Travel / Africa

An Interview with the Hungriest Hyena, Part 3

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

Click here for Part 1 and Part 2 of this story.

How do you recover from an encounter with a hyena that ate all your food? It’s the same answer to the question, “How do you eat an elephant?”

One bite at a time.

So, onward we pressed. It would be fair to say that we didn’t quite get the start that we wanted on this trip and the events of it so far exposed our status as neophyte African overlanders, but there was still a lot ahead of us.

We could still finish strong.

At the same time, it’s like being on the twelfth hole of a golf course. It’s like being on hour two of an eight-hour booze cruise. It’s like stopping for lunch in the middle of an all-day safari. You’ve had enough and say to yourself that this could end anytime and it would be just fine. But you are in it, you are committed.

And there is no way out but through.

The next day was more LandCruiser rumbling around on trails and tracks that one minute were there and the next were gone. The rainy season and its flooding made some routes impassable and caused others to disappear altogether. There was some going in circles, there was some going back to where we thought we had come from and starting over and there was some getting lost altogether. The four options of maps that we were using to guide us were of little help.

A combination of trial and error, luck, divine guidance and just trusting our instincts lead the way. We finally skirted a warthog pool and arrived at the welcoming gates of the Third Bridge campsite in the middle of the incomparable Okavango Delta. The term “cheese plate on arrival” that we repeated as the end of the day’s driving came into sight was taken to mean what the first order of business would be once we stopped moving.

One person was on charcuterie board detail while the other set about getting the mandatory fire going. Did we have any wine left? No, all of our stock had been decimated by the events of the previous day. However, the bottle of rum and it's gin counterpart that we had bought at the Johannesburg duty-free were mercifully intact.

It’s marvelous how those pair with a selection of fine meats and cheeses.

The decision had already been made en route to stay three nights in this place to regroup, do some laundry, take stock, rest our nerves, recharge our batteries and write it all down for posterity (or a future article).

And maybe to throw in a river safari or two to observe the animal world from a distance, letting ourselves be guided by someone who actually knew what they were doing.

Suitably refreshed, it was on to the town of Maun on an eventually paved road for Christmas Eve and a full food, drinks and gas refill. It has never ceased to amaze me, the quality of grocery options in what would otherwise seem to be isolated towns in Africa. Far more so than what was on offer in Dar es Salaam — a city of 10 million people — that we were living in at the time.

With the birth of our Lord and Saviour duly acknowledged, the Central Kalahari Desert, fabled in both the mind and in reality, was the next challenge on the horizon.

But one more speed bump just before entry there. I noticed a not insignificant number of random dead cows on the side of the highway every now and again. It could have been any number of things that got them, but in what I imagine was a government programme to deal with the problem, one had to pass through quarantine gates routinely.

And through these, the raw meat that we had purchased in Maun with dreams of future barbecues, would not pass. “But what if we cooked it?”, we asked. “Well then yes”, came the answer. So we fired up the propane cooktops, filled our two pots with water and boiled the hell out of everything we had.

In hindsight, frying it in the cast iron pan with butter, salt, pepper and a bit of rosemary would have made more sense. We only realized this later, but the side of the highway with the sun at its peak was not particularly conducive to culinary creativity.

The Central Kalahari can only be described as stunning and perhaps even life changing. The first night featured a tremendous wind and rain storm that we experienced in the rooftop tent in a secluded campsite with not another soul around, as far as we could tell. The following day by contrast was dusty and hot, and had us drinking water constantly, as we drove around on a game drive in the ominously named Deception Pan, checking off as many species in our book as we could.

The feeling of being surrounded by the vastness, left to our own devices, to say nothing of the show in the sky at night alone are both worth the price of admission. It was a couple of nights out there, truly out there, in splendid isolation, now armed with our experience and knowledge of how to do this right and very few other people to have to share it with.

The next overnight stop was the Makgadikgadi Pans National park which featured elephants directly in our campsite and a daybreak game drive to a lively waterhole, full of activity and life.

The following afternoon we reached Kubu Island, again by trial and error and this time with a few helpful signs. Flying across limitless salt pans stretching into the distance and a nighttime star show, even more indescribable than the one on the previous night did little else but provide more confirmation — as though any more was needed — that this might be the greatest trip of all time.

We emerged from the bush with an odd smell coming from the engine and onto the highway that bisects northern Botswana and made it to Francistown in the northeastern part of the country for a well-deserved pub lunch. The smell was explained by a bulging and dead car battery, and we could only be grateful that it didn’t happen any sooner, out in the wilderness.

The border crossing back into Zimbabwe was as fascinating and disorienting and hectic as the one out of it.

Southwest of Bulawayo we camped in the Motopo Hills on New Year's Eve next to three overland buses and the travelers therein certainly made their presence felt on New Year's Eve. I think we’d have been happier with the hyena again.

The remnants of New Year’s revelry from the night before were evident as we pulled into Bulawayo mid-morning. We pressed on northwards, sweet talking our way through three toll booths on the highway without any money of any kind. We had used all our US cash to pay the border fees and there were no ATMs to be found in that part of Zimbabwe. The people in the booths seemed to understand our plight and waved us through.

There was just one more night way out there left and we spent it near Hwange National Park in Northwest Zimbabwe, with warthogs surrounding the swimming pool, before returning to the relative safety and comforts of Victoria Falls, three weeks after we’d left.

And just like that, we had been transformed from being African overland greenhorns and had become weary but worldly wiser outback trekkers full of amazing experiences.

With one hell of a trip under our belts and great stories to tell to anyone who’d listen. Or wanted to read about it.

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.