Bushwhacked
A teenage monkey with an air of no money or regrets slyly tipped my wine glass. She scooped up the remnants of my Villiera Sauvignon Blanc 2010. As Jean Rhys would have said: “Feelers grow when feelers are needed and claws when claws are needed and cunning when cunning is needed...” The monkey reached a feverish pace with that little paw, and once suitably refreshed sauntered off with an elegant swish of her merrily grape-soaked tush and with a sigh she plopped down on the pool lounger next to me, dialled the bar from the infinity pool ordering us both a margarita. We were lazing post lunch to the sounds of whooping hoopoes, the ‘kekekekeke’ of crested barbets and the ‘kok-kok-kokkok- kok-kok’ of the purple-crested lourie. I was at Phinda Game Reserve overlooking supper – tender impala loins – where I was joined by my sister-in-law Vanessa, who looks like Nigella Lawson and in our family is affectionately called ‘No-Budget- Blevins’. She is known upon sighting a lilac-breasted roller to stylishly order Bombay Sapphire Gins to celebrate – the perfect pairing.
Later that night, after spotting a leopard close up, she ordered the sumptuous Meerlust Rubicon 2005, pairing well with bats and a roaring open fire. When I was spotted tenderly feeling up, not the Prince Harry game ranger look-a-like, but a voluptuous bottle of Hamilton Russell Pinot Noir, alas the 2008, they were out of the divine 2004, No-Budget-Blevins promptly ordered two bottles. We drank. They played Dorothy Masuka and the whole bush seemed to sway.
Harry was talking about GPS, which in the bush means Green Penis Syndrome, referring to an elephant in musk – as in being hot to trot for the girls – but my mind wandered off through the acacias that were wearing pistachio stockings like French girls on holiday. What best to drink when conversation turns to elephants – a honeyed handsome dessert wine like Pierre Jourdan’s Ratafia. Traditionally Ratafia was served celebrating the ratification of European treaties, but that’s as dull as sighting the first seagull in Sea Point on Christmas eve. Actually, that sounds rather romantic. And we are no longer in Europe.
The art on the walls at Phinda Forest Lodge was indigenous, mostly by the late great Cecil Skotnes, whose home I fondly remember as his author son John aptly described it: “an evolving museum”. And for whom bartering in the family was a thundering success. Cecil even found time to design wine labels and once accepted a commission for the Meat Board. “They gave us the most gorgeous leg of lamb!” quipped his wife Thelma. They swopped Cecil’s art for carpets, for the children’s dentistry, for good wine, for a Battiss, a little Chagall and much more. I was about to swop Prince Harry for another bottle of Hamilton Russell 2005 that they had unearthed, but then it started to rain soft fat east-coast raindrops. Conversation segued to the leopard we’d seen that night and the three lion cubs that were playing in the long grass with their mum tenderly watching on. They’d eaten a warthog and all that was left was the former warthog’s stomach, a neatly wrapped package that lay discarded like some ex-girlfriend’s heart.
We had a large fire in the bush and ate at a long table under marula berry trees with trumpeting elephants and seriously yummy food by chef Matthew Hancock as we celebrated Richard the Danger Ranger’s birthday with his wife Cherilyn. Staff wore white – it was very white mischief without naked people doing backbends. And then that cheeky monkey tipped my second glass of Ratafia...
