mark on our souls.

Along the way, we had to cross the river one last time. As we got to the water, Nunu pointed to two lionesses up on the sandy banks. Immediately, they scampered away, running from us. Too quick for a photograph! In the distance, we saw them meet up with two of their cubs, and they all ran off into the bush.

I was struck by the lions’ fear of us. Even though these imperious predators can pull down adult buffalo, they see us as a dangerous threat, as something to be avoided at all costs. Lions have developed an inherent avoidance of us, instilled in their genes after centuries of hunting and harassment by humans. We’re still the most dangerous animal on the planet. I hope that one day the lion will once again be the most feared animal in the bushveld.

As we unpacked our backpacks, and said our goodbyes, I felt like I was floating. And I realized how strong and alive I felt. I looked at the others in the group, and everyone was glowing.

Niki and I drove off, and it felt strange to be in a car. Images flooded my head and heart: the pride of lions, the buffalo we saw in the river, the rhino which came to drink at our camp, the elephant which crossed the river, the stars which turned in the sky, the moon which told me the time of night, the glistening of an impala’s horn in the early morning light…and my favourite, the rasping call of the leopard in the night.

Ian Player deserves the last words of this blog, and I quote from his book Zululand Wilderness. This passage describes the true essence of what the wilderness trail is all about. He writes of his mentor and friend Magqubu Ntombela:

“Magqubu was always involved in the natural world. He had really known no other and so had become part of it and in constant harmony with the ebb and flow of the days and the seasons. When the hyena called beyond the fire, Magqubu would answer, so too with the lion, the rhino, the zebra, and wildebeest.

It was the same with the trees: each one was different and alive, and for him an extension of ourselves. He talked with the waving themeda grass or the bateleur eagle, the vulture, or the Natal robin singing from a quiet kloof. There was constant dialogue with the wild world about him, as well as with cattle, sheep, and goats.

This unashamed and natural reaction to all that he saw and heard had over the years made a deep, if not the deepest, impression upon me. It made me realize how with our ubiquitous technology we had become separated from the world, forgetting, as Hermann Hesse so beautifully put it, that “a thousand forgotten years ago, the bird and the blowing wind were like me, and were my brothers.”

It is only the poets now and the natural people like Magqubu who see and hear the world as it really is. For most of us the world is a place to be used, and everything other than human life has no value beyond its material use.”

Our last morning

Look, the mist is clearing!

These buffalo stared us down as we neared the end of the trail

For more, go to www.yearinthewild.com and www.facebook.com/yearinthewild. Thanks again to my sponsors for making it all possible. CapeNature, South African National Parks, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, Eastern Cape Parks, iSimangaliso Wetland Park, Ford, Total, Evosat, Conqueror Trailers, Vodacom, Digicape, Lacie, Frontrunner, Safari Centre Cape Town, K-Way, EeziAwn, National Luna, Nokia , Garmin, Goodyear, Global Fleet Sales, Hetzner, Clearstream Consulting, Escape Gear and Trailcam Adventures.

While I was exploring the western part of the reserve today, I thought how concerned conservationists created it to save the last remaining white rhinos in the world. Hunters had wiped out thousands of these charismatic animals, and in 1897, there were only a few left. Today, there are more than one thousand in the reserve, and it’s easy to believe, because today I came across close to 50 of them at different times! They seem to be everywhere, and it’s wonderful. Thanks to the conservationists of that era, who had the foresight and wisdom to fight for the protection of wild animals and the natural landscapes.

It wasn’t only the colonial hunters who sought out the wild animals. Imfolozi was considered one of King Shaka’s prime hunting areas, and during his rule from 1818 to 1828, the charismatic leader conducted hunts near the confluence of the White and Black Mfolozi rivers. Today, visitors can still see the huge pits that were dug to trap the wild animals, after they had been chased into them by the Zulu hunters.

Then there’s the sad story of the Nagana campaign. Close to 100 000 wild animals in the Imfolozi area were methodically slaughtered between 1929 and 1950, in an attempt to rid the area of Tsetse flies, which were transmitting a lethal disease to the farmers’ livestock (although the parasite which caused the death in cattle and goats had no effect on wild animals).  Even this mass murdering did not eliminate the tsetse fly, and between 1947 and 1951 the whole area was regularly sprayed with the chemicals DDT and BHC. This eventually got rid of the fly, yet the impact of the culling and spraying on wild animals and their environment was obviously very damaging. Clearly, being a wild animal in Africa is not very easy at times.

But then there’s the lovely, hopeful story of Imfolozi’s lions, and it comes from TV Bulpin’s “Discovering Southern Africa”. At the time of the reserve’s proclamation, hunting was rampant, and it took several decades for a conservation ethic to be established. By that stage, however, the trigger-happy hunting fraternity had eliminated lions from the area. So it was with great surprise that in 1958, a single, lone male lion made his way from Mozambique, covering more than 300 kilometres, arriving in Imfolozi having dodged the efforts of several hunting parties. The game rangers at the time were delighted of course, even more so when a few years later, several females came to give the male lion some much needed company. Today, the lions in Mfolozi are the descendants of these pioneer predators, and I really hope that I get to see some when I do the Imfolozi Wilderness Trail later this week.

There’s definitely a real sense of ‘wildness’ at Imfolozi, something that was missing from some of the game reserves which I visited further south in South Africa. In fact, Imfolozi and the adjacent Hluhluwe Game Reserve are really the beginning of the traditional African wildlife landscape. From here, all the way north to Kenya, wild animals are more common, and – for me at least – there’s a greater sense of adventure. And it’s amazing to think that Imfolozi is only a three-hour drive from Durban, South Africa’s third-largest city. I hope that wild animals forever continue to roam free in such close proximity to the cities of our country.

For more, go to www.yearinthewild.com and www.facebook.com/yearinthewild. Thanks again to my sponsors for making it all possible. CapeNature, South African National Parks, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, Eastern Cape Parks, iSimangaliso Wetland Park, Ford, Total, Evosat, Conqueror Trailers, Vodacom, Digicape, Lacie, Frontrunner, Safari Centre Cape Town, K-Way, EeziAwn, National Luna, Nokia , Garmin, Goodyear, Global Fleet Sales, Hetzner, Clearstream Consulting, Escape Gear and Trailcam Adventures.