The Land That Time Forgot

Apologies for taking so long to post this, and it will be a wee bit short i'm afraid. A move of 1,000km and completely uprooting your life can have a big impact on your blogging, but who cares, the story must continue.

So I had a car, no plans, and time on my hands. Free accommodation at a luxurious resort found in a crater filled with animals the likes of which no other continent can boast. While on the journey from Johannesburg to Pilansberg you are unlikely to see many wild animals other than dogs and goats, once you enter the park and drive the mere few hundred metres towards Kwa Maritane, the lodge, you are likely to pass troops of baboons, buck and even more if you are lucky. It's at this point you realise you have truly left the concrete jungle as though it were another planet. There's no Boost Juice, no KFC, only critters and creatures that you may have believed only existed in a David Attenborough series. Yet here you are, pulling over as a troop of 17 baboons cross the road, the babies oblivious to your existence, the adults casting a protective eye around the land, and a few adventurous souls sniffing your tyres where a few dogs from local towns on the drive from Jo'Burg decided to take advantage of the moments when you slowed down and claim the four wheeled vehicle as their own.

It's a complete contradiction being in a place like Kwa Maritane, much like many of the reserves in Southern Africa. There's such remoteness, yet such luxury. Untouched bushland, yet silver service and crisp linen in salubrious cabins. Five star dining with mother nature's hungriest guests as your neighbours. While you enjoy the luxury of swimming pools, table tennis and bars, you are also dropped straight into the middle of the land that time, and thankfully development, forgot. Kwa Maritane offers the perfect base for a self driving tour, the perfect place to forget wherever it is you came from and the perfect place to fall in love with Mama Africa!

Barefoot Bushman... the adventure begins (part 1)

(image by Barefoot Bushman - Leroo La Tau, Botswana)
A friend said to me recently that I should probably write down some of my Barefoot Bushman adventures of old, after all it is through these stories of the past that I adopted this name. My feeling to date had been to write about more current events and recent adventures, but then I realised that if I didn't write down where I had come from, these memories and tales may be lost and may as well never have happened. Besides, you need to know where you have been to understand where you are heading. Given that I am on the doorstep of major change as I pack up my life in Sydney and move on, I figured now would be an appropriate time to start.

So, where did the Barefoot Bushman all begin. Well I guess it started when I touched down at Jo'burg International airport in November 2004 having just spent three years living and working in Edinburgh, Scotland. I held the post of National Media Officer for a company called the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (www.rspb.org.uk/scotland) managing to combine my pasison for the outdoors with my journalism experience, it was my first taste of PR. My plan had always been, however, to head back to the Dark Continent where I was born and satisfy a dream that I had held on to since my school days. A dream of working at a game park as a guide.

Touching down in South Africa I was filled with an incredible sense of fulfillment. It was the beginning of a life long dream realised and the end of wondering 'what if'. It was like a door that had been locked until now had suddenly been barged open and what lay beyond was adventure of untold scale. I knew that from here on there would be limitless opportunity, danger and excitment, and that was just the airport!

I had very little in the way of a plan, just an invitation to work at a lodge called Leroo La Tau in Botswana. A lodge on the banks of the Boteti River, not that water flows there very often any more. It's a lodge my eldest brother helped to build, and a place where my mothers ashes are now scattered. Through this connection, I had been invited to come and work at the lodge, an opportunity too good to pass up. But it would be some weeks before I made it to Leroo La Tau.

I had just left a Scottish winter and arrived to an African summer. The sun finding parts of my now pasty white face to warm that hadn't felt such a glow in years. Having just stepped away from a full time job, I didn't feel like walking straight back into one, no matter how different it was to being behind a desk. Before heading north across the South Africa / Botswana border, I needed to scratch a few tourist itches, to 'ooh' and 'ahh' at Mama Africa's landscapes and creatures. I needed to explore and get lost before I could then set out to find myself again.

A few days in Johannesburg was enough to come to terms with the fact that my life had begun. A few days of gin and tonic on the balcony in the afternoon to watch the four o'clock storm roll in. A few days in a gated community, it was time to 'go bush'. The family friends I was staying with have time share at a lodge in the Pilanesburg National Park, a crater on the border of Botswana that boasts the Big Five (lion, leopard, buffalo, rhino and elephant). A quick phone call to a car rental company, and for little more than the price of a nice three course meal in the UK, I had a car for four days to explore this land that time forgot.

TO BE CONTINUED...