Ten years ago, Grant van der Walt played the fool on the banks of Jozini Dam, then Mother Nature got her own back…
The shoreline of Jozini Dam is one of the most impressive places to camp. The facilities are nothing to write home about, but you always get a proper wilderness experience. It's a wild corner of KZN. The dam is part of Phongolo Nature Reserve, one of our oldest reserves originally proclaimed by Paul Kruger.
On this trip back in 2014, we were there to catch tiger fish (as usual) but the tigers weren't the only beasts around: Four of the Big Five roam the nature reserve - the only one missing is lion. We'd seen a leopard on a previous trip, lurking around the campsite, and another time we camped close to where two white rhinos were resting for the night.
Sightings of elephant and buffalo were almost guaranteed, and we'd already seen both on this trip.
Hippos aren't members of the Big Five, but they should be! They can be very dangerous if you get between them and the water, and we often encountered them at Jozini. If you've ever heard a hippo honk, especially at night, you'll be forgiven for feeling a bit unsettled.
There you are, trying to sleep, but now you're also trying to figure out how far away this huge animal is from your flimsy tent… But the roar of a lion is a properly unsettling sound.
With a hippo, if you stay out of its way, at least you know you're not in immediate danger. Not so with a lion. A lion isn't a vegetarian…
I like to play practical jokes on people. On this visit, I took along a CD, Animal Calls from Africa - one of those curios you often see in a tourist shop. It had 16 tracks of animal calls, including the cry of a fish-eagle, a howling jackal, a sniggering hyena, even a grunting hippo.
But it was the roaring lion that would be my weapon of choice.One night after supper, I slipped away from the fire and got into my bakkie. I wound down the windows of the Hilux, inserted the CD and played the lion track nice and loud. You should have seen the reaction of the guys around the fire! I watched from inside the dark cabin.
One of them heard it and then silenced the others. They were clearly uncomfortable and started looking around uneasily.
I didn't want to overplay my hand, so I surreptitiously made my way back. Stoking the fire - literally and figuratively - I said: "I might be crazy, but I just heard a lion on my way back from the bathroom!" Soon, guys started retiring to their tents until just three of us remained around the fire - me, my brother and another friend.
I couldn't keep it a secret any longer: I came clean and told them I'd played the lion track from the bakkie.
But hang on, what was that? After adding two more logs to the fire to get the kettle boiling again for one last cup of coffee, we'd all been staring silently into the flames when we heard it again: The roar of a lion! Now it was my turn to stress.
I knew it wasn't the CD player this time. It was a single lion, clear as can be. Maybe he'd heard me playing the sound earlier and wanted to come and investigate the presence of a rival? Or was there another practical joker in the reserve?
We hurriedly went to bed and zipped up our tents. After a restless night's sleep, we were collected to go tigerfishing the next morning.
I asked our skipper about the roar and he confirmed that there were indeed no lions in Phongolo Nature Reserve, but apparently a rogue lion had escaped from a park in neighbouring Swaziland and was now roaming around…
The roar was real!
With a hippo, if you stay out of its way, at least you know you're not in immediate danger. Not so with a lion.
