Walking with lions: Inside South Africa’s Karoo safari and rewilding success story

“The lion crossed this track shortly after dawn,” says Christiaan Swanepoel, our wildlife guide, squatting beside the deep pugmarks of what is clearly a very big male cat. This is probably the same lion whose distant roar reverberated through the canvas walls of my safari tent early this morning. It is no surprise that the big cat would still be hunting, but I wonder how the tracker could be so exact in his estimate of the timing. “He walked over these insect trails,” says Swanepoel, tracing a finger along some almost invisible dimples in the sand. “Grasshoppers don’t move until the sun has warmed them up.” If a game drive is like watching a movie, then a bush-walk in the African wilderness is like reading the book – slower, deeper and full of fine details. It’s only when you’re in the company of a knowledgeable guide that you realise how much information can be gleaned from between the lines. Swanepoel rises, his finger poised on the trigger guard of the high-calibre, bolt-action rifle that is standard issue for guides on walking safaris. This particular book, with South Africa’s spectacular Karoo Desert as a setting, is starting to feel like a thriller. The hairs on the back of my neck tingle as I imagine the size of the lion that left those saucer-sized footprints. There’s something uniquely invigorating about being on foot in Big Five country. It’s the reason bush rangers refer to Africa’s tall rainy-season vegetation as “adrenaline grass”. The term “Big Five” dates back to less enlightened days, when most safaris ended at the taxidermy workshop. Every hunter wanted to “bag” the five animals considered most dangerous to track: lion, buffalo, elephant, leopard and black rhino. The Big Five designation is outdated in an era when hunting is no longer the motivating force for most safaris. The awareness that such intimidating creatures are in the vicinity is enough to put a spring in our step as Swanepoel and his tracker colleague, Henrico Thys, lead us onwards through the 27,000 hectares of wilderness that comprise the Samara Karoo Reserve. One of South Africa’s great conservation success stories, the reserve has reintroduced many species hunted to extinction locally more than a century ago. We’ve already had good sightings of buffalo and elephant, and have watched a white rhino mother with a newborn about the size and stature of a bulldog. These animals are protected by heavily armed anti-poaching patrols and we can only hope that this extremely cute calf will manage to survive into adulthood. Samara, home to almost 60 indigenous species of mammal and more than 220 species of birds, is known in particular for its cheetah sightings. The previous morning, Swanepoel and Thys led us on foot to within 15 metres of a pair of males. The sleek cats, the world’s fastest land animal, lounged in the long grass grooming one another, seemingly oblivious to our presence. They were wild and yet habituated to human presence. Occasionally, one would glance in our direction, staring straight past us, almost as if we were invisible, to the horizon beyond, where a herd of springbok (their favoured prey) was grazing. They looked entirely at home and it was hard to imagine that these elegant felines were part of a population that was reintroduced only in 2004, 130 years after the last cheetah was shot in this part of the Karoo. It is close to midday and we’re enjoying a bird’s-eye view from the top of Eagle Rock, near the luxurious four-tent encampment known as Samara Plains Camp. The arid wilderness known as the Plains of Camdeboo sprawls out northwards towards the rearing outcrops that so spooked early pioneers they named them the Vallei van Verlatenheid (“valley of desolation”). To most South Africans, the Karoo is an endless plain, characterised by isolated homesteads where creaking windmills struggle to draw water from the ground. “At first encounter the Karoo may seem arid, desolate and unforgiving,” South African author Eve Palmer wrote in her 1966 bestseller The Plains of Camdeboo, “but to those who know it, it is a land of secret beauty and infinite variety.” Through binoculars, I try to make sense of the blurred details in the heat haze. Sure enough, now that I’m focusing more closely, I can see the plains below are teeming with life. There’s the telltale spiral of a kudu’s horns as it gazes back suspiciously from behind a thorny acacia. Farther off, at the edge of a shrinking watering hole, I can make out the hefty dun-coloured outline of a majestic eland, Africa’s biggest species of antelope. A patch of rising dust in the distance betrays a herd of wildebeest, kicking up their heels and doing their best to live up to their reputation as the clowns of the savannah. Not far from them I see the shimmering monochrome of clustered zebra, known to rangers not as a herd but as a “dazzle”. I wonder if the male lion, which has so far remained elusive, is also watching them, from beneath some shady bush. I pan the binoculars farther along the valley and make out the cinnamon backs and burnt-caramel go-faster stripes of countless springboks. These graceful antelopes, one of South Africa’s national emblems, are perfectly adapted to life in this semi-arid wilderness. “I’d estimate that herd of springbok to be at least 100 strong,” says Swanepoel. His thoughts have been moving in the same direction as my own, but, with his wilderness training and eyes three decades younger than mine, he has no need for binoculars. “Even with the proliferation of game down there now, it’s hard to imagine how these plains must have looked in the old days,” he continues. Raised on a farm in the Upper Karoo, Swanepoel’s ancestors may well have been living off the land here back when the French explorer and naturalist François Levaillant travelled through the region in 1783. “We