Backseat Safari

In Backseat safari, we travel with the author as she chronicles her and her photographer-husband's journeys from her position in the backseat of their Land Rover - 'Sybil, a name suggested by its registration plate (SBL 208 T)'. The author's wit razor-sharp and her eye passionately acute, she transports us to the wild places of Botswana's Okavango Delta, Zimbabwe's save valley conservancy, Mala Mala reserve and the Kgalagadi transfrontier park. We follow Sybil's isolated routes and meet people such as Robert the Barefoot Lion-hunter. We experience life in a bush camp - 'The architects had gone for a somewhat primitive air-conditioning system, providing a simple, gaping expanse around the entire hut between roof and wall, allowing for both the free movement of air, and wild animals, into the room.' Along the way we consider the dubious, and much-touted, benefits of ecotourism and learn the rules of wildlife photography - 'the camera never lies, nor swims.' Above all, we encounter animals in close-up.The author and her husband manoeuvre Sybil through 'Pamplona Francolin runs'; meet a lost and trembling zebra foal 'all eyes and knees'; stop to observe as 'in the pitch dark, several hippos are agitating to continue down the path and to the left, twenty-one lions are lurking in the reeds waiting to attack them'; and focus the lens on 'nine tons of elephant trio walking within arm's reach of the seat, so close that we can make out the black, coarse hairs on their hides'.