I awoke at 6:00am as the cell phone on the nightstand beside me began to beep.  I stood up and stretched, glad that I had taken the time to unpack last night.  This morning all I'd have to do was shower and go.  I took an extra-long shower, letting the water bring me fully awake before I emerged into the cold morning air of the bedroom.  Grabbing some camouflage pants and a button down shirt out of the closet, I got dressed quickly, then walked across the camp to the main lodge.

It was still pretty dark out, and I realized that I had not yet gotten a good look at the camp itself.  I could just make out the outline of my chalet as I looked back across the walkway, and, looking up, I saw more stars in the sky than I'd ever seen anywhere else in my life.  I turned and walked into the lodge.

As I entered the hall leading to the dining room, a black man came out of the kitchen to welcome me.  "I am Edward," he said.  "I am the chef.  Please, please have some breakfast."  I introduced myself and thanked him for his welcome, then walked into the dining room to see what awaited me.

Edward stands proudly in his kitchen.  A wonderful chef, this guy could really do some cooking!

There were several cereals available in glass serving bowls, a pitcher of milk, coffee, bread for toast, and some interesting looking biscuits.  I picked one of them up and was surprised to see that it felt as hard as a rock.  Finding a cereal that looked good, I got myself a bowl then put a couple of slices of bread in the toaster.  Edward came in and offered coffee or tea, but I declined both telling him that I did not care for hot drinks.  He told me to call him if I needed anything else, then wandered back into the kitchen to begin preparing for the day.

I took one of the hard biscuits and tried to tear off a small piece so that I could sample it.  As hard as it had initially felt, it was actually quite easy to break, and once I took a bit of it the hardness vanished.  The biscuit had a slightly sweet taste, somewhat like a British scone, and I found myself liking it quite well.  Sitting down at the table, I poured myself a glass of juice and relaxed, ready to enjoy my breakfast.

Looking toward the serving area, where each meal was placed buffet-style.

As I ate my cereal I looked around the room.  Beautiful game animals decorated every wall.  Above the serving area was a bushbuck, waterbuck, kudu, nyala, and blesbok.  In the sitting area beyond the foot of the table was a zebra rug, highlighting a beautiful full body leopard mount and an impressive looking cape buffalo.  The radio was softly playing the sounds of Jacaranda 94.2, a station I would become intimately familiar with by the end of the trip.  Every vehicle I road in that week was tuned into that station. 

Looking at the blesbok, I was surprised with the beauty of the animal, and thought that this might be one that I would add to my list at the end of the trip.  I had initially thought to add a springbok, but in the truck last night Hannes had mentioned that they were usually found a bit further south, and that we might have to travel a couple of hours to hunt one of them.

I finished my breakfast, put my plates and silverware on the bar in the serving area, then poked my head in the door of the kitchen to thank Edward for the breakfast.  "Oh, you're welcome sir," he said.  "You have the good hunt today, I hope."  I thanked him again, then walked back across the compound to get my gear together.

When I reemerged from my chalet, I saw that Zwei had arrived in his bakkie.  This, of course, is Afrikaans for "hunting vehicle" or "truck".  I walked over to load my gear into the truck and to say good morning.  Zwei introduced me to Jacob, who would be my tracker.  Jacob took my backpack from me as we shook hands and greeted each other. 

"The first thing we need to do," Zwei said, "is to check your rifle. Grab a couple of cartridges and let's go shoot it."  We walked across camp to a 100 yard target range, and I settled in to the shooting bench.  Putting in some earplugs, I took a shot with the rifle.  "Slightly high left," Zwei told me.  "Not bad though.  Take one more."  I fired again, and this time dead-centered the bull's-eye.  "That's good enough; can't beat that one," Zwei said. 

As we walked back to the truck, Zwei told me that we'd be going after impala and warthog today, and that if I was ready I could climb into the cab and we'd be off.  I mentioned the problem I'd had with my battery charger and asked Zwei if there was any way to get some fresh AA batteries before we got started.  He said, "Sure, we can drive over to the farm and get some from the office."   The farm turned out to be where Hannes lives, and it was right across the road from the main camp.  Zwei jumped out of the truck, ran into the office, and quickly emerged with a handful of batteries.  I thanked him and told him that I'd probably need to borrow these for the duration of the trip, having him recharge them for me every day or so as needed.  He told me that it would be no problem.

Getting underway at last, we made a 45 minute drive from the base camp to the ranch that we would be hunting.  This was fine with me; I was getting my first look at Africa in the daylight.  The roads, though dirt, were wide and empty, at least at first.  As we traveled, we began to pass not only plenty of pedestrian traffic, but also kids on little buggies being pulled by mules.  There were no towns to be seen; just scrub brush and the occasional ranch.  I wondered idly where everyone was headed.

