The new crossroads of Kenya, the Nanyuki airfield. Photo by David Lansing.

They used to say that sooner or later you’d run into everybody of importance in Africa at the Thorn Tree Café in the New Stanley Hotel which has been there, more or less, since 1902 (I say more or less because the original Stanley Hotel burned down in 1905 and was reopened a few years later as the New Stanley). The hotel was where Hemingway recuperated from a severe case of amoebic dysentery while on safari in 1933 and where he began imagining the story that would become “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”

The real crossroads of Kenya, if not Africa, these days seems to be Barney’s at the Nanyuki airfield. Okay, I can’t see Prince Charles and Camilla being feted at Barney’s the way Princess Elizabeth (now Queen Elizabeth) and Prince Philip were at The New Stanley back in 1952, but in the hour or we spent there having lunch while Calvin ran around Nanyuki buying final supplies for our drive north, a lot of interesting people came through, nobody more so than the wildlife cinematographer Alan Root.

During the ‘70s and ‘80s, Alan and his wife, Joan, were to wildlife movies what Disney is to animation. As Vanity Fair writer Mark Seal wrote in his book about Joan Root, Wildflower (which is supposedly being turned into a movie starring Julia Roberts even as I write this), “They were pioneers, filming animal behavior without human interference decades before films such as Winged Migration and March of the Penguins were made. Their movies were often narrated by top movie stars, including David Niven, James Mason, and Ian Holm, and in 1967 one of their films had a royal premiere in London, where the couple was presented to the queen.

“They introduced the American zoologist Dian Fossey to the gorillas she would later die trying to save, took Jacqueline Kennedy up in their hot-air balloon, and covered much of Africa in their single-engine Cessna and their amphibious car. Then, for reasons the public never really knew, they suddenly vanished from the screen as mysteriously as some of the endangered species they had documented.”

Interesting, no? But it gets better. They divorced and Joan retreated to her home on 88 acres along Lake Naivasha “where she devoted herself to saving the ecologically imperiled lake just beyond her home. It was there, in her bedroom at one-thirty a.m. on January 13, 2006, that she was brutally murdered by assailants with an AK-47. Screaming in Swahili that they would fill her with so many holes she’d “look like a sieve,” they pumped bullets through the glass and the bars of her bedroom windows until Joan—who, at sixty-nine, had become one of the most indomitable conservationists in the world—lay dead in a pool of her own blood.”

The murder was never solved, though most everyone, including the police, had a pretty good idea who did it. And what the motive was (hint: it has something to do with roses). Which is why, I suppose, Julia Roberts is making a film of the story. Sort of a more violent, but undoubtedly just as beautiful, Out of Africa.

The murder was four-and-a-half years ago. And now here was her ex-husband, Alan Root, sitting at the table next to me at Barney’s drinking a Tusker and eating a cheeseburger. Just like me. You can imagine how badly I wanted to introduce myself and have a little chat. But just then Calvin and Keith pulled up in front of where we were eating, honked the horn, and the four of us climbed into the Land Cruisers, leaving Alan Root to finish his lunch in silence.

Flying over the flamingos at Lake Nakuru. Photo by David Lansing.

We flew west into the Mara, following the migration route of tens of thousands of wildebeest and zebra below us as they crossed the Sand, or Longaianiet, River following the border between Kenya and Tanzania. The Masai word siringet, from which we get Serengeti, means “vast place” and why they called it that becomes apparent when you fly low over it. In front of us was an endless horizon of tawny yellow grass, sometimes so tall you could see the wind flowing through it like waves, interrupted only by the dark green vegetation along the Sand or the distinctive island kopjes, little rock islands poking out of the yellow grass that, like coral reefs on an ocean floor, become their own little mini eco-systems supporting birds, lizards, hyraxes, and maybe a resident leopard or a pride of lions.

