We’re in single file, moving through the bush. It’s still early morning, but the sun’s up and blazing already. Sweat cakes the back of our necks. Hats are vital, keeping the sun off our faces.
It seems like we walk through the crackling sounds of the early morning air, feet stamping through the tinder-dry bush, rain desperately needed here.
Up since before dawn, there’s silent anticipation. We’re hoping to see one of the big five in the bush: elephant, lion, rhino hopefully – after all, the trails are named Rhino Walking Safaris.
Guide Mark McGill halts, we stop our noisy stamping through the bush. We hear them before we see them: the soft, delicate sounds of hooves.
A pair of giraffes, loping through the morning, nibbling at leaves on trees, communicating with each other, the sounds of their hooves remarkably like those of horses. Perhaps smelling us, the giraffe canter away.
There’s something thrilling in this: so close to wild animals, a guest in their territory. It’s a sound denied you if you’re in a game drive vehicle.
We walk on and place our hands on a termite mound. The heat from this funnel-shaped beige-brown mound is intense; it’s where fungus grows, cultivated by the termites.
The sun carries on beating down on us as we stop in a clearing for a quick bush breakfast: Provita, wedges of yellow cheddar, sticks of meat and juice. The relief among the group is palpable. I’m especially grateful for the break.
It’s the second morning of rising at four-thirty, and my head’s pounding with the effects of lack of sleep, low blood sugar and low pressure.
Our break is interrupted by the sound of bellowing and a worried look on McGill’s face: a herd of breeding elephants is heading our way, and the well-being of the animals is always tantamount on these walks. We pack up our picnic with alarming rapidity as McGill ushers us away from the clearing.
Near 10am McGill notes, “The air is like soup.” And I realise why the early morning start. After a certain time it’s simply too hot to walk, to move, to be out. The heat is beginning to feel malevolent.
There’s one last stop to examine a tortoise: slow, silent, its big body moving timelessly through the bush. McGill places it back on the path and we walk out, back to the waiting game drive vehicle, a soothing, welcome sight.
As we jolt back to camp, the bush is singing, but the animals are asleep.
It’s a weekend of extremes. After driving the six or so hours from Joburg to arrive at Rhino Walking Safaris, in a concession in the Kruger National Park, we found great fires had moved through the concession.
As a result, the landscape was blackened and scorched. It even smelled burned, an acrid sense in the nose, the trees whitened and twisted by the fire. A denuded landscape.
Later that night, on a pit stop on our game drive, we see the remains of leadwood trees glowing, burning. On another game drive we watch as again, the bush burns, a veld fire sweeps through the land, turning the night sky into a dark pink-peach sky, lit by the flames.
There’s a slow sound of burning, crackling, like dogs growling at each other.
It’s all marginally thrilling, but we are visitors here for a few days, soon in and soon out. The drama of the unfolding fire touches us only in that we’re forced to go back to camp a long way around.
Back at the camp the extremes continue. On our first night we’re at Plains Camp, a luxury tented camp, with the main dining and lounge area under canvas as well. Our tents are equipped with rustic bathrooms, almost-open showers, and the tent I share looks out over veld.
At night we make our way to the dining area along paths already running with mud, as a storm belts down, drowning out conversation, lashing at the canvas, water running along the wooden raised floors. Yet more drama from Mother Nature in this little corner of Kruger.
The next night we’re promised even more of a rustic experience at the sleep-outs under the stars in real camping tents, on raised platforms, the Milky Way as canopy. We’re told we’ll be filling small rucksacks with whatever clothes and bare essentials we need and will cross the veld on foot. But, again, the weather defeats us.
It rains and storms. It’ll be another night at Plains Camp, gin and tonics with dinner of home-cooked style food, another night when the rain buckets and slams against the canvas, again quietening down just as dinner gets under way.
There are game drives: a bull elephant watches us pass and waves his trunk. Two young male rhinos, chase each other through the late morning, kicking up dust with their energetic feud. There are no sightings of the big cats for the overseas guests; it’s less of a necessity for us locals who are more jaded in our appreciation.
By day we chat desultorily, read, write, make notes and wallow in the small plunge pool, taking relief from the searing heat.
High tea precedes an evening game drive – cakes, muffins and hot porcelain cups of herbal tea.
We sip sundowners by a water hole. Out here in the bush it’s with joy that I meet an old university friend and we spend the time chatting about books and authors.
On the last night, we’re taken back to luxury at Rhino Post Safari Lodge, on the Mutlumuvi riverbed. There’s internet access again, fine dining, a wine room, comfortable rooms with private balconies over the riverbed.
The rock looks pink with earthy-coloured slabs in the sun; the heavy rainfall of the past two days means there's a trickle in what was a dry river-bed and it has brought out the frogs.
That night as we sip cocktails before supper on deck, the noise of a dozen species of frogs drowns out our conversation.
• Arja Salafranca was a guest of Plains Camp and Rhino Post Safari Lodge, courtesy of Rhino Walking Safaris/ Isibindi Africa. Call 011 467 1886; www.rws.co.za - Sunday Tribune