I (Dirk) often get asked, when visiting agents in the EU, why I left the road and what was my most memorable experience whilst guiding?

I decided to leave the road in 2014 when an opportunity arrived to work in the office in the HR department. Having worked in recruitment for a short stint I thought this would be a nice step forward. After a short few months in HR a position opened in marketing which is the way I wanted to head. So now 3 years later I have a really nice network of agents that I deal with personally and go to visit every year.

Where to start with the experiences I have had?? After having guided for 11 years (3 of those with Sunway) I have had many an experience in the wilds of Africa and there are a handful that will sit in my mind until the end of time. I think the one that pops in my mind straight away would be the time I was in the Savuti Marsh back in mid 2014 with 4 clients from Germany on a Botswana Wildside BT14 camping tour. We headed out on our morning game drive and saw a massive heard of buffalo on the edge of the dry marsh. We sat with them for about an hour just admiring these beautiful creatures as they feed on the dry grasses. In the distance I noticed something moving through the bush in the direction of the Savuti channel. I took my binoculars and had a look. Nothing? Im sure I saw movement so I kept my eyes focused on the last area I saw the movement. Again something moved, up came the binoculars and there she was, the most beautiful young leopard heading down into the channel. I tapped Kenny’s shoulder and said Ingwe, let’s go. We started up and I told the clients we have a small surprise for them. Heading across the open area I kept my eyes focused on the last spot I saw the leopard and guided Kenny to that position. We arrived and couldn’t find the leopard. A few meters further we found a small track that dropped down into the channel. Kenny took the track and to our surprise as we cleared the brush we had the leopard in front of us heading up the channel in the direction of what they call hippo pool. Now hippo pool is not a large piece of water in any terms but enough to hold the 3 hippo at that stage that where left in the Savuti. (Unfortunately on my last trip to the Savuti we found the carcass of one of these hippos that the lions had killed and the other 2 hippos we found later in Marabou pan.) 

We followed the leopard for about 300m when we came around the bend just before hippo pool to find a second leopard in a tree. Her brother! She approached and jumped up to join him in the tree. They sat there for a short while before she got bored, she then left him and wondered across to the other side of hippo pool to collapse in the shade of a fallen tree.

Now what made this sighting more special was the elephant’s drinking water in the background, hippo in the water and marabou storks pottering around.

The male leopard now looked like he was going to move but rather just rolled over and had a look at the elephants coming down the embankment to drink. A large bull made his way toward the leopard and walked within 2m of the leopard having a quick stop to have a staring completion before moving off, the leopard clearly won. A second bull decided he would try his luck with the staring competition. He approached and the competition was on. He stood there, maybe a meter away from the leopard and did not move.

This time I think the leopard started to feel a little uncomfortable with this monster staring him eye to eye and jumped down under the tree and slowly moved off to join his sister who was now fast asleep.

Now this was, if I think really hard about the many years in the bush guiding, the second most memorable experience of my life. The most memorable is another story that you might hear one day.