Sandwiched as we were between heaven and earth, what you become aware of, besides the vast numbers of wildlife beneath you, is the way all the colors of the Serengeti compliment each other: ocher-colored earth; grass going from khaki to umber to chartreuse; the deep green of trees and bushes along the riverbanks. All set off by a very pale blue sky that just seems to stretch out in front of you endlessly.

Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway’s third wife, in writing about the Serengeti, talks about the vastness of this sky, how it seems to have “no boundaries, no end,” and how this is almost more than she can handle. “The machinery that keeps me going is not geared to cope with infinity and eternity as so clearly displayed in that sky. After sunset, the Africans jam into their round huts and close everything up to keep out the night; if I understood nothing else about them, I understood that.”

Flying over the same terrain, I knew exactly what she was talking about.

The Sand River eventually merges with the Mara River at the southeastern corner of the Mara Triangle and here we turned north. Below us were what looked like a dozen or so big black rocks in the middle of the mud-colored water—hippos. This river is the banquet hall for crocodiles and lions and other predators for it’s where the lemming-like wildebeest cross in order to get to the lush grasslands in the Mara Triangle. Thousands and thousands of the animals will come to the steep banks of the Mara, stop, nervously look around, grunt in frustration, and wait for a leader—anyone, anyone?—to finally dive into the stream and swim across to the other side. Once that single wildebeest makes his move, the entire herd follows—first slowly, then in a nervous panic, like fans at a sold-out soccer game, stampeding from behind so that animals are trampled to death or break their legs running down the cliff or simply drown in the pandemonium. Meanwhile, the crocs and the lions wait, no doubt with smirks on their face, for an easy meal.

From here we flew over the Mau Forest whose rivers, like the Sand, are the water source for the Mara (as the trees go—and they are being free-cut at an alarming rate, as we could see flying over them—so goes the plains) and up to Lake Nakuru, flying low over the western edge as we watched an ungodly number of bright pink flamingos rise up out of the salty soda lake, circle, and land back where they started.

Then up over the verdant Aberdare Forest to the western edge of Mt. Kenya, cloaked in a dark cloud, to the airport at Nanyuki where Calvin and the boys were sitting on the tarmac in their Land Cruisers waiting for us.

William and Heidi come to say goodbye. Photos by David Lansing.

After breakfast I went back to my tent and packed. Calvin and his crew had left the day before and the other guests, a young family from Italy I think it was, had departed before sunrise because they were taking a domestic flight from the Keekorok airstrip, about a two hour drive away. We were flying out on the Caravan from Calvin’s private airstrip, about a 20 minute drive from camp.

The camp seemed almost deserted. Next to the mess tent was a little round building, like the huts the Masai live in, with several elephant skulls in front. A handmade sign said Dapper Flappers 1920s Shop. In the whole time we’ve been here, I’ve never seen it open but I found Heidi, the camp manager, in her office next door and asked her if they had any maps in the shop and she said they did and got on the 2-way radio to ask someone to bring her the key.

There wasn’t a lot in the shop. Toiletries, medications for upset stomachs, a few books, and some Masai trinkets: carved wooden elephants, beaded bracelets, woven baskets—the typical sort of curios you could get at the Masai Market in Nairobi for a fraction of the cost. I was looking for a map of the Masai Mara but all they had was one of Kenya. Heidi said she’d been trying to find a good Masai Mara map but there just weren’t any. So I bought the Kenya map which was $26. It was far and away the most expensive map I’ve ever bought in my life. When I unfolded it inside the mess tent, I saw that in addition to a beautifully rendered map of Kenya that included wonderful illustrations of a Masai moran, or warrior, cheetah, elephant, and a baobab tree, among others, the flip side also had very detailed maps of not only the Masai Mara but also Laikipia, The Great Rift Valley, and Nairobi. I don’t know that it was worth $26 but it was a very nice map.

