The last full day of this leg, what an introduction it had been. We had not seen a lot of game, but we had been introduced to a way of being in the bush that we had never experienced before. Something had enveloped me and us that we had never felt before. A mental shift was taking place, a new perspective on what it is to be human had been revealed by the experience of walking and camping in such wild spaces.
But it was on this fifth day that we first encountered a tar road since we had started. Catching glimpses of vehicles, we felt a little giddy, knowing that here we were walking through the bush that for so long we had only been able to view from the confines of the cars we were now seeing. It’s an odd feeling that would come up throughout the Kruger trail as we saw Kruger tourists and they saw us. They would often stare with a bit of intrigue, perhaps even ask a few questions. We would often feel proud and privileged to have their attention and admiration. As the trail went on, I would mostly shed what others thought of it and us, focusing on the journey of growth we were on.
By the fifth day, you are feeling strong, and your pack is feeling light. The conversation of how many days in a row we could do this for came about at one of our coffee stops. We moved through thick Mopani, our guides very wary of potential elephants using the same path as us, often stopping to listen for the flap of an ear or the sound of dung hitting the ground. Picking up on them early was critical to our safety. To our disappointment and the guides’ relief, we didn’t come across any.
We found ourselves walking along the electrical line that runs through Kruger, just north of Punda Maria. It’s used by people crossing from South Africa to Mozambique, and at one point, there was a pride of lions known as The Powerline Pride, that had become man-eaters. The trail under the lines was littered with rubbish from food and drink carried by the people using this route to sneak through Kruger. With the thought of the lion in the back of our heads, we came across a pair of jeans that were missing a leg, with a bit of dried blood smeared on the other. One could only imagine how they got there. Lion spoor slightly further down the line didn’t fill us with confidence, but it was daylight hours, and they belonged to us. Hard to imagine running the gauntlet at night; our guides suggested they do it pylon to pylon, taking turns to “go first” before calling the rest through. They also assured us that the actual Powerline Pride no longer existed.
That evening, we camped not far from a small dam where we collected and filtered our water. A favorite time of day was settling down around the fire after having had a bush shower with only a liter or two of water. We camped not far from the tar road to Punda Maria, and the sound of the odd car moving through the night was a reminder of what wilderness we had experienced over the last few days
