‘Drinking the wind’

What humble little resident of the Karoo sounds like a frog, flies like a bird, and loves a game of hide and seek? 

Senior Samara ranger Jan Dunn had played an audio clip for me of a Karoo korhaan calling, and I was keen to see one, so, having driven out from Plains Camp towards the foot of Eselskop where a flock had last been seen, we left the vehicle and tramped into the veld. 

After five minutes walking, we paused, our breath streaming out like smoke in the icy morning air, and listened. 

Suddenly, there it was, dry and scratchy: krik kraak-ak krik kraak-ak kraak-krook kraak-krook. 

It was coming from a drainage line a couple of hundred metres away.

We strode through the ankerbossies, and paused again, scanning our surroundings.

After a period of plentiful rain the Karoo was looking wonderful.

Shrubs and grasses were densely packed, sprinkled with tiny white, yellow and mauve flowers, the aloes were blazing and everything was underlain by a mosaic of spoor, attesting to masses of busy animals.

But there was no sign of our korhaan. 

We turned away — and then heard the call again: krik kraak-ak kraak-krook kraak-krook.

We strode, quickly and quietly, weaving between the termite mounds and porcupine and aardvark holes, paused, looked hard and listened again.

We never did find the Karoo korhaan that morning but what an honour it was to be out in the veld, having a go.

And on the way back to camp we saw their cousins, a squadron of kori bustards, the largest flying bird in Africa, lumbering across the sky.

The magic was everywhere, it seemed to me, like pollen from the sweet thorn trees, hanging in the rays of the winter sunshine. 

Situated on a low hill above the Plains of Camdeboo in the southern part of Samara Karoo Reserve, Plains Camp is inspired by the elegant simplicity of the old explorer-style mobile safaris. 

There are just four two-person visitor tents and no Wi-Fi or grid electricity but instead (hot) bucket showers, five-star meals cooked on the open fire, a little fireplace in each tent for the winter cold, and a fan for the summer heat.

The intention is that the camp should “rest lightly on the Earth” so what power is needed comes from solar panels, the kitchen uses gas and waste water is purified by an eco-filtration system, and then re-used in a waterhole.

All the cleaning products are environmentally friendly and local food is sourced.

The nights were icy when we were there and hotwater bottles were slipped into our beds while we were enjoying dinner.

Shower orders were taken as we returned from the evening game drive, so it was all ready for when we got back. 

This was big five country and there were no fences, so if we wanted to move around after dark we had to radio in to get a ranger to accompany us, which my boys thought was pretty cool. 

The wide plain was laid out below the camp like a gorgeous picnic cloth, stretching all the way to the foothills of the Sneeuberg, embroidered with the dry Plaat and Melk rivers and numerous dry streams, and dotted with herds of springbok, wildebeest, eland, zebra, hartebeest and more.

There was still snow on the mountains, and each morning the sun rose from behind Eselskop, lit the western slopes of Honey Mountain (made famous in Eve Palmer’s book The Plains of Camdeboo) and set behind the Tandjiesberg in an ancient, peaceful parabola. 

On the way in to Plains Camp the day we arrived, we spotted a secretary bird stalking through the bush and a bat-eared fox trotting shyly.

Roelof pointed out the difference between the ossicones on the female giraffe (with tassels like pigtails) and the male (often bald from fighting), and explained how a gemsbok stabs a lion with its scimitar horns (with a backward thrust as the predator leaps onto its back). 

That afternoon, barely out the camp, we came across a coalition of cheetah and, having alighted quietly from our vehicle, we were able to walk up close to observe the start of a hunt.

The mother had moved off through the long grass and, having spotted a potential springbok victim in the middle-distance, was sitting very still watching it, with all the patience of a cat.

We didn’t hear her call but her youngsters, lounging on a knoll, suddenly yawned and stretched and prepared for action, their faces transforming from decorous indolence to extreme vigilance. 

A further long spell of watching followed but in the end the springbok scampered off and the mother cheetah led her youngsters away in search of easier pickings. 

That afternoon, a host of animals came out to greet us, or so it seemed, from stately elephant and curious kudu to warthogs (always on the run with aerial tails) and a charming array of meerkat, mongoose and ground squirrel.

We saw a pale chanting goshawk playing sentinel in a karee tree, and angelic-looking blue cranes (SA’s national bird) prancing, flapping and calling with deep burring calls.

We discussed the bright white trunks of the shepherd trees, how in days gone by their roots were pounded to make porridge and beer, and the strange rhus clumps floating like bush islands in the savannah.

Returning to camp after dark with tracker Rowin Benade expertly manipulating the floodlight, we came across the extraordinary sight of the blue cranes, silent now and clustered in a dam.

The water was surely freezing cold and it was not for a fun paddle or to feed, our guides explained, but to avoid the predations of jackal. 

Over dinner we got to talk to our fellow guests which included an elderly English couple.

They had visited what seemed to be every country in the world but, of all the places they had been, we learnt with pleasure, SA was their favourite, and this little corner of the Karoo was their best.

Eve Palmer in her 1966 classic wrote how springbok herds, when put to flight, streamed across the land, “racing and bounding... drinking the wind”. 

Back then, with the growing introduction of farm fences, the herds were a fraction of what they were when the explorers first arrived in the 1700s.

But on Samara, it feels like the wheel has turned.

With 27,000ha of former farmland amalgamated and rewilded, the landscape has been opened up and that’s nowhere more evident than in the area around Plains Camp, where there’s a sense of the vast space and teeming herds of yesteryear. 

Each night, the dark descended like a cloak over the camp and the star-spangled heavens seemed to hang so low you could touch them.

Lying in our beds, we heard the wailing of jackals and fiery-necked night jars and even, on one occasion, older than old, deeper than deep, the grunting groan of a lion.

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