I have been remiss in not mentioning Heidi before now. She and her husband Josh run the camp in Calvin’s absence. They are both in their twenties and both extremely capable and attractive people. Heidi handles everything from organizing the Masai guides for game-watching to hosting dinners with the clients each night (which, as you can imagine, could get extremely tiresome when you don’t have guests like Uma Thurman and Ed Norton, as they have had). Josh, it seems, does everything Heidi doesn’t—organize the many game-watching vehicles, repair equipment, build new tents and other structures, and also run guests to the airstrips. In fact, Josh was taking us this morning to meet our plane.

The marungu Pete bought from the Masai.

Heidi, dressed as if she were an extra in the movie Out of Africa, came with William, looking dapper as usual in his crimson vest and red fez, to say good-bye, and then Josh organized our luggage and we were off to the airstrip. The morning was beautiful and we passed any number of dik-diks and gazelles, wildebeest and zebra, and even a few giraffes on the short drive. When I saw the Caravan, guarded by two Masai crouched beneath the shadow of its wing, I felt a mixture of excitement and sadness. We were headed up towards Mt. Kenya and into Samburu country and it is always exciting to be heading into new country in Africa or anywhere else for that matter, but we were also leaving this special little corner of the Mara behind and I would miss William bringing me a gin and tonic in the late afternoon and the cry of the raptors floating in the thermals over the camp and the heady smell of leleshwa when walking in the bush.

While Hamish checked over the plane the rest of us loaded our luggage, except for Pete who, while taking photos of the Masai, decided he quite liked one of the simple but nasty looking weapons they all carry, called a rungu, which is nothing more than a carved hard wood club about two feet long with a knob on the end. The rungu is used for hunting and for protection, both from animal predators and human ones as well (in fact, former Kenyan president Daniel Moi liked to be seen with his elegant silver-tipped rungu which he would sometimes pound on a table or his desk when he was angry as a form of intimidation, much like Nikita Krushchev’s famous shoe-pounding episode with Richard Nixon I suppose).

The Masai wanted something like 400 Kenyan shillings for his rungu, which is like $5, but none of us had anything smaller than a thousand note so he ended up buying both of them. And then letting them keep the extra 200 shillings since the one thing the Masai do not carry around with them is a wallet or change. Pete didn’t mind. He was quite happy with his marungu (the plural of rungu) since they were truly authentic if not as elaborately decorated as those sold in tourist shops in Nairobi.

And then we shook Josh’s hand and climbed into the Caravan, me sitting in the co-pilot seat in front and Pete in the very back so he could lower a window and hang out the plane and take photos as we flew over Masai Mara, and Hardy and Fletch in the middle. Hamish guided the plane over the bumpy airstrip, turned the nose into the wind, and we lifted off, Josh waving goodye and the Masai morani watching stoically as we cleared the far hills and disappeared over the horizon.

Peter McBride, National Geographic Traveler photographer.

We’re not just stalking cheetahs during the day and drinking whisky around the campfire at night. That’s a pleasant part of our stay here at Cottar’s 1920s Safari Camp, but the more important task is planning and preparing for our long expedition, which starts tomorrow, to Lake Paradise about 850 kilometers north of here, not far from the Ethiopian border.

One doesn’t just get in one’s vehicle and drive up to Lake Paradise. For one thing it is situated high up in the Northern Frontier District, or NFD, which is a rather lawless territory plagued by Somali bandits called shifta (those Somali bad boys aren’t just out in the Indian Ocean being pirates). For another thing, about 250 kilometers or so of the drive will be over corrugated dirt roads. Or worse.

And there is little in the way of supplies along the way and absolutely nothing once we get there. We will have to carry all our own food, water, gasoline, and beer, of course. The way the plan is at the moment, we will have two four-wheel drive vehicles plus a trailer loaded with our camping equipment and food as well as a support staff that will include Calvin as expedition leader; Keith, a guide and driver; Julian, our cook; Eddie, our mechanic (Calvin likes to say about Eddie that he is such an incredible mechanic he could rebuild an entire engine in the bush); and Karani for security and to help out. Plus the four of us: Pete McBride, a photographer from National Geographic Traveler; Hardy McLain, a London producer; Chris Fletcher, my agent; and me.