Before long we arrived at our destination.  Zwei told me that we would stop to say hello to the owner of the ranch, a man named Frans.  This turned out to be a common practice; at just about every ranch we hunted that week we would spend a few minutes talking first with the owner.  Pulling up to the house, we stopped and looked around, but could not find any signs of life.  "They must be down in the fields," Zwei said.  We backed up and headed on down a side road on the property. 

The scrub brush soon parted, and I saw a vast field of green ahead of me: the first green I'd seen in Africa.  It was a sod farm, and there across the field from us were Frans and his workers.  We got out of the truck and walked over to greet Frans.  He asked me where I was from, and how I was liking Africa so far, then said that he would be coming with us for the first part of the day's hunt.

A typical Limcroma bakkie.  You'll spend a lot of time in one of these on your safari.

"You can get on in the back," said Zwei to me.  "Climb up on the seat and go ahead and load your rifle." 

"Yakob," he said to Jacob in Afrikaans, "U sal skyf van hier."  You will drive us from here.  Jacob got in the driver's seat, while Zwei, Frans and I got settled into the back of the bakkie.  We proceeded to spend the next several hours driving around narrow dirt roads, trying to get a look at some of the animals.  We saw a great many warthogs and several impala, but nothing we saw was worth a second look.  As we drove around, I was reminded of my mule deer hunt in Montana ten years ago.  Back then, we did the same thing: drive slowly around these back roads looking for a good deer to stalk.

We also saw a bunch of steenbok, which, as the trip progressed, I would see hundreds of.  I was thrilled to get my first look at a couple of young kudu bulls, too.  Their horns had only just begun to spiral, but just seeing them was enough for me.  As the morning wore on and the sun got higher in the sky, the temperature began to rise.  It had started out being quite chilly, but it wasn't long before I took off my jacket.  I could feel the sun on my neck, so I reached into my backpack and got out a bottle of suntan lotion.

Back home I'm not very big on using sunscreen; I hate the greasy feel of just about any kind of lotion, but in Africa I was quickly thankful that I had packed some.  By the end of the week I had used most of the bottle I brought and was wondering if I should have brought a second along.  I wiped my hands on my pants, grabbed a drink out of the cooler, and got back to looking for animals.

A little before noon we decided that we just weren't seeing any animals worth hunting, so it was time to change our strategy.  Jacob drove us back to a pretty section of brush that we had passed earlier, and for the first time I saw that there was a nice looking treestand hidden back on the edge of a small open area.  We would get up in the blind, Zwei told me, and wait for a good warthog or impala to come by. 

I was fine with this, so Jacob dropped us off, then drove away to get the truck out of sight.  As we sat in the treestand waiting for an animal to appear, I couldn't help but think how much this hunt resembled a typical Carolina deer hunt.  I changed my mind about that when the warthogs started to show up.

They came in in a line; a family of five "beautiful" hogs showed up and started to drink from a small watering trough near where we were sitting.  Although they didn't stay around long, another group came in shortly after the first ones had left.  It was fun to watch them.  Warthogs have always made me laugh, and these were no exception.  None of them were shooters, but that didn't matter a bit to me.  It was the first day of my safari and I was sitting comfortably in a tree watching animals come by. 

I felt a nudge from behind me and looked back over my shoulder.  Zwei had opened up the cooler, which I just now saw that he had brought up into the tree with us.  He offered up a sandwich and a drink, and I accepted both gladly.  We ate in silence, keeping an eye out for any game that might appear.  There was an interesting snack to go along with the sandwich that I disremember the name of.  It was a kind of cheese puff with a meaty flavor that was actually quite tasty.

We finished lunch and I turned my attention back to the area in front of me.  Zwei was soon snoring quietly behind me, and I took the opportunity to take some video of a small group of warthogs that had come out to water.  As they were drinking, I heard a sound like a burst of static from a walkie-talkie.  I looked around to see what it was and watched open-mouthed as an impala ewe went running by with a nice ram right behind her.  They were gone as quickly as they had arrived, but it wasn't long before they settled down and came walking back to the water hole.  The snort of the ram had awakened Zwei, and I saw that he was watching the impalas as intently as I was.

I looked at the ram carefully through my binoculars and didn't think that he was a shooter.  "Let's wait," Zwei said to me as the male presented me with a perfect shot opportunity.  I was glad that he had said that.  I didn't want a guide that would tell me to shoot the first animal that came walking by.  I wasn't looking for a world record animal or anything like that (at least, not on my first safari), but I did want something on the wall that I could be proud of.

