My sister-in-law, Sarah Venter, often comes to Sentinel to “re-gather” herself when life in the fast lane gets too much. 

As the mother of two young boys, wife of an extremely busy country doctor in Louis Trichardt, well-known birding aficionado, owner and director of Eco-Products (which produces the amazing Baobody line of skin and hair products made from pressed baobab oil), prize-winning competitive cyclist and avid exercise-freak AND (as if that wasn’t enough for this pint-sized go-getter) PhD candidate, one can imagine that her life is pretty hectic.  Sentinel is her much needed retreat from it all.

Sarah is constantly on the go and is notorious for fading fast come night fall, slipping off to bed well before you or I have had our post-dinner aperitif. “ Early to bed, early to rise, makes one healthy, wealthy and wise!”, so they say, and no proverb could describe her better.  She is usually up well before daybreak to write her thesis – making full use of those precious early hours of silence and solitude before the other demands on her time start to stir.

This morning, while Digby and I were still “vas in die slaap” (fast asleep), Tuffin (as we affectionately call Sarah) slipped out of the house by herself and headed off to Tobwani, a beautiful sandstone gully on the eastern side of the farm. Her father, John Bristow, dammed the sandstone-bedded river running between two cliffs many years ago to create a beautiful water point for swimming and to provide water for the prolific game in the area.  Here, Black Storks and Egyptian geese nest in the krantzes, green-leafed rock splitting figs tower into the blue sky creating cool and mottled shade on the rock surface below and providing an effective look-out point for the resident baboons.  Tobwani is home to leopards, klipspringers and pythons too.

Approaching the dam from the south, one walks a kilometre or two past a huge sheltering mashatu tree, against a copse of tamboti trees and up the potholed sandstone riverbed surrounded by sparsely-wooded hills to the dam wall.  Below the wall are deep perennial pools caught in the sandstone crevasses caused by continuous seepage through the wall of the now silted-up dam.

Tuffin says it is when she is alone walking on Sentinel that she has the most wonderful and memorable moments. Today was no exception.

As she gently ambled her way through the riverine forest to the gully she became aware of “happy” splashing some distance in front of her – not that of elephants who loudly throw trunkfulls of water all over the place while drinking and bathing, but “fun” noises, like that of children playing in a shallow pool.  She approached quietly, silently, elevating her position up the sidelong hill as she went.   

Creeping from tree to tree and boulder to boulder up the hill, she advanced high enough to the edge of the cliff to look down on the pool below. There, totally unaware of her presence,  splashing and romping in the shallows like happy, carefree toddlers were three black spotted hyena pups, rolling and swimming and diving beneath the surface, grabbing at the water with white little teeth, jumping on one another and dragging each other under and just having a whale of a time in the crystal waters of the pool.  In attendance were four adults, drinking and cleaning themselves in the warm morning light.

Tuffin sat there for ages watching them.  Eventually the adult hyenas moved off to their nearby lair, and the pups continued to play until a handsome stallion at the head of herd of 12 rather impatient and thirsty zebra ran them off. 

The zebras quenched their thirst and left.  Eland came and went; more zebra and then wildebeest. 

After two hours, game still coming and going in streams, the sun was high and white and Tuffin became acutely aware of the reflected heat now glowering off the rocky surfaces around her.  She thought to slip away unnoticed, but the harsh bark of a baboon rang out as she raised herself and everything exploded into flight.