Hardy McLain, a London producer, and Hamish, our pilot.

Because we’re covering a lot of ground, we’re going to travel via a mixture of flying and driving. Calvin and his crew headed out early this morning for Nairobi to stock up on everything we’ll need for the expedition and to load the vehicles before heading north. Meanwhile, tomorrow Pete, Hardy, Fletch and I will fly with Hamish, our pilot, in the Caravan, to Nanyuki, on the western slopes of Mt. Kenya, where we’ll hook up with the rest of the group and begin the long drive to the Sarara Camp in the Mathews Range, an area I’ve heard is one of the most beautiful (and seldom visited) in Kenya.

We’ll spend a fair amount of time at Sarara in an area known for great herds of elephants as well as reticulated giraffes, which are slightly smaller but, I think, more elegant looking than the Masai giraffe around here. We’re also expecting to find Grevy’s zebra here. The Grevy’s differs from the common zebra we’ve been seeing in that they have white bellies and round ears.

Chris Fletcher, my agent and gun bearer .

From there we’ll begin the worst section of the trip, a hideous drive across the lunar-like landscape of the Kaisut Desert in search of Lake Paradise which, according to a Lieutenant-Colonel J.H. Patterson over a hundred years ago was called Angara Sabuk (Great Water) by the local Samburu pastoralists who described the lake as “glistening like a sheet of burnished gold in the brilliant sunshine.”

I am anxious, as are others in our expedition, to discover if the lake is still there. We plan to find out.

Baboons hate leopards. The feeling is mutual. Photo by David Lansing.

Cottars 1920s Safari Camp is spread out in the acacia woodlands at the base of the Olenturoto Hills which call out to us, literally, every evening when the large troop of baboons that make the tree tops their home bark and scream belligerently at the leopards prowling about the granite koppie below.

Leopards and baboons have an interesting relationship; they despise each other. During the day the baboons scamper over the rocks and in the trees, taking fruits and leaves, insects, lizards, even small snakes, the babies regally riding on the backs of mom, the adolescents batting each other about, rolling on the ground like kids on a playground. Then at night, they roost in the trees, keeping watch below, and should a leopard be in the neighborhood they’ll make this ungodly racket alerting not only the troop to the leopard’s approach but everyone else in the woodland as well, including us.

Which, of course, really annoys the leopard (it also annoys me, but I have less skin in the game). Sometimes if the leopard is really annoyed, he’ll kill a baboon or two. Not to eat but just for fun. Or perhaps to shut them up. But here’s the thing: baboons kill leopards as well. In a very organized fashion. A troop will surround the leopard and when the cat attacks the point man, usually a young male—but not the dominant male—other, larger males will quickly close in from all sides. The leopard, of course, will take out many of the baboons but eventually the numbers overwhelm him and sooner or later the troop will rip the cat to shreds. It is, in short, nothing less than a war between the species.

Yesterday afternoon, about an hour before sunset, we decided to hike to the top of the hill behind us, both to enjoy the sun setting over the Rift Valley and to see if we could spot one of the leopards that the baboons are always barking and screaming at. But you don’t just put on your hiking boots out here and climb a hill. There are too many unseen dangers. Like the leopards and the baboons. So Calvin sent us out with one of his young Masai guides, Jackson Oletura.

Pete shooting Jackson atop the Olenturoto Hills. Photo by Chris Fletcher.

Jackson is tall and powerfully built with long legs and long arms decorated with beaded bracelets and colorful bands just below his knees. He wore the traditional orange red shuka, knotted at his shoulder like a Roman toga (the Romans once occupied North Africa, where the Masai originally lived, and it is thought that the shuka as well as the Masai panga, which resembles the short Roman fighting sword, and even their sandals, were copied from the Romans). A bandolier of metal amulets ran across his chest. Low on his hip was a leather belt with a sheath holding his panga, a sort of broad bladed machete that everyone carries in the bush, and in his hand every Masai warrior’s most precious possession, a spear with a razor-sharp blade on the end. He looked regal, as do most Masai, and there was no doubt in our mind that should we surprise a leopard (or he us), Jackson would dispatch him with utmost haste.

