Brian Pendreigh

I was not even meant to be in Zambia. I had begun the day in a different country – in a cafe in Zimbabwe where I was attacked by the biggest baboon that I have ever seen. It just appeared out of the sky somehow, landing on the canopy over my head. It dropped to the ground and my mistake was to think it would just pose while I lined up a photograph. Instead it fixed me with a, “Are you looking at me, mate?” stare and charged, veering off at the last minute.

There is not a lot to do in Livingstone and it does not have many public places with wifi. To be brutally honest there is probably more to do in Livingston in West Lothian than in Livingstone in Zambia. It is a base for visiting Victoria Falls and the only other attraction is the Livingstone Museum, which has a lot of exhibits about David Livingstone. It is Zambia’s oldest museum and it feels like it.

I had grown used to wifi in Botswana and Namibia, lying in my sleeping bag in my tent, with a lion rumbling in the darkness, like a hungry tummy, while I chat to a friend, who tells me she is curled up on the sofa with her dog watching Better Call Saul. And right now my need for wifi is urgent.

My friend was doing her first marathon in Berlin that morning. With the wonders of modern technology and GPS, I could call up a map of the course on my smartphone and see exactly where she was. I watched her first 5k while sitting in that cafe in Zimbabwe and then I set off to walk to Zambia, a kilometre or so to the first border post and then over the bridge that spans the Zambezi far below me. I paused to take what turned out to be a perfect photo of a young woman in cruciform as she did a bungee jump, and to admire Victoria Falls – dizzyingly high, but also long, stretching over a mile, with large sections unfenced, so you can perch right at the edge for that special death-defying selfie. I wonder what Livingstone thought, the sense of wonder at this awesome thing his god created in less than a week. And he did not even get to see bungee jumping – that took longer to create.

It is another long walk from the bridge to the border post on the Zambian side, a short taxi ride into Livingstone and, to cut a long story short, I finally I found a Chinese hotel and thought they must have wifi. They did. And so an Irishwoman ran in Germany, tracked by a Scotsman in Zambia… in a Chinese restaurant. She crossed the line and my phone rang just moments later, a tearful voice from another continent – “I did it, Brian”. And the only other diners, a Chinese family enjoying their Sunday lunch, paused mid-chopstick and thought WTF, in Chinese.

Africa is not much like West Lothian. One night in Namibia I stayed at a campsite on the Okavango River. It had two cats, well it had two cats when we got there. But then there was a terrible screaming. And there was just one cat after that. The proprietor had seen the other cat on a log near the river and a crocodile nearby. Quick as a flash, one of the guys at the bar said, “At least the crocodile got some pussy.” The proprietor did not bat an eyelid. He said, “Yeah, Africa is not for sissies.”

Five weeks is a long time travelling on a truck, putting up a tent night and night, taking it down every morning, washing my hands again and again and again till they looked like rhino skin. It is a long time sharing the days with an international mishmash of strangers. Some were stranger than others, including the woman who wanted the dual visa for Zimbabwe and Zambezi – “Eh, Zambezi is a river, not a country”. She bypassed the queue at the next border post, marching up to the closed window, waving her passport and declaring “I’m an American and I have a visa”. Me and the other guy hung back in embarrassment until an official opened the window, stamped her visa and waved her through.

This was my first visit to Africa for more than 30 years and border crossings seem easier these days. I did not have to bribe anyone and was not arrested even once.

At the Okavango Delta we could not go into our tents when we arrived because there were elephants too close to them. Later, when we went to our tents to bed down at our regular time of 9pm, they were close again. I had the second last tent. The American woman and her Australian tentmate were in the last tent. I popped out my tent for a pee. I heard the Aussie shout-whisper, “Brian…” I did not hear the rest of it. The bit I missed was “there’s an elephant on the other side of your tent”. As I settled back into my sleeping bag, I did hear the elephant chewing, more or less in my ear.

Elephants are one of the “Big Five”, a term that originates with big game hunting. They are the animals that, if you get it wrong, will end up killing you – elephants, rhinos, Cape buffalo, lions and leopards. The only one I did not see was leopards, though I saw fresh prints. Later I got to within about 20 yards of a mother rhino with her three-day-old calf. The women rangers with the Kalashnikovs were protecting the rhinos from poachers, not protecting us from the rhinos. For 50 million years these animals have roamed the African landscape unchanged. Experts predict that because of poaching rhinos could be extinct in the wild before this baby even reaches maturity, in as little as five years, and it will likely end up in a zoo or slaughtered by poachers for its horns.

I'm a runner, and found that long runs were a little tricky. I could not run before 4.30pm because of the heat and I had to be back by 6.30pm because it would be dark. One day I ran five miles out into the Namibian desert, carefully following a track out and back. A single tree was the only feature of the flat, empty landscape and on the way back, beneath the tree, stood four Hartmann’s mountain zebras, an endangered species. They stood and watched this unfamiliar creature in bright orange until I was about 60 yards away and then they disappeared in a cloud of dust. On another occasion, in the bush, a herd of eight elands or antelope crossed my trail. They were taller than me. I was close enough to see the muscles in those powerful shoulders and flanks.

My journey began 50 years ago. A great aunt went to the Kruger national park in South Africa and brought back a book with drawings of all the animals. I still have it. Kruger was amazing and just one of five national parks to which I went. Etosha was my first and much of it is flat and open, making it easy to see animals at a distance – elephants, giraffes, rhinos, wildebeest, all sorts of boks. Hundreds of zebras grazed on the savannah. Our truck had to stop while some crossed the road – it was a zebra crossing, obviously.

And three motherless lion cubs plod across the savannah. They look emaciated and forlorn. Ahead of them is a herd of springboks, which let them get close and then bound off again, taunting, mocking the little cats, who plod on, never varying their pace. A solitary giraffe drinks at a watering hole, surrendering it when a large herd of elephants appears, young and old, big and delightfully small, keeping close to mum.

The lion cubs also turn up, plodding towards the watering hole. They circle round our truck to get closer without the elephants seeing. They are thirsty, but they cannot approach while the elephants are drinking, bathing and frolicking. The cubs are too young to hunt. They must scavenge and just hope. But in this state they are susceptible to hyena attack. They have still not got to the watering hole as the sun drops down in the sky and the light fades. A jackal also waits. There is not a lot of hope for the little lions.

This is Africa. I upload a few pictures of the cubs to Facebook. Africa is so far away and now so close. And like the man said, it is not for sissies. The sun goes down over the savannah, beautiful and savage. For some animals it will be their final sunset. This is nature. This is Africa. Tomorrow I will run with the animals again. But this campsite has a bar and might even have wifi.

I signed up for a four-week trip with Intrepid, travelling in what they called a truck, though it was somewhat more luxurious than that implies. Almost every night was in a tent, which we had to put up ourselves. Prices are dependent on numbers, but around £2,350-£2,750, with most meals included.

I arranged flights online through TravelUp – going out from Edinburgh to Cape Town, via Frankfurt, and back from Johannesburg, via Zurich, at a total cost of £543.

Visas are not required by UK nationals for South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. A joint visa for Zimbabwe and Zambia can be obtained at the border.