| Africa! - no other continent quite holds the attention and sparks the imagination of hunters like Africa does, the proverbial 'heart of darkness'. For most of us the riches of gold and oil don't mean much, rather it is Africa's greatest resource, her wildlife, that draws us to her and pulls at that adventurous string in our souls! |
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Africa is worth it, just grin and bear it!
Ever wondered about those safaris of old, the ones that are written in journal style with a new event each day, sometimes full of adventure and excitement and then other times just plain old everyday life! Like the endless notes the old hunters used to conjure up while they sat on the upper deck in sun loungers whiling away the day on their month long voyage to the dark continent. Noticed how they never start off with how they arrived and got straight to the point of hunting. No it was an endless process of organization and then reorganization, their pre trip planning, their acquisition of maps, and their ordering of those essential double rifles. Then when they did arrive it was a healthy dose of stocking up with provisions, supplies and an entourage of staff and then of course a reliable guide or even better a professional hunter.
My recent trip to Africa, a short 10 days to attend my sisters wedding in Cape Town got me thinking about those early days of travel and how we have evolved. You see, I've never actually been in a clients shoes because I've never had to embark upon a trip from the USA to Africa, it has always been the other way round.
This 10 day family holiday to Cape Town I realized was very much like one my clients would embark upon if they were say doing a 10 day hunt with me in Zambia. Because I now live in Denver, thanks to my beautiful wife, I suddenly found myself experiencing the much talked about flight over to Africa and, without a doubt, I was humbled.
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OK, I often would question the strength and resolve of a client if they complained about the journey over, and I would always make a mental note to myself when they did "..this guy is not going to last 3 days in our hot sun" and I'd usually try and drive them around for a few days before getting down to tracking buffalo. However I stand corrected and promise never to think this again unless they were in business class!
The first mistake I made was to choose the absolute lowest fare, not because of poor service, but because of the extra leg it involved to get to my international flight, in this case departing from Detroit. I had to spend the night at a hotel near DIA because my flight left very early. Why I decided on an early flight - well it is winter so you need to make allowance for the proverbial murphy's law and plan to have at least one delayed flight due to snow. I was already cutting it fine to get to the wedding (as clients would with fixed hunting dates) so I needed to make the flights. Of course murphy's law did catch up to me, there were NO delays, so I sat at Detroit airport for 7 hours watching the millions of Japanese passengers line up for their flight hours before their plane had even arrived!
Then on a 8 hour flight you'd expect to be able to stand around a bit and talk BS about hunting stuff with other passengers clad in camo, but the air hostesses, no matter what language you spoke would shoo shoo you to your seat and then when you asked for another beer would give you the story about deep vein thrombosis, alcohol and heart attacks and then disappear entirely for the whole flight. I looked for them and then when I found one she was sitting next to another passenger in the dark pretending to be asleep. Nowadays you have to sit in your already cramped seat for the flight duration and watch that most addictive of American inventions, the personal TV. Seriously, whenever I get off the plane after watching the movies on that small screen I cannot see properly for a few days, even with the help of my trusted swarovskis and my trackers look at me puzzled when they point to an elephant 40 yards away which I can't see.
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Then when you get to Schipol (it could also be Heathrow) watch out, watch out for the streams of passengers, some Dutch I guess but most seem to be from the eastern bloc or France, hell bent on running you over as if they know you've just come from the US with a personal message from George Bush. The thing is, as you arrive the airport has just opened, it's a European thing, no landing before 6am because you may wake those living 100 feet from the runway. As you step off the plane, shaking from lack of beverages you get run off your feet and caught in a series of dodging maneuvers to avoid the Euro rush!
OK you survive being trampled and try finding solace in a cup of coffee until you see the price and decide, along with all the other people in the restaurant, it is cheaper to have a pint of beer at 6am than badly needed coffee. It is the only reason I'd ever think of living in Europe, beer is cheaper than coffee and you can order it at 6am, no problems of waking anyone there!
Eventually you have made it through another security check and are now jetting your way to Africa! your final leg which is 12 hours on a jam packed plane with friendlier air hostesses, at least they don't scold you, but they just smile and look at you in a sorry sort of way as if they are saying ' shame, we understand what it is like to be addicted...'
Because I chose the cheapest flight it means landing when the airport fees are cheaper, in this case past midnight, usually not a good time in Africa. Whenever I had returned home in the past, I'd get the feeling of relief as I stepped off the plane and felt the warm night air and that feint smell of grass over the aircraft fumes. Yet after 2 hours of standing in line waiting for the few immigration officers on duty to clear us I started to realize why Americans seemed so tense when you met them at the airport.
This whole experience I had just been through, 30 continuous hours of cramped seats, condescending air hostesses, passengers sneezing, coughing and farting on you, security check points, sit down and fasten your seatbelt sir, square eye syndrome and poor food, would make the most tolerable person, tense and down right militant. I was not even traveling with a firearm!
You see, in the good old days , before Denver that is, my trans-continental flights to the US were once a year coinciding with all the major hunting conventions, the annual PH pilgrimage to the land of their clients. It was a once off thing lasting for a month at least and the highlight of the year for many of us after a long season in the sun fighting off tsetse fly and manly urges. Of course you never noticed the flight over, it was always a blur until you arrived in New York and had to face one of the US CBP officers cold stare and critical questions. In the early days Zambia still had it's own national carrier, a clapped out DC 10, the type they later outlawed because the front door had a knack of flying off at 30,000 feet. It was a weekly flight direct to New York and of course most of the Zambian PH's would be aboard, bright eyed and eager for their annual holiday where clients would pay for most of their beer and gentlemen's club jaunts. It reminded me of a flying beerhall, a mass of scruffy haired PH's in their tight hunting shorts cluttered at the back of a grubby aircraft talking to the air hostesses in their local language, making sure there were enough beers on board. In fact most of us, the ones who'd done this before, brought carryon 6 packs and later, somewhere over the Atlantic usually, we'd all be standing at the back in the galley as if at a long bar causing a ruckus, the air hostess resigned to the fact that we were going to drink this bar dry, asleep on one of our seat rows.
Of course, times have changed, the old DC 10 eventually lost it's door and Zambia Airways went bankrupt signaling the end of an era for many of the PH's. After that it became too expensive and perhaps didn't have the appeal anymore because the trip didn't start off on the same note. You see, older PH's, like many of the animals they hunt are creatures of habit and when Zambia Airways went bust, they did too in a sense, much like those old hunters we read about on the long ship voyages. It was a golden era and times have changed because time has become scarce and it seems to me that the more time we look for the more suffering we have to endure and put ourselves through.
However, sitting in the back of the shiny new Northwest Airbus A 300 en route from Schipol back to Detroit, I realized that we will always look back, sometimes way back and sometimes just a little, into our own life and we will without a doubt find something to reminisce about. No matter how bad it may have seemed, or how arcane, there will always be something appealing, be it sitting on the deck of a Union Castle steamer, standing unsteadily at the back of a flying time bomb or chasing down the missing air hostess for another beer.
This is the nature of the business we are in, hunting, it is a sort of collective suffering that we as hunters, both clients and PH's are part of and it is perhaps this fellowship that binds us together to endure!
To most of us air travel is a necessary evil especially getting to deeper Africa, those countries where the hunting is good. The thing to remember is this, no matter how uncomfortable, the adventure you are about to embark upon is well worth the effort, Africa is well worth every cramped minute at the back of the aircraft!
Happy hunting
Pete Swanepoel jnr |
Good travel insurance for hunters! |
Next Week I have some great deals on 10 day Buffalo hunts and a very well priced Lion safari - more next Wednesday!
or email me now for preliminary details
