A Serpentine Safari
Persian Proverb Piggy the rock python makes himself at home on my shoulders, happy to share my body warmth. His skin, brown Rorschach blotches on a canvas of silver and black, is a slither of silky coolness. He winds himself like a scarf, albeit one with a bad reputation. Sleek or not, he feels like coiled menace. Matthew is the man in charge, and he\'s optimistic - "Piggy won\'t bite you unless you move your hand suddenly and he thinks you\'re a mouse. His bite will hurt a lot. But don\'t worry, you\'ll be okay." Snakes have always intrigued me. They\'ve had a bum rap ever since Eve sold Adam the apple story and blew eternal Eden. Snakes in the grass are treacherous. Cheats speak with a forked tongue. Scratch any phobic and snakes will lie close to their surface. But there\'s much more to these spineless creatures than judgemental adages. Namibia, on the north west border of South Africa, has nearly 90 species and fewer than half will floor you with venom. Most bites just hurt like hell. The 30 or so that are considered medically important (read \'life threatening\') can ruin your day in one of three ways. The neurotoxic types will pump you with venom that takes out your nervous system. The haemotoxic will bring on internal haemorrhage. And the photo of the two-year old boy, alive but not smiling, his face and torso disfigured by necrosis, was the work of a cytotoxic snake, one whose venom dissolves skin and flesh. With the bliss of ignorance, I\'ve been willing one to slither across my path for the six weeks we\'ve been here. But there\'s been a drought. Of both rain and snakes. So the best we can muster are Piggy and friends at the Living Desert Snake Park in Swakopmund, on Namibia\'s Atlantic coast. Matthew is an enthusiastic host. We can take our pick and he\'ll whip any one out for a closer look - snakes, scorpions, or the harmless chameleon. The only one off limits is the black mamba. She\'s just a bit too scary, even for Matthew. There\'s a neurotic cobra, winding itself around and around it\'s glassed enclosure. But most, like the leaf-green boomslang, are catatonic, experts in immobility. I\'m surprised to find most are not the gigantic creatures of my mind\'s eye; many are tiny, less than metre long, and three pencils thick if that. But they are beautiful, their markings melding into the sand of their cage in perfect camouflage. The scorpions are altogether a more agitated bunch. Normally at home in a hole in the ground, they\'re not happy in the limelight. Parabuthus is the star, a shiny black specimen with an immensely thick tail. A thick and lethal tail. The rule of thumb with scorpions is big pincers, small tail, bark worse than bite. But tiny pincers and a big tail, these ones you call \'sir.\' For me, scorpions have the same allure as snakes. And have proved almost as hard to find. That particular drought broke at Epupa Camp, way up on the Angolan border. Clutching an ultra violet torch, Epupa\'s manager, Bremmer, lead a midnight expedition. I\'d checked the hill out during daylight, leaving no stone unturned, to no avail. But, in the beam of Bremmer\'s torch, fluorescent blue scorpion shapes dotted the hillside like some teenage disco. Bremmer says the jury\'s still out on why the stingers glow in the dark but the leading theory is that ultra violet light lures in insects. Back in Swakopmund, at the Living Desert Snake Park, I\'m drawn to the flaccid looking puff adder. This Homer Simpson of snakes, lazy and fat and in need of liposuction, has the unlikely record of most often biting humans. Its strategy is to lie still until stood upon, at which point it takes umbrage and strikes, surprisingly quickly for such a fat thing. We have been warned about puff adders wherever we go, especially at Ngepi Camp in the Caprivi Strip, that odd finger of Namibia stretching out to border Angola, Zambia and Botswana. To listen to Ngepi\'s managers, the place is ridden with them. I feel lucky that the snake drought will break here. Next day we head for nearby Mahango Game Reserve. In the morning we see rare sable antelope shimmering in 40-degree heat. In the afternoon we see a wave of thirsty elephants hit the river with the sound of ocean breakers rattling up a stony beach. But no snakes. Meanwhile, back at the camp, the cook is chasing two puff adders out of her pots and pans. They\'ve decamped by the time we get back. Here in Swakopmund the hunger is finally sated. Our exploits with Piggy draw a crowd of nervous locals, happy to laugh from the other side of the fence. For them, snakes are constant threat, more menace than novelty. Our blasé attitude bemuses them. And rightly so. A fact sheet for visitors attests to the reality of living with snakes. Do not, says the fact sheet, wash your eyes with petrol or diesel fuel. Do not delay in reaching medical help by consulting with a traditional healer. Do not use any electric shock. As Piggy\'s small head snakes down my leg I get how lucky I am to be able to think of snakes as an exciting novelty. Unlike Richard, our guide into the Okavango Delta. In a dug-out mokoro, he poled us along the channels narrowed by the dry season into thin blue fingers, fringed with papyrus and stroppy dragonflies. The water was churned brown by thirsty elephants and bathing hippos, and submerged crocodiles kept the small antelope jumpy. Over campfire pasta Richard told me how he lost his 23-month-old son to a snake\'s bite two months earlier. It was, he believes, God\'s way of telling him he was not a good parent, and now he must wait until he is 40 or older before having any more children. We leave the snake park venom free. Two days later we are down in the southern reaches of this desert land, standing in rain on the edge of the magnificent Fish River Canyon. Both droughts have broken in the same morning. From the heavens comes rain and rainbows. From under a rock slides a tiny feral horned adder. It spies us and hisses and spits its way under a rock. ends Travel Facts Namibia was known as South West Africa until its independence from South Africa in 1990. It is physically huge, with few people (1.7 million). If the name Namibia doesn\'t ring a bell, think Etosha National Park, the Skeleton Coast, Fish River Canyon and huge red desert sand dunes. You\'ve probably seen it before care of the BBC. Although there are 11 different indigenous groups, English is the designated official language, the infrastructure is good and the going easy. If you speak German, you\'ll get on well with about 90 per cent of the other tourists. From Namibia it\'s very easy to tie in visits to Zambia (Victoria Falls) and Botswana (Okavango Delta). Seasons are on southern hemisphere time - summer around December/January, winter around July/August. Rain, if it falls, comes mostly in summer and autumn. Temperatures tend to be coolest around July and August, but it depends a bit on which part of Namibia you are in. It can get extremely hot from October through to March. South African Airways services Windhoek (www.saa.co.za/). For travel advice and bookings, contact the Cardboard Box Travel Shop (www.namibian.org/). The scorpions, along with fantastic scenery and service, were at Epupa Camp (www.epupa.com.na/). We stayed at the Cardboard Box backpackers (http://www.namibian.org/travel/). © Marieke Hilhorst/ORIGIN NATURAL HISTORY MEDIA |