CLIVE GAMMON

I Was brought up on all that stuff—Gregory Peck in his leopard-skin hatband, the Snows Of Kilimanjaro tinged pink in VistaVision, the symbolic hyena snuffling round the tent. It took that late vulgarian, Robert Ruark and his bloodthirsty book, Use,Enough Gun, to spoil the whole romantic scene for me and in any case I am at least a generation too late, even if I had the money, to go hunting in Africa. %. It can still be done, they say, on a very 'United scale in Tanzania or Kenya and pos- sibly also in the old Francis Macomber style in Mozambique, or Portuguese East, as Macomber would have said before the beautiful Mrs Macomber (Joan Bennett) drilled him with her express rifle to the con- sternation of the beautiful red-faced Mr Wilson (Gregory Peck). But it won't last

much longer and meanwhile its place has been taken by a new spectator sport. These days. Macomber wouldn't have tracked his lion very far before having the trail fouled up by at least two vw Combis loaded to the roof with a noisy party booked through

Neckermann's Tours. Nuremberg, for a fifteen-day, all-inclusive, sea-and-safari trip. Almost the nearest I ever got to a Heming- way situation in Africa was on a deep-sea

fishing trip to Shimoni, a place about sixty miles down the coast from Mombasa. Really is was just a fishing camp on the edge of the

hush, and one evening before supper I

thought I'd take a short walk through some trees and across the beach. I was gone maybe

half an hour. When I got hack there was a lot of consternation. What had I been up to? Why hadn't I taken the dogs? asked the man who ran the camp, indicating three evil- look ing alsatians.

'What for?' I asked him.

'Leopards.' he said. The theory, someone told me later. was that leopards preferred eatine dogs to people, which gave one the chance to run for it. I spent my evenings in the bar after that.

However I have put in a lot of time at this new way of getting the most out of big game. I started a few years back right at the

bottom of the league, in the Kruger National Park in South Africa—which is only one step up from having a 'We have seen the Lions of Longleat' sticker on the back win- dow of your car.

It is a very slick operation. To begin with. the rules are well-calculated to put you into a receptive frame of mind. No getting out of the car. The gates of all the rest camps shut at dusk. If you are locked out then. you stay locked out for the night. There's a magic moment when you drive through the gates of the Park and almost as if somebody has thrown a switch there are baboons and imnala. just like on the telly.

The trouble is, it tends to go on being baboons and impala all the time. Eventually you come on a knot of cars pulled into the side of the dusty red road. Someone saw a lion maybe half an hour since, and every- body is hoping it will appear again. By the end of the first day, you are wise in the ways of the Kruger, and you may find yourself indulging in a variant of that primitive prac- tical joke where a man draws a crowd by pointing at the sky, whereupon he disappears, sniggering. All you do is stop the car and wait. Soon, a couple of other cars will have joined you. When there are half a dozen you leave, like the man, sniggering.

On that trip, my bag on colour film was giraffe, gnu, zebra, many impala and baboOn

and one shagged-out looking old buffalo on his own. I think my reaction was similar to many people's. One is so familiar with all these animals on film that they make hardly any .impression when one sees them in the wild. What do make an impression are the birds—the great flashy hornbills and the rich blue velvety rollers. They are really new and arresting.

The East African reserves, in fairness, are a lot better than the Kruger. For all the camera-clicking and the safari buses painted in zebra stripes, places like the Ngorogoro crater are so heart-stoppingly wild that even thoUgh you are flying straight hack to Nairobi after tea it is a very powerful ex- perience. Even the small game reserve right next to Nairobi itself can have its moments. 1 said to the friend who drove me there,

'This is just a Mickey Mouse place really, isn't it? Right next to the city?' I couldn't believe that it wasn't some sort of super- Whi psnade.

This put him on his mettle. Breaking the rules, he drove his car off the track and straight through the grass to give me a close and thrilling view of a rhino. We closed to fifty yards and the rhino put his head up and leered at us. Then, so help me. the engine cut dead, and there was this pervading smell of petrol. It slowly came to me that we would have to get out of the car to see what was wrong. As silently as possible we slid out of our seats and lifted the bonnet. The rhino moved his head about sixty degrees. It was simple, thank God. The petrol lead had come off. My friend shoved it back on. The rhino lifted .a foot, and then we were in the car again.

That was, conclusively, the very nearest I got to the Hemingway Experience.