At safari camps, signs of peace and peril By Jenny Hontz

At Duba Plains safari camp in Bo-tswana’s Okavango Delta, there was fighting within the pride. A rogue lioness had killed four newborns, and their mother, breasts still engorged with milk, cried out over and over for her cubs. I tried to hide the tears welling in my eyes, feeling it was silly to humanize a lion. But I knew how she felt. Just a few months earlier, I had lost a pregnancy at the midpoint, my first attempt at having a baby ending abruptly in despair. With the worst of the agony behind me but the wounds still raw, this trip with Wilderness Safaris was an effort to restore my spirits. I had always dreamed of visiting Africa, and I knew a safari would be tough to pull off once a baby arrived. Though I never would have asked for it, now was my chance. My husband couldn’t get away, so my former college roommate, Heather, joined me on the journey. We decided to visit three safari camps: the brand-new, solar-powered Kalahari Plains Camp and two spots in the lush Okavango Delta, Xigera and finally Duba Plains, where the lion and the buffalo go head to head. It was summer in Botswana, hot and wet. Signs of life -- and death -- were everywhere. The day before we arrived at Duba Plains, a pride of 10 lions had downed a buffalo, and vultures had al-ready picked the carcass clean. Nature’s cruel efficiency. I was happy to have missed the kill. As luck would have it, we witnessed lots of life being created instead. At Xigera, a tropical oasis on Paradise Island overlooking a river, it was hard not to blush at all the activity. One afternoon, on the raised wooden walkway lead-ing to my tent, an entire baboon fam-ily confronted me. I backed up as they advanced, but I finally froze, holding my ground a few feet from the babies. Then they all hopped to the ground, and the parents started mating. I was tempted to

shout, “Get a room!” The lions at Xigera were also getting busy. Or so we heard. It took us three days to find them. We’d spotted a huge dazzle of zebras and elephants that tried but failed to hide their girth in the bush. We’d taken a traditional mokoro canoe ride through water lilies and papyrus reeds, passing giraffes munching along the shore. But where were the lions? Where were the buffaloes? Game drives can be an exercise in patience, hardly my strongest quality. It’s not like a zoo. You can tool around for hours and spot nothing more than some fancy antelopes and a few warthogs. The good news is, you won’t see any sign of human beings, either. For days, our view was never marred by buildings, cars or trash. Nothing but miles and miles of pristine wilderness and elephant dung. I eventually learned that if I just relaxed and took it all in, things would work out. There wasn’t a single day we didn’t experience something new and invigorating. And in those rare moments when you’re the one to identify some distant movement in grass, you will feel as if you’ve just dug up hidden treasure. On our last morning at Xigera, we went on a wild ride in search of big

I’m sure, if you had been mating every 20 minutes for four straight days without sleep-ing or eating. It’s amazing how close we could get to lions in love without causing them any upset. Apparently, as long as you’re in the safari truck (which has neither windows nor guns), they don’t view you as a threat. Step out of the vehicle, and all bets are off. Puts things in perspective, envisioning yourself as lion lunch. The Kalahari Plains Camp near Decep-tion Valley was the most remote stop on our trip. During the three-hour drive from the dirt airport runway to camp, we passed a snake so poisonous that if we’d been bitten, we probably would have died before reach-ing help. Much more pleasant were the herds of odd-looking oryx. These antelopes, which appeared to be part horse, part cow, are thought by some to have been the inspira-tion for the mythical unicorn. So many of them populated the desert that a jaded Ger-man tourist started calling out, “Just another oryx.” The sturdy herbivores finally earned his respect after we watched a group of them chase off a cheetah, turning toward the spotted cat and bravely advancing en masse. The Kalahari Desert is so barren and dry most of the year, it’s hard to believe that anything or anyone can survive there. But life is possible even in the most unlikely places. The indigenous Basarwa people, also known as San and Bushmen, traditionally endured the relentless sunshine by digging for roots filled with water. And the harsh desert landscape always springs to life again after the rains. Grasses sprout, flowers bloom and butterflies flit across vast open spaces. Ducks swim in the puddles of the dirt road. We even saw a giant bullfrog dive into the water beneath our sa-fari truck. So strange to encounter a frog in the desert. They hide underground for many months, emerging only when the sky opens and the birds start to sing. Back at camp, the Basarwa tribe members on the staff also sang in praise of the rain, stomping the earth around our campfire. I sang, too, imagining the rain washing away my grief, determined to carry this moment forward. On parched nights pregnant with longing, such memories can give one hope.

Near Xigera camp, a giraffe’s hide gets a once-over from small birds searching for insects.