We climbed the trail up the hill in single file, staying behind Jackson, who moved with the ease and grace of a gazelle. Twice Jackson gave us a hand signal to stop, peering intensely at a dark cave or boulders in a depression, but there was no leopard. At least not one we could see.

Cottar’s camp is at 6,200 feet and we were even higher than that and the air was surprisingly crisp, the sky gray with slow-moving clouds that looked like the remnants of a thunderstorm that we had seen earlier coming in from the east. At the top of the hill you got the full effect of the camp’s setting; the umbrella acacias spreading across the upslope just to the camp’s edge where the woodland then turned to a green forest of cedar and kigelia and commiphora, the thorny, small-leaved flowering bush that is so prevalent across East Africa. It really was a beautiful setting.

The sun had already set behind us and slowly the day was losing light. Pete, sensing the evocative mood of the setting sun, took some photos of Jackson standing on a granite boulder, his spear in hand, looking out over these plains where he’d grown up. Then we quickly descended the hill, listening and looking at the shadows, breathlessly both hoping and fearing we’d hear that distinct, rough sawing sound of a leopard alerting us to his presence, but we never saw or heard a sound. Not even from the baboons.

My camp bedroom with its foldaway beds from the '20s. Photo by David Lansing.

The weather has been quite comfortable and even in the middle of the day unless you are on the ground with the heat rising through your shoes and the dust in your nostrils it’s very pleasant. Still, after a languid lunch in the cool shade of the mess tent and maybe a couple of Tusker beers, everyone wanders off to their tents for an afternoon nap. I’ve tried doing this but it just doesn’t seem possible. I lie on my foldaway bed, draped with an open mosquito net, and study the rolling hills of the Siana plains and the distant Kuka Hills, thinking of the animals coming down from the Serengeti, listening to the white noise of unseen birds and insects, smelling the wild sage and lilac, dazed, groggy, the way one is on a very long flight, but unable to sleep.

Calvin's father, Glen, in 1963.

This afternoon instead of a nap I stayed in the mess tent, abandoned except for William, in his crisp white kanzu and crimson vest and fez, who brought me a pot of tea while I sprawled on a settee with tapestry cushions and flipped through a book I found on the coffee table called White Hunters. In it was a photo of Calvin’s grandfather, Mike, wearing a hat—the same hat now sitting on top of the bookcase behind me.

There is something about the whole Cottar lineage thing that I find striking and evocative. It’s not just knowing that this camp is so close to where Calvin’s father, Glen, established the first tourist camp in the Mara or that these golden plains and acacia woodlands are where Calvin learned to hunt at 15, but that Olenturoto Hill, where Calvin has built his elegant little camp is, as he says, “the epicenter of the Cottar soul.”

Imagine having a place in the wilderness like that? A spot where your father and his father all camped, walked the miles of thorn-bush and undulating hills of golden grasslands, a place that has become what Calvin calls “a cellular memory.” Something you retain in your subconscious even if you didn’t directly experience it.

While I was sipping my tea and thinking about all this, Calvin wandered in and sat with me. I told him what I’d been thinking.

He pulled some other books and memorabilia out of the old bookcase behind me, showing me old photos of his greatgrandfather, Charles, as well as shots of some of the old tent safaris and such. It’s so odd. This landscape seems so familiar to me—in a primal sense. I guess it’s part of what Calvin calls le nostalgie d’Afrique, perhaps best described by Hemingway when he wrote, “All I wanted to do now was get back to Africa. We had not left it, yet, but when I would wake in the night I would lie, listening, homesick for it already.”

Like Hemingway, I am still in Africa. And yet a part of me is missing it already.

A Masai giraffe in front of a flat topped acacia. Photo by David Lansing.

