The vehicles leave at six, which is earlier than most people would choose on holiday. There is a reason, and it is not tradition.
Before the sun clears the horizon the air is at its coolest, and the animals that feed or hunt at night are still moving. Predators finish their night's work in the same soft light that photographers spend years chasing. Then the heat arrives, and much of the bush goes to ground until the afternoon.
What we look at first
The first ten minutes are mostly tracks. A fresh line of prints across the dust road tells a guide who was here overnight, which way they were heading and roughly how long ago. It is a kind of reading, and it decides where we go next.
- Fresh prints in the road, and the direction they point
- Alarm calls from birds and small antelope
- Where the vultures are, and where they are not
Why we stop for breakfast
Somewhere around eight the light turns harsh, and the guide pulls up on a rise with a view. A table, coffee and eggs cooked on a small fire — and the plains laid out below. Nobody has ever complained that this was the wrong place to stop.