By Allan Larson

This morning we head to Ongava Camp on the south side of Etosha National Park.  Near as I can count, this will be the 26th African camp in seven countries where I have photo’d.  We are always with guides or rangers — mostly black, some white — usually in safari trucks, occasionally walking and even sometimes in canoes.  The thing that never ceases to impress me is the quality of the guides.  They are universally good and often beyond excellent.  They recognize and know a lot about all the birds; they recognize bird calls and can mimic them.  They know every animal’s track and can follow them through stuff where I can’t even see a single track.  They know animal behavior and are wonderful animal story-tellers.  They all seem to be multi-lingual.  In South Africa, for example, the black guides all speak English, Africaans and a couple of native languages.  It is a priviledge to be out with these people.

Different countries have different training requirements before a guide can take out photo clients.  In Botswana, I’ve heard they train for six years.  In Tanzania, it is more like a couple of years.  But most of the native guides grew up in the bush and they’ve always known the birds and animals.  A Maasai guide in Kenya told me his biggest problem with birds was converting their names from Maa to English (or German or French).  But he knew them all.  Belinda, a charming Zimbabwe ranger, told us that in Zim a ranger had to have shot, I think, two elephants and two cape buffalo before taking clients out alone.  She had done so, and her well-cared-for 458 Lott went with us every day.  The Maasai guides in Kenya never part with their traditional long spears and a long belt knife.  I don’t remember any Botswana guides carrying guns.

In South Africa, we had a tracker a few years ago named Lucky.  He rode on a little seat on the front fender of the Land Rover looking for tracks.  All business, quiet, the total professional.  But he wanted us to see his village a few miles from our camp.  So we loaded up with some soccer balls we’d brought for village kids and visited the school where Lucky’s kids went.  He was proud of his kids, the school and even us, as his guests.  It gives you a different perspective from simply the total ‘man of the woods’ to see him as husband, father and community member.

Over the next three weeks, I’ll try (technology willing, obviously) to blog from each of the camps, emphasizing the guides skills and as much as I can get of their background and personal life.

This evening, Allan and Doug began their near-two-day journey to southern Africa — headed to Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana.  Be on the lookout for exciting new images when we get back!  We will touch base when we can, if we can…whenever possible, we will do a blog entry so that you may tag along with us on our safari.  See y’all in three weeks!

By Allan Larson

No, this isn’t the price of rare minerals opium or white truffles.  It is the retail price of ground rhinoceros horn, used as a component of various Traditional Chinese Medicines (TCM).  Rhino horn is mainly keratin (think hair and fingernails), calcium and melanin.  Orientals, primarily Chinese, used to think it had aphrodisiac qualities.  When Viagra hit the market, and really did do the job, poaching syndicates began advocating rhino horn as a cure for cancer and a host of other maladies.  Demand rose.

There has been a huge increase in rhino poaching in the last few years.  In South Africa alone, 333 rhinos were poached in 2010.  Poaching has also hit Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and other countries with wild rhinos.  There are less than 25,000 rhinos in all of Africa.  Less than 4,000 of these are Black Rhinos.  In the 1800s, rhinos in Africa numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

From a somewhat historic perspective, it isn’t all doom and gloom.  In the 1970s, fewer than 500 White Rhinos remained.  With the greatest of protective measures, throughout their range, populations rebounded to the current estimates of 17,500.  What is needed is, of course, protection – perhaps extreme protection – of the dwindling populations.  But despite a government-sanctioned “shoot-to-kill” policy on rhino poachers, Zimbabwe is reputed to have lost between 200 and 3000 in the past 4 years.  In contrast, five rhino poachers were killed in January in South Africa’s Kruger National Park.  They were in possession of two rhino horns.  The real solution would be to convince the Chinese that rhino horn really has no medicinal value whatsoever.  It is almost entirely compressed hair.  It would seem to have even less potential medicinal value than tiger bone.  Ian Michler describes it as “intriguing in its senselessness.”

