Dark Star Safari

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Blazing sunsets, star-splattered night skies and herds of animals drifting across dusty plains; all the usual clichés had filled my mind as I booked my first, long-awaited safari and fidgeted excitedly throughout the overnight flight to South Africa. But my spirits were quickly dampened as the plane descended through a carpet of grey cloud to a chilly, gloomy Cape Town.

“It’s just a blip,” I thought, “the sun will come out soon enough.”

It wasn’t to be: The pilot announced with a note of schadenfreude that the entire Cape was due for several days of heavy rain, adding gleefully that he was about to turn round and head back to an unusually warm UK. The first drops began to bounce off the windscreen of my hire car seven hours later, as I rattled along an almost-deserted dirt track to a game reserve in the vast, empty landscape of the Karoo.

An arid plateau which occupies a huge swath of South Africa’s interior, the Karoo marks the southern tip of the Kalahari. Its barren plains, sparse bush and rocky outcrops have previously been home to little other than sheep and the occasional isolated homestead; now, however, they’re also the setting for a small number of remote reserves set up to protect the country’s indigenous wildlife—and attract tourists tempted by their contrast with the bigger, more visited reserves of the Kruger. Rain is normally elusive here: It seemed I had chosen to arrive during a very rare wet spell.

Having left paved roads behind when I passed the last town on my route some 50 miles earlier, I slowed to a crawling pace in a vain attempt to avoid the many potholes which were rapidly filling with water. The normally powdery dust which covered the road had turned into a thick past and every now and then a local in a 4×4 would roar past in a cloud of spray, quickly turning the white paintwork on my rental car a vibrant shade of ochre.

By the time I pulled up at the camp—a series of squat white chalets clustered around a thatched lodge—the downpour was relentless and the jagged mountains which I was assured towered round the reserve remained hidden behind a wall of fog. Sensing that the chances of glimpsing wildlife through the pervasive gloom were diminishing by the second, I felt myself becoming increasingly despondent. After all, I mused, if I’d wanted to see nothing but rain I could have stayed in Britain.

Conditions failed to improve in time for the dusk game drive. My fellow guests and I clambered aboard the jeep, blankets wrapped tightly around our laps and cagoules zipped against the drips which splashed our faces as our guide Alvin sped us off into the reserve.

At first both the scenery and the animals evaded us and the planned sundowners under orange skies were replaced with coffee from a flask, huddled in the jeep as the daylight faded to grey. The sense of isolation was immense as we drove along the rough terrain, shrouded in silence and unable to see more than a few feet ahead of us.

But then everything changed: As we rounded a corner the eerie form of a lone wildebeest emerged from the mist, standing perfectly still against the damp evening with its wet coat plastered to its skin. Behind it I could just make out the faint silhouettes of a group of ostrich fleeing into the distance at the sound of the jeep, then a silvery eland watching silently like a ghost as we passed.

Further on we crossed the path of a herd of zebra, their black and white stripes accentuated with smears of orange mud, while a pair of elegant springbok sparred nearby. And then, busily stripping the leaves from a copse of trees, was a family of giraffe, including a newborn struggling to balance on its spindly legs. Next was a herd of buffalo lumbering across the track, their curved horns like elaborate hairstyles, with a calf hurrying on behind.

Several miles later we were suddenly thrown forward in our seats as Alvin slammed on the brakes and reversed. In a small clearing between the trees we saw why—a pair of rhino standing less than 20 feet from the vehicle. The female briefly sniffed the air and, having decided we were of no interest, returned to foraging in the bush, while the male eyed us warily from beneath folds of grey skin.

“You know we really needed this rain,” Alvin mused later as we headed back to the lodge to be greeted by hot towels and a crackling open fire, shivering in our soaked clothes but elated at our wildlife encounters. “The bush was getting as dry as cinder—I’m glad you brought your British rain out to Africa with you!”

It was a good thing he was happy: The rain lasted another three days, only clearing to reveal jagged peaks beneath an unbroken blue sky as I packed my bags on my final morning. As I set off back towards Cape Town, I laid any lingering stereotypes of a “real” safari to rest. The downpour had showcased the reserve’s normally bone-dry landscape in a way experienced by few visitors, renewing the parched ground and providing welcome relief after the burning summer months. I may have missed out on the blazing sunsets and starry nights, but those cold, damp hours on the back of an open jeep have become one of my favourite African memories.