AMICK’S AFRICAN ADVENTURES
Editors Note
Following is a continuation of letters written by Sharon Amick. Sharon grew up in Waynedale, and traveled to California to attend Stanford University. After graduating she worked for a few years and then decided to travel to Africa. She started her adventure in August of last year, and has agreed to share with the Waynedale community her African Adventures.
After a couple of hours, we dropped our bags at the first camp, had some tea, and headed back out on the Land Rover for our first early evening game drive. We were seeing tons of animals, especially groups of female and baby elephants (called breeding groups). We weren’t taking much time to stop and watch them, since our guide (Russell, who was excellent) had a tip about another place we should go. As it turned out, one of the elephants had another idea, leading us to pay lots of attention to them.
As we were just getting past one of the elephant groups, one of the older females (presumably the matriarch of the group) decided to take off after us. The next thing I knew, she was trumpeting and charging behind us, with a few of the other females following her, and Russell was flooring the pedal on the Land Rover to try to speed away from her. The chase ended up lasting for a minute or two, which seemed like forever at the time! We’d gain ground and think she’d given up, and then she’d come running and trumpeting around the curve behind us. To make things more interesting, all of the roads are just dirt/sand roads, and we hit a stretch with really deep sand ruts. The elephant was still charging and Russell was just about to go off the road and try to find some harder ground when she finally gave up the chase. Whew! My heart was pounding so fast, and one of the guys on the trip told me my eyes were as big as saucers (as were everyone else’s). We found out later from Russell and Hayley (the safari assistant for our trip) that the charge was a rare experience for the safaris, and Russell, who has been a guide for 20 years, rated the ‘situation’ as he called it a 7 out of 10. Not bad for our first outing! Believe me, all of us had a new respect for (and healthy fear of) elephants for the remainder of the trip.
The night got even better when we found out that we were on our way to see a leopard that had killed a baboon and carried it up a tree to eat it. After the elephant charge, we arrived at the place where the leopard was just before dusk. We sat there for about 30-45 minutes, just watching it sit in the tree about 30 feet above us, and balance on a branch while eating. What an impressive sight! There was another Land Rover there as well, but the leopard didn’t show any interest in us at all. I kept wondering what would happen if it realized that there was a group of easy prey just sitting there. We felt really lucky to see a leopard at all, especially on our first night, since we found out that some people go to Africa several times without seeing one. On the second day, Russell found some lion tracks and followed them. To be continued in the March 31st issue of The Waynedale News.
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