We sat there in the tree for several more hours, something with animals in front of us, sometimes not.  Late in the afternoon another group of impalas showed up, and this time there was a good one in their midst.  "You can shoot him," Zwei told me.  I slipped the safety off of my rifle and moved the gun into position, braced against one of the cross members on the blind.  I don't really remember actually shooting the gun, but I knew that I had done it even before Zwei exclaimed, "good shot, good shot!".

Zwei called Jacob on the radio and was climbed down from the tree and started walking over to where the impala had been standing.  We immediately saw him laying dead just 30 yards away, and I breathed a sigh of joy and relief to have my first African animal on the ground.  It was only then that I realized that I had been feeling the pressure of being in a new country hunting new animals, and I had been fearing making a bad shot.  It's like taking a deer on the opening day of the season.  It's a wonderful feeling to have four months of the hunting season stretching out before you and to already have an animal in the freezer. 

We posed for pictures with the impala, and I was quite impressed with how carefully the Limcroma guys cleaned up the impala and positioned him so precisely so that the pictures would come out perfectly.  Jacob even washed the blood off of the side of the animal with water from one of the bottles we had brought along, taking time to cover up the wet spot on the ground with fresh, clean dirt.  We took a dozen or more pictures, then loaded the impala... my impala, onto the truck.

My impala.  24" horns and bases 6" in circumference.  Zwei says he should make SCI gold.

It was now time, Zwei told me, to go kudu hunting.  With only an hour or two of light left, we wouldn't have much time to spend on the kudu, but Zwei said that they were most active at dusk anyway.  That was fine with me; I told Zwei that a kudu would have to be a monster for me to take him on the first day, especially with a nice impala just fresh in the bag. 

We got settled into a treestand on a power line right-of-way.  This again reminded me of hunting deer in South Carolina.  This blind was actually attached to a creosote power pole, and the only bad thing about it was that it was looking directly into the setting sun.  Zwei and I both pulled our caps down over our eyes and prepared ourselves for the hunt.

Before long I heard a loud grunting in the bush to my right.  "Kudu?" I asked Zwei.  He confirmed this, and soon a kudu cow came into view.  She had several young kudu with her, and they began to slowly cross the power line.  To my right was the gate from a low fence, and it was amusing to watch the animals saunter right through this little gate as if they were humans.  They could have just jumped the fence; it wasn't much more than three feet high, but I guess the gate was easier to deal with. 

The first kudu female to emerge, her young are following along behind her.

We kept watching, and soon the males started to appear.  Zwei was making a funny noise as I commented quietly but excitedly on each animal.  "Ok, that's a very young one; his horns have just started to appear.  That one's got a bit of a spiral starting.  Oh, there's a good one, not yet double spiraled, but he's getting there."  I thought that I was amusing Zwei with my running commentary, and I looked at him to see if he was laughing along with me.  He wasn't... as I turned my head, he let out an explosive sneeze, and the kudu scattered.

Zwei turned red with embarrassment, but I just laughed.  "Hey man, don't worry about it," I said.  "It's day one.  There's an impala in the salt, and I doubt I would have shot a kudu today even if a big one had come out.  Let's pack it up and go on back."  Zwei, glad that I didn't hold the sneeze against him, agreed that it was time to head back.  He called Jacob to tell him to come get us, and we packed up our gear and drove back to camp.

The stars were bright in the sky when we arrived, and again I realized that I had hardly gotten a good look at the camp yet.  It would have to wait until tomorrow, I thought.  We headed into the lodge where Edward awaited us with a hearty chicken and rice dinner.  As we stepped into the dining room, a man stood from his chair and introduced himself as Tyge Floyd.  Tyge was a Texas friend of Hannes, and he was in camp for four months to video safaris for different people who had hired him to do that.

After supper we retired to the fire pit, where Tyge and I talked about Africa and safari.  Tyge also does the website for Hannes, and being a web developer myself we discussed that commonality in depth, and even decided that there were a few things that I could do for them to help them make some changes to the Limcroma website.  I also told Tyge about my battery situation, and he solved the problem by bringing two chargers down from his bedroom and putting them in a common area behind the bar where I could charge all of my new batteries.

Thanking him for his help, I walked back across the camp to my chalet and sat down at the desk to begin my journal.  I got my departure and arrival chapters written, then took out the cell phone to call Micki.  We had a good talk, and I told her about my impala and the fun that I was already having in Africa.  We made arrangements for my next call, then it was time for sleep.  I sat the alarm on the cell phone for 6:00am the next morning, and was soon dreaming about what tomorrow might hold.