Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2012/02/27
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]i've now been twice in Africa in wild animal country. Once in South Africa and last September in Kenya. The Kenyan trip was all in vehicles; that was just the way it was. In South Africa we were for a while in Kruger Park, and the general rule was: stay in your car (a rental Nissan; not a convertible!). There were certain areas we could get out, and there were various places where there were blinds that we could walk to. The 'stay in your car' rule was far from absolute. We also stayed for a while at a private reserve on the western edge of Kruger, and there we went on walking tours quite often. Two guys with big guns came along, but both said that they had never used them. I didn't feel much less safe walking than I did in the vehicles, but the experience coming upon animals on foot was quite different and very worthwhile. Henning On 2012-02-26, at 3:45 PM, Marty Deveney wrote: > On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 5:51 AM, Bill Pearce <billcpearce at cox.net> > wrote: >> If you are in the bush in Africa, as I was, you always stay in the >> jeep/land >> rover as that is the only way to come home alive. My safari was a personal >> one (no one but me, the guide and my now ex wife) and there was no >> question >> of an out of jeep experience. I have read of safaris that allow trail >> walking, but am quite skeptical that they are able to provide for your >> safety. > > I disagree really strongly. It's not that unsafe to be on your feet > in the bush in Africa. I spent several weeks doing walking safaris in > South Africa, the Okavango, various places in Botswana and Zimbabwe in > 1999 and only ever felt nervous because of Homo sapiens, never because > of another species of animal, even when I had to swap from a 75mm lens > to a 35 and back up quite a lot to fit the whole animal into this > shot: > http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/freakscene/Africa+2009/Botswana/img920a.jpg.html > or when I was less than a metre from this cheetah: > http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/freakscene/75+Summilux/cheetah.jpg.html > > The whole set is here: > http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/freakscene/Africa+2009/ > > Especially in well trafficked parks, you can get lots of 'great' shots > with almost no effort - the driver drives right up to the lion > drinking/hunting/eating its kill, you pull out your 200-400 and go > click click click . . . seriously, hardly any effort at all. The > hardest thing about it is getting up early enough to get early light > or convincing the driver to stay out long enough to be there at dusk. > You see more and more interesting things on foot, including smaller > animals, amphibians, reptiles and many insects. You don't see things > from an artificially elevated perspective, and you get a better feel > for the terrain and what the animals that live there experience. > > I am 100% certain that going on a safari on foot is vastly less > dangerous than spending a comparable amount of time walking in > Johannesburg. > > Marty > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information > Henning Wulff henningw at archiphoto.com