had met but one flock of springbok,” wrote Levaillant, “but the flock contained all the plain, being an emigration, of which we neither saw the beginning or end.” When the first white settlers began to farm the region, about two centuries ago, the Karoo was still the setting for one of the biggest wildlife migrations ever witnessed. As many as 12 million springbok, known to the first farmers as trekbokken (“trek-buck”), passed through the area. It was said the dust took two weeks to settle after they had moved on. Such masses would have made even the world-famous Serengeti migration (around 2 million animals) seem insignificant. But the farmers brought disaster with their flocks, fences and flintlocks. At first encounter the Karoo may seem arid, desolate and unforgiving, but to those who know it, it is a land of secret beauty and infinite variety Eve Palmer “In June 1880, farmers declared war against a springbok migration that they accused of ‘destroying the sheep industry owing to the immense amount of herbage they devour and the fact that sheep will not graze where springbok have cropped the grass’,” wrote Mitch Reardon, in Wild Karoo: A Journey Through History, Change and Revival in an Ancient Land (2018). The last large-scale movement of springbok in the Karoo occurred in 1897 and Reardon described how one general store in the tiny village of Vosburg sold 12,000 cartridges in a single week and filled its storeroom with more than 16,000 springbok skins. Throughout the Karoo, hundreds of thousands were shot. Once the competing herbivores were slaughtered, it didn’t take long for the settlers to hunt down the last of the starving predators. The slaughter was so effective the entire area was almost devoid of wildlife for the next 100 years. The vast wilderness before us is the product of a bold rewilding project. In 1997, English physicist Mark Tompkins and his South African wife, Sarah, began buying up sheep farms, a patchwork that has developed into the biggest privately owned reserve in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. There are hopes that this entire section of the Karoo will eventually be connected with wildlife corridors so big game will be able to move through Samara between Mountain Zebra National Park in the east and Addo Elephant National Park to the south. The time might come when visitors to the Plains of Camdeboo will once again witness the passage of the trekbokken. The lions continue to evade us. Then, on our final day in the Karoo, Swanepoel arranges to rendezvous with a game-driving vehicle at the end of our morning hike. “There’s an area up on the plateau that we call Samara Mara,” he explains. “It’s spectacularly beautiful and it’s a perfect big cat habitat.” We’ve had ample proof by now of just how varied this part of the Karoo can be. But as the Land Cruiser rumbles up a rocky trail, a landscape unlike anything we’ve seen on the plains unfolds. The shimmering savannah plateau is polka-dotted with acacias, evoking Kenya’s Masai Mara, after which it was named. Even the wildlife is distinct up here. The terrain is better suited to the rarer Cape mountain zebra than the common Burchell’s zebra that we’ve seen in large numbers everywhere we have walked. Klipspringer, nimble little antelope that evolution has equipped with “rubberised” hooves to help them leap between boulders, give their high-pitched alarm whistles. Massive eland lumber away like prize bulls when we pass. None of these species were here a century ago. Even the lions, reintroduced in 2019, had been absent for 150 years. Experts believe that, genetically speaking, the closest living relatives to the original Karoo lions are the huge and powerful big cats typically found farther north, in the Kalahari Desert. Finally, on a high bluff, Swanepoel spots what appears to be a bleached boulder. As we drive closer, we realise it is the carcass of a truly gigantic eland. Nearby, a great lion lies almost hidden in the vegetation, his gold-and-black mane rippling in the breeze. Two lionesses sprawl nearby, bellies similarly drum-tight with meat. We can only imagine the battle that must have taken place earlier in the morning. The story of how the huge bull turned to stand its ground against the snarling cats is scoured deeply into the red earth of the hillside. Like front-page news. A century ago, neither the lions nor the eland existed here. But now, with predator and prey returned, the Karoo is writing a new chapter in its long, brutal, beautiful history. Where to stay Owned by Mark and Sarah Tompkins, Samara Plains Camp, along with their family-friendly Karoo Lodge and a four-suite villa known as The Manor, is the only accommodation on the Samara Karoo Reserve. The tented camp is open to the wilderness, meaning views are not blocked by the high fences that are a usual fixture of accommodation in South African national parks. At night, guests are escorted to and from the four spacious, “Hemingway-style” safari tents, which are raised above the ground on timber platforms. Most visitors fly into Gqeberha (previously known as Port Elizabeth), from where it’s a three-hour drive by hire car or with the reserve’s driver. Some VIPs fly directly onto the reserve’s landing strip. Samara’s Cheetah Trail, a three-night / four-day experience (US$1,765 per person) is open to guests aged at least 16 who are fit and able to walk for five or six hours per day across variable terrain. Mark Eveleigh was a guest of Samara Plains Camp at the Samara Karoo Reserve. Visit Samara Karoo Reserve

Walking with lions: Inside South Africa’s Karoo safari and rewilding success story

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}A century after the springbok vanished, lions and cheetahs now roam the Karoo’s restored wilderness once more

A century after the springbok vanished, lions and cheetahs now roam the Karoo’s restored wilderness once more