Butterflies, Birdsong And The Big Five

On the Mathikithi Wilderness Trail in the Kruger Park, a drumbeat announces meal times and a scops-owl is your alarm clock. Book your place and rediscover a time when humans lived much closer to nature.

- Esma Marnewick

One of the trails rangers, Philip Gumede, is outside my tent. “Time to wake up,” he says gently. It’s 5.30 am. He needn’t have bothered because I’ve been awake for an hour or more already, shaken from sleep by the frog-like krrrup of a scopsowl and the raucous chattering of some vervet monkeys. A lion also roared in the darkness, way too close for comfort.

One by one the other hikers pop out of their tents and we all head to the “dining area” of the bush camp. After coffee and biscuits, the group gathers at the camp gate: Adri Visser, a physiotherapist from Somerset West; Gert and Estelle van Dyk, farmers in the Napier area; Anelenie and Albert Smit, pensioners from Pretoria; Charlotte and Richard Mayne from Ulster in Ireland; and me.

Yesterday afternoon, we all arrived at Satara to do the three-day Mathikithi Wilderness Hike (pronounced Mathikithi), the newest wilderness trail in the Kruger Park. Mathikithi replaces the old Metsi-Metsi Trail near Orpen Dam.

From Satara, a game-drive vehicle delivered us to a bush camp south of Satara, near the Nwanetsi River. We had barely driven a kilometre on the dirt road when Philip showed us an impala carcass dangling from a tree. Hooded vultures, lappet-faced vultures and even a rare white-headed vulture waited in the nearby trees, but the leopard responsible for the kill was nowhere to be seen.

Today I’ll get to experience the bush as I’ve never done before – on foot. Ewout Verschoor, our second ranger, slings his rifle over his shoulder and opens the gate. Let’s go.

Bush school