We’ve fallen into a pleasant routine here in the Mara. We try to gather in the dining tent by 6:30 for a quick breakfast of fruit and coffee (Calvin would like us to be up by 5:30 but it’s just not going to happen). Early morning is the best time of day. The air is cool and fresh, the sky alive with chattering starlings and weavers and mourning doves. It is the cooing of mourning doves that, for me, is the soundtrack of Africa.

We might spend three or four hours looking for game, always with a specific species in mind, yet we are easily distracted. In search of a leopard in a tree we instead come across three or four Masai giraffe browsing on a flat topped acacia or cautiously sipping at a water hole, their ridiculous legs splayed out in all directions, like a dog on an ice-skating rink, which is when they’re most vulnerable to an attack by a lion. Do you know how easy it is to spend your morning just watching a giraffe drink?

And then there’s always the wild goose chase like the one we went on this morning. Yesterday Calvin heard a report that a pack of wild dogs was in the area. Very rare. Once common in the Serengeti and Masai Mara, they’ve been reduced to almost nothing as a result of disease and persecution by the Masai and other tribes because they are a threat to livestock. I’ve read that even 20 years ago there were probably 500,000 wild African dogs and now there may be less that 4,000 remaining.

Pound for pound African wild dogs may be the most efficient hunters in East Africa. Hunting in a pack, they pursue their victim relentlessly, handing off chase duties much the way cyclists do in a peloton until their prey is exhausted. Then 20 or 30 or more wild dogs come in for the kill, dragging smaller antelopes or even a zebra to the ground.

African wild dogs. Photo by Chris Mahoney.

Anyway, Chris Mahoney, one of the guides at Cottars Camp, was told by the local Masai yesterday that there were some of these rare animals in the area so he spent most of the day looking for them, finally coming across 15 or 20 of them with pups in a den just before dusk. He snapped this photo of three of them with his cell phone just to show us. The quality of the pic isn’t very good but you get the idea.

The thing is, wild dogs don’t stick in any one place for very long. They have an incredible hunting range that can extend for hundreds of miles and tend to hang out at one place for maybe three weeks before moving on. Which is why Calvin was rather keen to take us out looking for them early this morning (they hunt mainly at dusk and dawn and tend to hide in their dens during the heat of the day). They’re extremely elusive however, particularly around man (as they should be) and we never could find them. Not that it really mattered. Just being out in the open grassland for the morning was reward enough.

What's left of a wildebeest just a few hours after its death. Photo by David Lansing.

The easiest way to find lions is to look skyward. Early this morning as we were driving through the woody area not far from camp, Calvin stopped the Land Cruiser and pointed towards three or four vultures dropping down from the sky about half a mile away. “They’re going in for a meal,” he said. “Probably from a lion kill. If we’re lucky they might still be there.”

We cut through the bush, taking a straight line to where Calvin thought the birds had landed. The lions were gone. In their place were a dozen or so vultures, huddled around a dark shapeless mass, pecking at it and each other, spreading their wings in a fury when one of their brethren dared to go for the same scrap they were after. Several maribou storks stood quietly off to the side looking like undertakers.

The white-backed vulture, with his bald black head and stony stare, is an ugly bird but the maribou stork is even more hideous with its coat-like wings and back and its pink scab-encrusted head, sprouting whisps of hair, making it look like a burn victim. Just looking at these grotesque creatures gives me a chill worse than anything except maybe hyenas.

We had to practically drive over the kill before the vultures would abandon it. What they’d been picking over were the remains of a small wildebeest—probably an adolescent. Calvin figured it had been killed last night because although there was very little left to be picked over, even by the vultures, there were still a few morsels of red flesh above the hoofs and inside the vacant eye sockets (the eyes being a particularly prized delicacy by the carnivores).