Some African natives participate as the lowest rung of mafia-like killing and smuggling cartel.  All these cartels originate in the Far East.  Last year, a couple of Vietnamese “hunters” were arrested in South Africa.  They possessed 2 or 3 rhino horns and were taking them home because the value of the horns far exceeded the cost of the “hunt”, travel, trophy permits, etc.  The hunters probably weren’t even the shooters – simply buyers operating under the guise of legal sport hunters.  A few rhinos, mostly privately owned, are legally hunted each year in South Africa.

We are headed to Africa next week to photograph.  I’ve photo’d white rhinos in a few locations previously but have never even seen a black rhino.  They are quite different; smaller and much more aggressive.  A private or restricted area on the south side of Etosha National Park in Namibia has decent populations of both white and black rhinos.  We will be there for three days and it will be the best opportunity that I have had to photo black rhinos.  I am pretty excited.  If we get some good pictures, we’ll have them on the website right away.  We got back April 13^th so check after that.

(Some of the information in this blog is from Ian Michler’s article in the March 2011 issue of Africa Geographic.)

By Doug Larson

Here is a wonderful blog from our friends at Wilderness Safaris:

http://www.we-are-wilderness.com/2011/03/08/to-walk-or-drive-%E2%80%93-is-it-a-question/

We have experienced some of the very same events that James Hendry describes in this blog.

In regards to the cats being comfortable with the safari vehicle…on my first trip Africa in 2007, we were driving by this watering hole and there was a horribly scarred bull hippo which I was photographing intently.  After a couple minutes, our guide motioned my attention to the other side of the vehicle…where a young lioness was laying peacefully about 8 feet away from us. How silly did I feel at that point? Pretty darn silly.

Similarly, in 2009, we went on a walking safari where we encountered a large herd of cape buffalo. We didn’t have much cover or brush to hide behind so they spotted us from a good distance. Immediately, a line of large bulls assembled between us and the rest of the herd. As we walked around the heard – giving them a very wide berth – that line of 8-10 bulls rotated to remain between us and the herd. Most importantly, they didn’t seem to appreciate us being there AT ALL…and I had no desire whatsoever to get any closer to them.

By Allan Larson

In 1984, an unusual hippy-type naturalist couple named Mark and Delia Owens wrote a book titled, “Cry of the Kalahari”.  It chronicles 7 years of wildlife study in the middle of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana.  Their camp was a mostly dry river bed called Deception Valley.  The Owenses were great, rather low-tech biologists whose primary interest was brown hyenas but they wrote about the other animals of which there was (and I hope still is) a fine diversity.  They were both excellent and observant naturalists but they also both wrote very well.  In rather an unusual book format, Delia’s chapters alternate with Mark’s.  It is fine reading.  Ultimately, they complained and made such a stink about the government-sponsored game fences that they were asked to leave Botswana.  These fences run for hundreds of miles and separate the “disease-bearing” game animals from domestic cattle.  In the dry season, wild animals that traditionally migrated to distant water sources were stopped by the fences and died by the tens of thousands.  The fences still exist.  The Owenses are gone.

Doug and I will spend 4 days in early April in the Deception Valley area.  The seasonal rains will be ending or will have already ended.  Short, palatable grasses on the pans systems concentrate plains game such as springbok, gemsbok and wildebeest.  These in turn attract predators like lions, cheetahs and hyenas.  This portion of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve offers some of the best opportunities for cheetah photography in Africa.  Brown hyenas live only in the Kalahari.  This is not barren, sand dune desert; it is dry but supports grassy plains, scattered acacia trees and brush.

I hope the country is more or less green following the rains.  Our last trip to Botswana was in September.  The game viewing is good at that time of year because leaves have fallen and animals are concentrated around the remaining water sources.  But the land is brown, dry and kind of bleak.  Grass fires in all directions fill the area with low smoke.  I want to photograph against a green background.

