It’s dark and quiet. The three of us sit there, each sitting in silence, staring out the slit of the concrete bunker. In front of us, less than 10 metres away, the giants of Africa are having a standoff.It’s hard to explain how it feels to be involved as the silent witness in a disagreement between a grown male elephant and four black rhinos. It’s awkwardly quiet, broken by moments of ear-shattering noise as the elephant signals his displeasure. It’s almost surreal at times, all playing out in dim light only metres away, the black rhinos making weak ‘ulp’ noises to each other that seem to be completely mismatched to their body size. This noise is the sound of a shy goose, not one belonging to a creature weighing over a ton. And of course, it is comical, as some random bird completely misreads the situation and wanders right into the middle of the standoff, chirping their head off.
What it really is, above all else, is incredible. This is the lazy safari, the hidden safari.
This is a hide safari.
Hides come in all shapes and sizes. A hide, as the name implies, is a secret little room where you hide and watch the animals from close up. There are some hidden up above the ground looking down over a particular patch of land, like those in the Congo. There are those that are nothing more than a shipping container buried in the ground next to a well-visited waterhole, like one in Hwange, where the entrance involves sneaking past that waterhole to enter it. Then there are those like this one, on the fringe of Etosha National Park in Namibia, which are seemingly more permanent. Set next to the main lodge in the Ongava Private Reserve, this hide is down next to the waterhole at the bottom of the hill. To enter, you walk down a protected walkway and past a few security doors, all the while heading closer to the action. And finally, you enter the hide itself, a permanent building with large openings facing the waterhole.
In case you’ve never been in one, the ground-level hides typically look somewhat similar. The buildings are usually half-buried in the ground, and a row of seats puts you at ankle or knee height with any wandering animal. With the waterhole no more than 10 metres away, but you sitting in shadow, you are literally hiding from the animals as they come to take a drink. Hides also work best in areas with little water, because animals will need to come to drink from this waterhole rather than from other sources. With so many animals from so many species all converging on one point, it is always a time of tension and high drama.
We enter around five in the afternoon, just as the shadows begin to lengthen and the intensity of the sun drops away. At first, we have some more common animals, the impala and a few nervous springbok. They are nervous for good reason: the waterhole is a great place for a lion to set an ambush while their prey is distracted. As a result, you always find these ‘prey’ animals keeping a watch in all directions and taking little sips. When they move on, the waterhole is silent for a few minutes before a juvenile jackal pup slinks in. It is even more nervous, the near inaudible click of a camera shutter sending it frantically looking in all directions. We take note and turn off the shutter noise to prevent future panic. There is also a large flock of sneaker birds. This isn’t their real name, but we called them that because their bird call sounds amazingly like thousands of squeaky sneakers on a polished floor. We promise to look up their real species names but quickly forget (as you can tell), as not long after that, a large herd of elephants come in to drink. We are close enough to hear the water trickle into their bellies, close enough to see the individual personalities of each elephant. There is one that treats the waterhole as an inconvenience, another that decides to stand in the middle of it to splash the rest, and there is a baby venturing bravely outside of the trunk length of the mother before scattering back under her belly to safety. The young males jostle and crash into each other, and the aunts take turns to stick close to the baby. And then, slowly (and sadly), they leave.
We sit for almost two hours, although it feels much shorter. One after another, we sit in silence and watch the parade of animals come in. On our end, it is a game of charades. There are mimed ‘Wow’s’, lots of pointed fingers, descriptions of physical traits and lots of laughs, all in dead silence. The animals continue to come in until we are eventually betrayed by the grumbles of our stomachs and go for dinner.
Sitting at dinner, we keep stealing glances at the waterhole from up on high. And it’s here, as our mains are being served, that the black rhinos come to drink. We decide to forgo our desserts and quickly eat, not wanting to let them visit without us getting close. By the time we get down there, a male elephant has arrived as well.
The politics of the waterhole are a well-established thing, and you can easily see the natural pecking order in full effect as each animal arrives. An antelope outranks a bird, a rhino outranks an antelope, but an elephant outranks a rhino. In fact, an elephant outranks most animals. The rhinos are forced to make way for the elephant, who seems quite happy to take his time and enjoy his position of power. He picks up water and drops it, splashes it about, and stirs the waterhole with his trunk. He is playing with the water, all the while the rhino patiently wait nearby with thirsty looks. Eventually, one black rhino approaches the waterhole and takes a few nervous sips. The others do the same from the other side of the waterhole. All seems calm until the elephant flaps his ears and lets out a head shake, which sends the rhino skittering. He then continues to play with the water. Nearby, whilst this is happening, a bird stalks and then kills a scorpion, banging it on the rocks before devouring it. And, hidden in the darkness in enraptured viewing, the five of us sit. It is five of us now, as we are quickly joined by some researchers who will spend the night here making notes on animal populations. Rather than spending hours in a vehicle trying to spot animals, they can simply sit here and have the animals come to them. To sit here and watch nature’s television, to have a front row seat to this unfiltered and raw view of nature, that really is a job to make anyone envious.
Eventually the drooping head of our 7-year-old forces us to make a retreat back to our room and the comforts of our bed. I try to ignore the sound of a lion call as I have a shower, knowing that it is likely to head to the waterhole. I lie to myself and say that it has probably had enough to drink for today. And as we go to sleep that night, we dream of being back in the hide, of being immersed in nature once again.
