Travel / Africa

An Interview with the Hungriest Hyena, Part 2

The midst of ripping yarn about a far too close encounter with the animal kingdom in Africa.

Part 1 (ie: the lead up to all this) is found here.

That was a fitful night. Noises around us in the bush indicated the presence of animals, but we were locked up tight in the sweltering cab of the LandCruiser. We awakened at daybreak and hoped for the best. It’s possible that we said a little prayer as well. I fired up the engine and to our surprise, we got out of there relatively easily. It seemed that the sand had cooled and hardened somewhat overnight.

Or maybe it was just the power of positive thinking.

Naturally, we got bogged down again a few more times but figured it out and finally arrived at the gates to Linyanti Camp at 730am. The rangers welcomed us, mentioned in passing that they’d wondered where we were and said we were free to use the shower and our reserved campsite to make breakfast, and that we could stay as long as we wanted.

It was a relief, there’s no other word for it.

After washing the events of the previous day and night off of us, having a very full breakfast and cleaning up, we ran into a two-car party of South Africans who were driving Range Rover city SUVs that were certainly not as rugged as our Landcruiser and they had come from the south and had a similar experience, in terms of the sand and the overnight in the back end of nowhere.

We all set off in the same direction, but before we left, one of the men, a typically burly salt of the earth South African who knew which end was up explained about deflating the tires and what the differential lock was all about and how and when to use it.

This time, I listened.

Despite his rough and ready can-do approach to things, we ended up pulling them out with a rope a few times, but after a while, we set off on our own and drove for hours with only a few sand traps to trip us up. And when we did encounter them, our now savvy African traveler wisdom made short work of them.

It was another long day of driving in the direction of the Savuti camp. Sometimes in the forest, sometimes on the savannah, but always bumpy. We made it to Savuti midday, but our reservation for the night was further ahead, at Khwai Northgate camp.

We traveled uphill seemingly for hours up what felt like going up a mogul heavy downhill ski run. It was very active driving, always looking for the least consequential route, avoiding holes, and detouring around mud pits. At one point we came upon a cluster of other off-road vehicles, gathered around a tree and watched two lions pull apart a freshly killed antelope.

We finally arrived at Khwai and after checking in and asking about animals in the area, found our campsite but also found that much of our food supply that was stored in the large pullout drawer at the back of the truck hadn’t survived the endless jostling of the journey.

Smashed red wine bottles, squashed tomatoes, broken eggs. And it all had to be cleaned up before doing anything else, which took an hour.

By now night was falling again and my partner set about making dinner, which she said she was happy to do in exchange for the fact that I had driven all day.

Her question “Should we make a fire?”, was a fateful one, but even more so was my answer of “Nah, let’s get dinner going first”.

She did truly whip up a masterpiece with the remaining undamaged food. A delicious sausage and broccoli pasta. And as we sat down across from each other across our little camp table, she also set an apple rum compote on the cook top to prepare for dessert.

Both exhausted, we tucked into our food and after about two bites, I leaned back in my chair and noticed a rustling in the bushes, maybe five metres away.

Her back was to all this and she said later that what I remember as a conversation between her and me was actually me talking inside my head, my eyes showing a look of increasing terror.

What I remember asking out loud (but was actually only thinking) was,

“Why does someone have a dog here?”

And then…”Why does that dog have spots?”

And then…”Why is that dog so big? Or is that a pig?”

And then “Oh fuck”.

And now about two metres away from us, me facing, she with her back turned, was a hyena.

And not a pup either.

It now dawned on her that I was gripped by looking at something and she had the presence of mind to turn around, to realize what was going on and to yell “Fucking hyena. Get in the car!”

As adrenaline and fear propelled us to safety, this thing proceeded to saunter in and eat up our whole campsite. I say saunter because it wasn’t aggressive with us, it didn’t attack us, it didn’t come bounding in.

It was all very casual as if to say, “You can do what you want, but I am going to eat your food”.

Which it duly did, as we again found ourselves in the cab of the truck for the second night in a row, slightly more terrified than the last.

Honking the horn and flashing the lights eventually brought a fellow camper in their truck and the animal scampered off.

More valuable advice was offered and gratefully accepted.

You need to arrive at your campsite no later than 3 pm and you immediately light a fire. You begin cooking dinner at 5 and need to be finished eating by 630 latest. You need to be washed up, showered, everything put away and into your rooftop tent by 8 pm latest.

It’s amazing how silly you feel when fellow travelers fill you in on the basics.

The hyena gone, we were able to do a quick appraisal of our destroyed campsite. Everything was eaten, everything was upended and overturned and the apple rum compote had burned to a crisp on the propane stove that was still going.

We hastily brushed our teeth and prepared ourselves for bed, lest the hyena return. My partner got in the rooftop tent first and I followed up the ladder. However, we had not yet figured out the latch that kept the two parts of the ladder from collapsing as yet. And when I reached the platform of the tent (and imagining the hyena nipping at my heels), I got my big toe caught between the two parts of the ladder, with my full weight pushing down on it.

As I screamed out in pain, my partner jumped out of the back window of the tent, and onto the ground and managed somehow to free my now mangled foot. Shaking, profusely sweating, and with heart rates through the roof, we were finally in the tent and I asked, “can we do the rest of the trip in hotels since I am clearly not cut out for this.”

That part I definitely asked out loud.

Meanwhile, the hyena returned and we smelled, listened to and watched it do what a hyena does from a safe-ish distance. He got what he could out of the apple rum compote and made off with both of my flip flops that I hadn’t had the sense to bring into the tent with me.

It had been a very trying 36 hours to say the least. It was obvious to us at that point that this kind of travel was neither for the faint of heart nor for the uninitiated and that while learning as you go was really the only way, this method was fraught with potential hazards.

Surely, that would be the end of the dangers.

Here is Part 3 of this story.

I really do hope that you like what you have just read. If you want unlimited access to thousands of writers, consider a subscription to Medium. It will set you back $5 a month and if you use the link below, then I get a slice of that. I’ll use it to invest in some hyena repellant next time.