Day 14

Monday, July 6, 2026

An easy morning, a dugout afternoon, and hippos who'd had enough

Morning	The usual cast. Dylan wanted a plot; we got none.
	A giraffe I spotted — Obert has a reputation.
Afternoon	Mokoro through the reeds.
	Hippos, thoroughly unamused.
Evening	Gin and tonics, and home for dinner.

After the day before, almost anything would have felt quiet, and this one duly obliged. Not every day on safari is a crescendo — it would be an exhausting trip if it were — and July the sixth was the kind of easy, pleasant, largely uneventful day that a good safari needs in order to catch its breath. Dylan, over breakfast, set the day's ambition anyway. We had, he pointed out, essentially seen the whole cast by now — every animal on anyone's list, including the two I had spent eleven days begging for. What we wanted now was interactions: a hunt, a chase, some drama between the animals rather than just the animals standing around being photogenic. Rhinos were off the table — there was simply no hope of them here — so we set out hoping, in effect, for a plot instead of a cast. We did not get one. The animals turned up, posed beautifully, and did nothing whatsoever to each other.

The Usual Cast

A zebra, immaculate as ever. No zebra has ever looked anything less than freshly pressed.

An elephant in the trees, browsing. You will notice I no longer have anything new to say about elephants. This is not their fault.

A waterbuck bull, with the shaggy coat and the white ring on the rump that looks, unmistakably, as though he sat on a freshly painted toilet seat.

Wildebeest among the dead trees — and the dead trees, standing grey and bare across so much of this country, are a small mystery that comes up on every drive.

Then the birds, which on a quiet day become the main event.

A Southern yellow-billed hornbill — the “flying banana,” for the obvious reason, all down-curved yellow bill and finely spotted wings.

And the lilac-breasted roller once more, head-on this time, showing the full absurd palette and the two long tail streamers. I will photograph this bird every single time, and so would you.

A grey heron out on the green water, standing in the patient, one-legged way that is really just fishing done slowly.

A tsessebe, glossy and dark-flanked, cutting past a knot of impala. The fastest antelope in Africa, Obert told us — though, in keeping with the day, it declined to prove it.

Obert's Reputation

Two small human moments made the morning. First, Obert produced a zebra skull from somewhere and held it up for us — the kind of roadside relic the guides collect and the guests, Paul especially, covet. And then I spotted a giraffe. It was half-buried in the bush, barely more than a pattern of shadow and neck, and I called it before Obert did — or at least I said so first. He congratulated me, generously, on the good eyes. And then, entirely deadpan, he laid down the rule for the rest of the trip: I was welcome to find all the giraffes I liked, but I was not, under any circumstances, to spot the leopard before he did. He had a reputation to protect.

Obert with a zebra skull. The guides find these things; the guests want to take them home.

The giraffe I spotted, such as it is — neck and shoulder and a great deal of camouflage. I maintain that finding this counts. Obert graciously allowed that it did.

The Mokoro

The afternoon was given over to the mokoro: the shallow dugout canoe that is the Delta's oldest way of getting about, one passenger sitting low in the hull and one poler standing at the stern, pushing you through the reeds with a long pole. Obert stayed ashore — on the water you get a different man, one to a canoe — and for a while it is the most peaceful thing imaginable, silent and low and gliding, the papyrus sliding past at eye level. Right up until the hippos.

Low in the dugout, poler at the stern, reeds closing in — the Delta's oldest and finest way to travel, at least between hippos.

The pod we came upon, and they were not pleased to see us. A great deal of low, seismic grunting and some pointed surfacing followed.

The polers assured us — not, I felt, entirely convincingly — that the hippos were only issuing warnings. Then they conferred quietly among themselves, evidently decided the warnings were worth heeding after all, and backed us away with the unhurried competence of men who intend to do this again tomorrow. Given that hippos kill more people in Africa than any animal we had come to see, nobody in my canoe argued.

Safely ashore, and the day resolved — as the good ones tend to — into gin and tonics in a beautiful place with people we had come to like.

And back to Saguni for dinner, the light gone, the day quietly filed under “easy.”

It would be a strange trip that was all crescendos. Some days the plot stays offstage, the hippos win the argument, and the whole thing amounts to a slow morning, a quiet paddle, and a drink at the end of it in a place most people only ever see on television. That is not a lesser day. Looking back, it may be closer to the point than any of the big ones.