蜜芽传媒

In order to follow the animals over such a long period of time, we had to embed ourselves in the place they live. Our remote filming camp ran solely on solar power, which had the added benefit of no noise pollution from a generator. However, this did mean that there was nothing to deter the wildlife from inhabiting it too. The camp location was right on the edge of the river and unfenced. Wildlife of all shapes and sizes would visit. Here are a few guests we managed to catch on camera.

“Filming days always start before sunrise and end after sunset, so usually you are using the bathroom in the dark. Every morning and every evening, the first thing I did was to investigate which tap handle had a frog stubbornly sitting on it – this would determine whether I chose a warm or cold shower, as I didn’t want to disturb them! They also loved to hide in different places around the tent and frequently made me leap out of my skin, but I grew quite fond of them in the end.”

“Snakes were also common... from swerving in the (open sided) car to avoid a huge puff adder curled up on the path to camp, to accidentally herding a baby boomslang into my bathroom, it was always wise to check where you were stepping each day! One morning I was called over to cinematographer Mark's tent to help him work out which animal has found it's way under his floor (usually a cheeky monitor lizard or two!). As he lifted the canvas, I crouched down with a torch and shone it underneath... only to come face to face with a spitting cobra... made all the more angry by the fact it had already been accidentally stood on twice by Mark. We eventually managed to relocate it to a safe spot far from camp.”

“My particular tent was so well loved by the elephants (thanks to a lovely Winterthorn tree whose tasty pods dangled enticingly over it every dry season) that they were regular nightly visitors from September onwards. This was all fine, until one night, a particularly hungry bull reached in a little too far, pulling down my bathroom roof, cracking the toilet and bursting a pipe... all at 2am in the morning! After shooing him off a few times, it was clear the lure of the pods was too much to resist, and I decided to make a break for it and dash to a nearby vacant tent to spend the rest of the night... having won the stand off, he enjoyed his buffet until dawn!”

“In the wet season one noticeable difference, other than the volume of water, was the number of small beasts, predominantly spiders, and their confusingly named but unrelated, and infinitely creepier crawlier counterparts, the camel spiders, or solifugids; driven by the floods on to the remaining patches of dry land. Now I am not going to pretend for one second that I am a hardened natural history type, unphased by those lightning fast, enormous critters and so when I discovered one in my room, I was straight out in search of someone to undertake an eviction. Annoyingly by the time I returned, tailing, shamefaced, behind the indomitable owner of the camp who raised her daughters in the African bush, and clearly raised them tougher than me, the creepy colossus was nowhere to be seen. As it was clearly lying in wait for me to let my guard down… my first night was a long one!”

“One of the best feelings is showering in camp to wash off the day’s dust, sweat and toil. It was usually dark by the time we were home, but on travel days and occasional lunch breaks back at camp, an icy midday shower was the best way to cool down, and keep the sweat bees at bay. Grass screens provided the necessary privacy… from fellow humans at least… but did little against curious giraffe!”

“One evening, I was getting ready to turn my light off when I felt the sharp pain of a bite on my leg. I was so exhausted that my first thought was: I could just ignore this and go to sleep. But I did check, and found a single ant. Not a great worry in and of itself. But I knew that it was a safari ant, and where there is one, many will follow… they have a nomadic raiding habit, where the whole colony flushes insects out and pretty much eats everything they come across (not humans, but they do bite as I had found out!). In the end, I stayed up until 2:00 am to make sure they didn’t invade my bed while I was sleeping. With pyjama trousers tucked into my socks I watched the ants come in through the seams, turn back as they found no insects, and heard the swarm of hundreds pass above and below my tent. It was one of my harder 4:00 am starts the next morning !”

"There was a huge sausage tree over my tent so I knew there was a chance that the hippos might visit for a midnight snack. I didn’t have long to wait. My first night in camp was a full moon and I got woken by a sound that’s very hard to describe. ‘A dinosaur eating a rubber tyre’ was the memorable way one colleague expressed it. It was coming from just behind my bed.

Being inches away from a noisy hippo is a remarkably effective cure for tiredness and I lay wide awake listening to the other-worldly sounds. Unable to contain my curiosity, I very slowly rolled up the flap of the tent window. There on the other side of a flimsy strip of fabric was a huge, and seemingly very happy, hippo, munching an enormous sausage fruit in the moonlight.

I held my breath and watched for several minutes as it snuffled up the last of its snack and wandered off in search of more. It was a magical introduction to the Luangwa valley.

The hippos would be regular visitors to camp over the years of filming. Shuffling and shy, despite their fearsome reputation, they were a constant reminder that we were temporary guests in a place whose rhythms had been going on for millennia."

"Late one night I went to the bathroom, which were little fenced off areas beside each of our tents. It was pretty usual to find frogs around the toilets so I did the usual checks before using it, but it was only when it came to flushing it that I noticed a small furry face swimming furiously as the water washed away! He must have been hiding in the u-bend and had quite a rude awakening! Thankfully using mouse-paddle he kept his head above water, but the next problem was getting him out. I searched around and found a stick which he duly climbed up, and I then managed to lift out with him on. After a bit of time catching his breath on the ground in the bathroom, he trotted off into the night!"