Still, if you take a good look at this photo, it’s amazing how picked over this animal had been in probably four or five hours. First the lions had their fill, feasting, in particular, on the organs. Then the hyenas came along, maybe even chasing off the lions at one point, and quickly devouring entrails, crunching up ribs and leg bones, tearing off the snout. Which is when the vultures come in for clean-up, basically scrubbing the hide and bones clean, picking at the head and anything left on the bony legs. Eventually the marabou storks would elbow their way in and fight for anything that was left, leaving the ants and flies and other insects to dispose of hair and hide. If we came back tomorrow, all we’d probably find would be a few bleached bones and perhaps a skull. That’s how quickly Mother Nature disposes of the dead in Africa.

These buffs probably can't see us but they can smell us. Photos by David Lansing.

It was a Cape buffalo, of course, that ended the short happy life of Francis Macomber in Ernest Hemingway’s classic short story of the same name.

“(They saw) the bull coming, nose out, mouth tight closed, blood dripping, massive head straight out, coming in a charge, his little pig eyes bloodshot as he looked at them. Wilson, who was ahead was kneeling shooting, and Macomber, as he fired, unhearing his shot in the roaring of Wilson’s gun, saw fragments like slate burst from the huge boss of the horns, and the head jerked, he shot again at the wide nostrils and saw the horns jolt again and fragments fly, and he did not see Wilson now and, aiming carefully, shot again with the buffalo’s huge bulk almost on him and his rifle almost level with the on-coming head, nose out, and he could see the little wicked eyes and the head started to lower and he felt a sudden white-hot, blinding flash explode inside his head and that was all he ever felt.”

That is all he ever felt because his wife, sitting in the safari vehicle behind him, had shot him. On purpose? Accidentally? Accidentally on purpose? That’s a question lit majors have been pondering for more than 50 years. What’s never been in question is just how dangerous Cape buffalos can be. Particularly when they’re wounded, as the one in Hemingway’s story was. Wound a rhino or a lion and they’ll go off into the brush or high grass and lay in wait for you. But wound a buff and it might very well circle back around you and begin to stalk the hunter, taking them from behind. Which is why in Africa, where they regularly kill over 200 people a year, they are known as “Black Death.”

After we left the cheetahs, we drove up a slight rise and across a grassy plain inhabited by zebras and wildebeests with the odd Thomsons gazelle mixed in as well. The dry grass was waist-high making it difficult for Calvin to know where to go so Hardy climbed up on the roof and gave him directions to avoid wart-hog holes and hidden boulders. Still, every once in awhile, the bottom of the Land Cruiser would scrape over an unseen hazard and Calvin would curse under his breath.

Calvin stopped the car and studied the grass around us, pointing at it and saying, “There.” I couldn’t see what he was pointing at. It just looked like more dry grass and a couple of smallish termite mounds to me. Calvin got his field glasses and studied the slope in front of us.

Buffalos trying to get our scent to see if we're dangerous or not.

I asked him what he was seeing. He put down the field glasses and looked at the grass again. “You see how it’s shorter?” he said. And now that he’d pointed it out, I could. The grass we’d driven through was at least three feet high and the area he was pointing at was a foot high at most. But I didn’t know what that meant.

“There’s a relationship all of these animals have with one another,” he said. “Buffalos graze on tall, coarse grass—like what we’ve been driving through. But they don’t eat it down to the ground. They leave a foot or so of the grass for the grazers who come behind them—dik-dik, oryx, impala. So look here,” he said, pointing at the clipped grass, “and follow the path with your eyes.” Then he nodded towards a green patch of acacia trees down a sloping hill maybe a hundred yards away. “The buffs are in there.”

And they were. About fifty or so. Mostly females and their off-spring (the bulls tend to form their own sub-herds around the cows). Buffalos can’t see worth a damn and their hearing is poor but they can smell a lion—or a human—at a great distance. And spook easily. Which makes it extremely difficult to sneak up on them. Calvin got us as close as he thought possible and then stopped the vehicle and we just sat looking at each other, the herd of buffs and us. Calvin said from this distance they couldn’t make us out. We were just a dark boxy shape to them. So they weren’t quite sure if we were dangerous or not. Which is why they had their heads up and were sniffing the air. Trying to get our scent. This lasted for three or four minutes. And then they decided, for whatever reason, that they’d had enough of us. And thundered off, their thousand-pound bodies rushing through the high grass like a fullback trying to pick up a first down, while the Land Cruiser gently shook as if from a small earthquake.