By Allan Larson

Zimbabwe is on our photo-safari itinerary next month.  A common question is, “Why would you go to Zimbabwe and have your dollars support a brutal thug like Robert Mugabe?”  I think our dollars mainly support the game lodges and their staffs, the national parks and game refuges and, most importantly, the wildlife.

Times are tough in Zim.  The government is essentially broke.  The currency is valueless.  State employees are not paid.  There is little food even for those who can afford it.  Wildlife poaching is rampant and some of those hired to protect wildlife are poaching as well just to feed themselves and their families.

I am returning to Hwange National Park in western Zim, on the border with Botswana.  I was last there in 2006.  This is semi-desert brush country.  It is harsh country indeed.  Nevertheless, Hwange and a vast area around it support large and diverse populations of big animals: elephants, lions, buffalo, wildebeest, zebras and, until the last couple of years, one of Africa’s better populations of black rhinos.  In the dry season, these animals are quite dependent on scattered, man-made water holes; I think there are 23 in Hwange N.P.  Things are so bad in the Zim economy that after the government stopped paying park staff and supplying them food rations, it shut off fuel supplies to water pumps at the water holes.  Tragedy was averted when a coalition of lodge owners, conservation groups and hunting organizations supplied the needed fuel.

So am I somehow supporting the Mugabe regime by traveling to Hwange N.P.?  Probably a little.  But the lodges and camps are privately owned.  They have large staffs of locals.  They are vitally concerned about the well-being of animals.  In large areas of many parks and game refuges, the lodge staffs of highly trained guides and rangers are the backbone of wildlife conservation.  A viable photo/tourist and hunting industry puts people in the bush whose livelihood is dependent on healthy animal populations.  I believe a visit to a Zimbabwe lodge or camp provides a very direct benefit to the local people and the wildlife.

By Allan Larson

Exactly a month from today, I leave for a 3-week African Photo-Safari.  So I thought I’d share with you what I am taking for camera gear.  Whenever someone admires one of our photos, invariably, the first question is “what camera, what lens?”  My answer is always that the subject, lighting and composition are far more important than the camera itself.  Several years ago, I used a 4-megapixel digital Olympus point-and-shoot camera in Africa with great results.  I could enlarge the images, crop them, edit them and, best of all, sell some of them.

In the safari vehicle (and you will be in, not out) I want two cameras rigged and ready with a medium and long range telephoto lens.  I will have a 10.1-megapixel Canon Digital Rebel XTi with a 120-400mm Sigma telephoto lens and a Canon 50D (15.1 megapixels) rigged with a Canon 18-200mm lens.  The 50D is a much heavier body than the Rebel, so I match it with the lighter weight lens for ease of handling and steadier focusing.  When the light is good, I have a circular polarizing filter on both.  Early and late in the day, I take the filters off because they have a darkening effect equivalent to 1-2 f-stops.  I use a stout monopod (Manfrotto 680B) in the vehicle rather than a tripod.  Stacks of sand bags just don’t cut it in the vehicle.  Even though my cameras and lenses are not the highest end professional class, they are heavy enough that they are nearly impossible to hold steady without some sort of support.

One of the reasons that it is possible to take good pictures with the smaller digital point-and-shoots is that you can hold them steady without support.  I always take one along.  They are a great backup for the main cameras – 10-12 megapixels, 10X (or more) optical zoom, less than $350.  You can’t beat that.

Camera gear is heavy, fragile and expensive.  You want to carry your gear on with you – DO NOT CHECK IT.  I can get the cameras and several lenses in a camera backpack.  Mine is by ThinkTank Airport Antidote V2.0.  If you don’t have one, take your biggest, bulkiest camera and lenses with you to the camera store and try out several models.  You’ll have to check the monopod.

I am in no way an equipment junkie or a technical expert.  I like the stuff I have and I know how to operate it.  But as I said at the beginning, the subject, lighting and composition are FAR more important than having the finest, most expensive equipment.

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