Friday, January 14, 2011

Somewhere over the rainbow…


If only there truly was a pot f gold at the end of each rainbow, we would be lavishly living it up here at Amakhosi! Especially at this time of year when afternoon thunderstorms become the norm…

This picture perfect scene played out one afternoon on game drive this past week…with our tracker admiring and probably also wondering…what if there is really a pot of gold…

The trackers at Amakhosi have loved each moment and relishing in their own achievements in the past weeks, with leopard sightings and amazing lion encounters. They have this unique ability of finding the ever illusive inhabitants of the African bush.

To give some insight; the ranger and tracker teams at Amakhosi all have trusting relationships and a ranger sticks with a tracker for the duration of their stay at Amakhosi, so close relationships grow over the years of those that stick around.

The trackers are the guys who are proud Zulu’s from Zululand, and extremely passionate about their ‘home’, Zululand being their ‘home’. They take immense pride in sharing the beauty around them and showing off whom and what they are in this bigger picture they live in.

With sharp eyes and ingrained ‘bush sense’ there is nothing that a Zulu tracker would miss out there! They are the guys that when mentioned by a guest; I hope to see elephant, will without you even knowing track them, and take you to your hearts desire.

They all are born in our own ‘Bush School’ and there is no better place to learn about the bush than in the bush…with no books, just keen senses that are tuned in with the environment around them and a die-hard sense to observe all that goes on around!

These guys who sit right out front on the tracker seat of the vehicle will blow your mind by their ability to read the ever present signs that animals leave behind…

When visiting Amakhosi you can’t believe that in some of Africa’s deepest and darkest parts live the people whose passion for this continent in its natural state, overwhelms anything that is not of the bush.