Mom grooms one of her youngsters. Photos by David Lansing.

The cheetahs were moving away from us across the top of a rocky ridge, their movements effortless and graceful. Once we crossed the donga and started climbing up the hill, very, very slowly, the cheetahs became aware of our presence. We were still a good quarter mile or more away. All you could see was a slight movement in the high grass and every once in awhile the glimpse of a sleek, spotted body slinking away. Calvin figured it was a mother and her two adolescent children.

We started to play a little game with the cheetahs. Calvin would stop the Land Cruiser, kill the engine, and we’d let the cats have a good look at us before starting up again and approaching a little closer, at which point the cheetahs would slink further across the ridge as we followed. Doing this in steps, we eventually closed the distance between us from a quarter of a mile to maybe a hundred feet. This took us about half an hour.

At this point the cheetahs were slouched in the shade of a thorn bush with a view of the sloping hill in front of them. I had always thought that cats stalk their kill from a great distance, slowly sneaking up on it until it’s time for the chase, but Calvin said usually they find a good place from which to attack—like a covered area on top of a ridge—and let their prey come to them. Much more efficient. This was obviously what the cheetah family was doing.

Photo by David Lansing.

All the shadowy coolness of morning was gone now, replaced by the harsh heat of day. Calvin positioned the Land Cruiser to give us as much shade as possible. Even so, it was starting to get hot. We didn’t talk. I’d screwed a mono-pod on to the base of my camera and was using a 200mm telephoto lens with a 2X multiplier and when I looked through my camera, I could see the amber eyes of one of the largest of the cheetahs, the mother, and a pink slip of tongue sticking out. She was beautiful to look at and seemed to be staring right back at me.

There was a cooler in the rear and Fletch got out very cold cans of Tusker beer and handed them around to everyone but Hardy. He had to pee but knew he couldn’t get out of the vehicle. Calvin asked him if we should drive away and find someplace where he could do his business but Hardy said no, this was just too amazing, he’d pee in a bottle if it got bad.

Just then the three cheetahs exploded in a furious run right in front of us. A lone eland had wandered by and the cats, led by mom, went after it. An eland isn’t typical prey for cheetahs. The largest of African antelope, they’re about the size of cattle, which they somewhat resemble. Several cheetahs could obviously bring one down, but it wouldn’t be easy.

The eland changed course, heading down the hill instead of up, the minute the cheetahs attacked. Before I could even swing my camera around, they’d moved off to our left, heading for the donga. The largest of the cheetahs made a swipe at the eland’s back legs to knock it off its feet but missed and the eland changed directions once again. Already the two smaller cheetahs had stopped running and were falling behind. Soon the mother gave up as well and the eland fled down into the donga.

Cheetahs are very fast but they have no stamina. They can run over 60 mph but only for short distances. And after a sprint, they need to chill out for at least half-an-hour before making another attempt. Calvin knew nothing exciting would be happening for awhile so he backed the Land Cruiser up and slowly drove away from the cheetahs, looking for a spot where we could safely get out and stretch our legs or whatever for a few minutes.

Then we went back to look for the cheetahs. They were lying on their sides in the shade, the mother grooming her two children. Calvin said he thought the cats looked a little thin. “They need a meal,” he said.

Pete and I took photos of them for another half hour or so, hoping that a small Thomsons gazelle or maybe a dik-dik would come by, something a little easier for the cheetahs to run down, but, like all cats, they are patient. It might be another hour before they gave chase again or it might be another five hours. Who could say? We’d already stayed with the cheetahs for a couple of hours. And hadn’t we originally thought we were going to spend the morning looking for Cape buffalos? So Calvin started up the engine and with the cheetahs sitting up watching us, we slowly retreated from the ridge, in search of buffs down in the wooded glen a mile or so away.