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Tales From The Giraffe Pan

25th June 2006

We should do this more often...

These weekends are a drag. Nothing to do. Not really. There are no clubs around here, no favourite bar where all the cool and beautiful people hang out, but here we are on what we are trying to sell to holiday go-ers as the premier holiday destination in Southern Africa, and I can't find anything to do? It just cannot be. And yet it is. Until last weekend that is.

For two weeks previous a mate had been trying to convince me to go on a camping trip to Okwa Valley. Why I kept asking myself? It's just beyond my own valley; there is nothing there but cattle posts and cattle thieves. And a mere fifty years ago my grandfather owned it. He ended up swapping it for two better farms, because there is nothing of any interest out there except may be to the last of the bushmen still living the traditional lifestyle. (I believe it is one family who although they do live in the settlement nearby they are still very much in touch with the bush.) So why would I want to go there and leave behind a fridge with cold drinks in it, a warm bed and a comfy mattress.

Well in the three days I was there we saw gemsbok, steenbok, guinea fowl, a dead scorpion ( which did not bode well, I mean if a scorpion can die out there, and they do not need to eat for a year sometimes, then really, what chance did we have in a double cab hilux with a penchant for boiling over when the sand got too soft. But it was worth it.

On the final morning we saw a young Cheetah with three cubs, are they called cubs or kittens. Very touristy. And the two biologists I was with got very excited. Even me and my fellow Ghanzi farmer, who have lived here our whole lives and see cheetahs as pests inside the farm block, very impressed. So after that Kodak moment we were very happy, if a little hung over, when around the next bend, a leopard also young, juvenile in fact so his mother could not be far behind, but he was completely taken by surprise. We had the wind on our side the sun in his eyes, so he really wasn't sure what to do. He just stood there in mid pose like something from a glossy mag. Then after he thought enough photos had been taken he disappeared with a flick of his tail. Gone, vanished as if by magic.

We drove the hour back home very satisfied and all swearing we should do this again. We will. After all people who live in Guildford have to pay good money to get here, stay in very expensive hotels go out on game drives every morning for ten days to see what we saw. In what is really my back garden. Oh yeah the food was good too.

Kahn/a.

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Tel: 00 267 729 64 33. or: 00 267 721 55 259.