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The Lion of Chizarira
(First published as ‘Walking if you’re game,’ in Qantas Club magazine, winter 1999)
| We had been told to expect safari yarns around the campfire in the African wilderness, but not poetry. |
| Yes, poetry-- from the very bawdy to the classical (William Blake’s ‘The Tyger’ was almost inevitable, if not geographically appropriate), with Australian verse such as ‘The Man from Snowy River’ in between. Australian? |
| It happens that Zimbabwean safari guide Leon (now, that’s appropriate) Varley not only has a prodigious memory for poetry but also a liking for things Australian. |
| Perhaps that’s because Australians tend to dominate his walking safaris in Zimbabwe’s remote and wild Chizarira National Park and the more touristy Hwange and Zambezi parks. Varley estimates 40 percent of his clients are Australian, providing 60 percent of his business because they stay longer than other nationalities. |
| Varley, who’s in his mid-40s, is one of very few professional guides specialising in walking safaris in Zimbabwe. It’s only a small and slowly growing sector of the market, as people have to be fairly fit and willing to forgo the comforts of game-viewing by vehicle. |
| A Government forest ranger until starting his safari business 12 years ago, Varley gears his pace to that of his clients, but routinely will lead them on an average of about 15 kilometres a day on mostly moderate, sometimes tough terrain. Almost always, it will be in single file on narrow elephant trails. Elephants know the best way to go. |
| A convivial host in camp, he’s all seriousness in the bush. Buffalo always mean it when they charge, he says, while elephant, lion and rhino usually will mock charge first. “Don’t run ‘til I say,” he tells clients in an almost formal little speech at the start of each safari. “When I say ‘Go, get out of here or whatever,’ do it immediately, keep together, and keep me between yourselves and the animal.” |
| Day three (28 kilometres covered in three walks). The big bull elephant looks down at us from the ridge-top. It’s restless, ears spread wide and trunk raised to catch our scent. It doesn’t have the gentlest of dispositions, having lost the tip of the trunk to a poacher’s snare years before. We’re on foot in Chizarira, though not far from our vehicle. The elephant seems to lunge forward, and one of our group turns and starts to run almost before “Go!” is out of our guide’s mouth. But Leon calls her back immediately, realising the bull’s move was a feint. A minute or so later, we hear his second standard instruction-- “Let’s back off now, slowly”-- and leave the elephant in peace. |
| If finding big game while keeping clients out of trouble is the prime concern, flexibility doesn’t rank far behind, as the first often depends on the latter. |
| Day four (31 kilometres, two walks). Twenty minutes before dark, we’re back in camp after a hard slog, just starting to wash the dust down with a beer and looking forward to a meal. But a male lion roars only 500 metres off, and Leon jumps into action, calling us to follow him into the vehicle. Matabele tracker Stephen Maphosa finds where the lion left the track as our truck approached, and we walk briskly until it’s too dark. We’ve lost him, and return wearily to camp. It’s not the first time we’ll lose lion, but Varley’s groups often succeed. |
| Varley, who carries a .458 calibre rifle for its stopping power at close range (closer than 10 metres is just about too late), has had to kill three times to protect clients. The unlucky animals were an elephant, a lion and a buffalo. He jokes that if he’d had to kill a rhino, the chief game warden probably would have ordered him shot in turn. |
| There are no black rhinos left in Chizarira, nearly 200,000 hectares of what Varley calls the original wild Africa. The park’s remoteness makes the game roaming its thickly bushed hills, gorges and lowlands so shy it rarely poses for vehicles and will run at the faintest scent of people. |
| But the isolation also made it hard for the authorities to protect rhinos from poachers. When de-horning the few survivors failed (the poachers still killed, so they wouldn’t track a hornless animal next time), the park’s last rhinos were moved in the early 90s to areas where they could be better protected. |
| Day 10 (19 kilometres, three walks). Stephen Maphosa and Varley lead us to a black rhino after 20 minutes sharp pursuit through the bush in the only part of Hwange National Park opened for walking. The rhino had fled from near the road as we drove by, but is now relaxed and unaware of us as it wanders across our path only 10 to 15 metres away. It’s easily visible through a thin screen of bushes, but we take no photos-- to do so might draw unwelcome attention to ourselves. Stephen imitates rhino sounds to try to give us another look at safer range, but the rhino becomes alarmed and crashes away. |
| It’s almost impossible to get good close-up pictures of wildlife on a walking safari in this kind of country. Without humour, Varley instructs the photographers among his groups not to try for ‘that final shot’ of a charging animal. But he usually sees that his clients get photo opportunities on game drives and at viewing spots near waterholes. |
| That's easy in Hwange, Zimbabwe's flagship national park where you're always bumping into other tourists looking at wild animals which are used to being gawked at; in Chizarira's rolling, bush-covered hills and gorges, you hope to bump into wildlife which will be doing its best to avoid you, and you don't expect to see other people at all. |
| And you will bump into animals in Chizarira, shy of people though they are. Even though the sightings may only be glimpses, each day begins with anticipation. Our breakfast greetings as the sun rose frequently began with a question: "Did you hear the leopard (or lion or whatever) during the night?" and once with the envy-creating statement: "Two hyenas came into camp after you went to bed." |
| Then it was into the vehicle, to head for the starting point of the day's walk. As we passed the park's single bush airstrip, we would usually see what must be Chizarira's only habituated animals, a family of waterbuck. Further on, zebra, sable antelope, impala or kudu, but always skittish and moving away. |
| On foot, we almost always came upon elephant, which would move off with dignity and relative quiet when they caught our scent; buffalo were seen almost as often but made noisy, even panicky departures. Once, three baby crocs next to a rockpool; various kinds of mongoose scurrying for cover; a warthog suddenly appearing from nowhere between us and two elephants; a split-second of leopard disappearing into scrub. |
| And, of course, the birds: from bee-eaters to lappet-faced vultures, and in between, the ubiquitous 'go-away' birds, the grey louries whose call of |
| Varley , whose wife ‘Mags’ runs the Victoria Falls office of his firm, Leon Varley Walking Safaris, offers 10 days of walks twice a month for up to seven people, carrying light day-packs and cameras or binoculars at most. His crew of three or four move camp every few days. (There are also full back-packing treks of several to 18 days, and upmarket lodge and classic camping safaris, still with the emphasis on walking. All safaris have back-up camp crews). The days end with a welcome hot bucket shower, excellent food and drink, and that campfire with its yarns-- and poetry to your taste. JOHN MILBANK
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