Safaris and Rhythms

 If you know me, you know that I am not a morning person. Nothing good happens before 9AM. It is not unusual for me to see 1:30 or 2AM before I hit my pillow. Likewise, while I may wake up earlier, my morning routine does not usually begin before 8:45-9:00AM. I do not understand the need of golfers to hit the links at 7AM. The golf course is open all day! Similarly, why is it necessary to go fishing at 6AM? If the fish only bite in the early hours of the morning, why don’t fishermen pack up and go home at 9AM? 

My body is perfectly happy with my daily rhythm, only protesting slightly before or after dinner, when a nap seems tempting. If I conform to the notion that hours slept before midnight count more than hours after midnight, a conspiracy theory made popular by golfers and fishers, I can look forward to many hours of tossing and turning in my bed, resulting in less sleep than if I went to bed at my usual time.

This brings me to safaris. I love safaris. I have been to Africa twice now, and while Covid-19 is doing its best to keep me away, a third trip is planned once things settle down. Safaris have quite a different rhythm.  The day usually begins before the sun is up. A quick cup of coffee and a few African rusks, hard chunks of solid something not unlike biscotti, and its off in an open air safari vehicle, enjoying the sensation of the crisp morning air trying to form ice crystals on your nose and watery eyelids. As the sun wakes up, the day becomes quite peasant. The safari drive often lasts until 10 or 10:30AM, when we return to camp for breakfast. A second drive is generally scheduled for about 3PM and lasts until about 7:30PM. When the sun goes down, around 6 or 6:30, there is the traditional sundowners stop. Drinks and snacks or brought out and enjoyed while keeping an eye out for a curious lion or hyena. Not long after retuning to camp, after getting refreshed and washing off the dust cloud you probably drove through a few times, the group gets together for dinner, which can often consist of a brai, an African BBQ which always includes more than one kind of meat. Not long after dinner, everyone returns to their tents, (I love the permanent tents built on a platform, complete with showers, full bathroom, etc.). Often, you do not have a choice, as you need to be accompanied by a local like a Masai man just in case you run into dangerous wildlife. Presumably people go to bed then, at about 9:30 or so. 

This routine is so far from my own routine. What made me think of this is an article I read in my Travel Africa magazine. This magazine is how I stay connected with the African bush until I return. This latest edition reflected on missing the African experience since the pandemic shut down the safari camps for over a year now. The author, a guide, wrote about the healthy psychology provided by safaris. His first point was how it reset your circadian rhythm. Safari goers need to reset their internal clocks to the rising and falling of the sun. Now, one would think that I would have a great deal of trouble adjusting to this new rhythm. I think it might help that there is a 8 or 9 hour time difference between east Africa and home. On my first trip, which began in South Africa, we left Johannesburg for Kruger National Park mid morning, arriving at our camp inside the park after dark, at about 7:30PM. We ate outside, spent some time getting to know the people we would be sharing our time with for the next 19 days, and the went to bed at about 10PM. I had my own tent because I had no spouse with me, and there were no other single men in the group. I did manage to go to sleep fairly quickly, but was wide awake at 2:30AM. I waited until just after 3 o’clock to go to the bathroom. This required a walk to the facilities building. Outside my tent, there was a waterbuck, a type of antelope, grazing. I heard the grunts of hippos in the river not too far away, and the hoots of scoops owls.I wandered around the camp for a few hours until sunrise. After that however, I fell into the rhythm. I was able to go to bed and sleep often by 10 or 10:30PM, and had little trouble waking at 5:30 or so. The anticipation of wildlife viewing helped of course. 

I did draw the line one night. We were sleeping in regular tents in the bush in the Okavango Delta. The local tribe that poled our boats to the island we were on also guarded the camp against wildlife all night long. Our bathroom was a hole dug in the ground with tarps on three sides and a toilet seat suspended over the hole. (Make sure that when you camp like this for two days, you dig the hole deep enough. By the last morning there was no longer a hole.) After sunset, we sat around the fire and ate a delicious meal of kudu stew. The locals did not eat, but sat a distance away. When we were finished, they moved around the fire to eat their meal of freshly caught boiled fish. It felt like we should let them have their space, so everyone went to their tents. It was only 8PM! I am not going to bed at 8PM. However, with no electricity, there was little to do by yourself in a tent. Finally, at 10 o’clock or so, I thought I would go to the bathroom, just for something to do. Along the path was a branch sticking out. We would put something on the branch as a signal that the outhouse was occupied. On returning from the poop hole, I walked right into the branch, gashing my thigh and tearing a big hole in my pants. That gave me something to do for a while, trying to stop the bleeding. It was a long night. In the morning I was about the throw my blood-stained pants with the gash in it into the garbage. One of the locals asked if they could have it, so I gave it away.

So, did I become one of those crazy, “Get up at sunrise” kind of people? No. When I got home, I did struggle to stay up past 11:30PM for a week or so, but then my old rhythm kicked in. Until the next safari in 2022, I hope.