Life has become a realm of instant gratification as we now live in a world where everything is at our fingertips. This has made our jobs as guides more and more challenging over the years. There are many elements that play a role in this, the most significant being the phenomenal work of National Geographic, Disney, Netflix, and many other natural history filming groups.

Videographers spend weeks, sometimes years, to get a sequence of shots together that will be played for viewers on television in a matter of seconds. I was recently talking to a friend here in Botswana that spent 26 days filming a nest of Jacana eggs which took 26 days to hatch. He must have found them two days after they had been laid as they have an average incubation period of 28 days. This sequence of video put together an incredible display of Jacana chicks and their first few days on this planet. However, the entire duration of this clip was 120 seconds – 26 days of filming to produce 120 seconds of television! They only show you the best of the best, as that is what the viewer wants. This expectation of instant gratification has become a way of life, but safari can sometimes go against the flow of modern man’s expectations. Nature will do things in its own way and, in its own time.

We all know that annoying question coming from the back of the car on a long road trip “Are we there yet?”. There is an equally much dreaded question as you start your first game drive of the safari, “When are we going to see a kill?”. These are real expectations that can sometimes impact the energy on a safari. Most of the time mother nature is incomprehensively beautiful and expectations are blown out of the water, however, there are those days when even mother nature takes a public holiday.

I was on safari in early June last year. We had a relatively short safari, again another reason to maximize your days out in the wild as you never know what mother nature will deliver, and we must have had three public holidays in a row. The wilderness was dead quiet. We were on a mobile safari and had not seen much at our first camp’s location. The pressure was building, expectations were high and a looming feeling of disappointment was starting to set in.

On our fourth day, the last day of our mobile safari, we headed out on the morning drive and picked up a fresh pair of lion tracks. At last, I thought, a sign of a big cat! We followed the two sets of tracks and not long after we had found them. They disappeared into the thick Mopane forest. Those of you who have been on safari in Botswana will know that there is little hope of following anything into these thick elephant mangled forests. We decided to loop around and try and catch them as they exited the forest. It was a large forest and on the other side, we drove up and down to check if there were any tracks to be seen, but nothing.

For the last few days, we had been driving around looking for animals with little luck. This time, we decided to do something a little different. We analyzed the forest and the surrounding open plains and saw a small pan with a little bit of water left in it, some of the only water for miles. This was it, we parked in the shade of that tree near the pan and sat and enjoy the spectacle of nature. Something was bound to happen. We all had our binoculars out scanning the horizon for any sign of the lions. In the meantime, we enjoyed the few plains game out on the savanna and the plethora of water birds on the edge of the pan. As well as the occasional falcon swooping by to try and catch the morning doves as they came for their first drink of the day. The aerobatic display of these birds was quite spectacular. Time passed, but we were determined to stick it out as something was about to happen – we could feel it.

It was at that moment when one of my guests shouted, “Lion!”. Sure enough, from across the pan where the Mopane forest petered out, in the brisk morning sunshine a big male lion was walking towards us. “Look, little ones!” shouted another guest.  In the male’s shadow, there were three little lion cubs closely followed by their mother. The two lion tracks we had seen earlier in the morning had gone through the forest and picked up the cubs that must have hidden away for the night. We remained in our spot as the lions were all walking straight toward us. The small family came right up to the pan to drink and then they decided that this was where they were going to spend the rest of their day. For hours, we enjoyed watching the mischievous little cubs chase franklins, plovers and doves away from the water’s edge, tackle each other time and time again, and annoy their parents to no end.

Whilst we did not see a kill on this safari, we had one of the most special experiences with a small family of lions. So often lions are just lying around, so to have them actively playing and posing in the sunshine was quite a treat. The time that this pride gave to us was worth the 3 days of searching for them. The biggest lesson we all took away from this day with our furry friends was to stop chasing that need for instant gratification and enjoy the present. As is often the case, good things come to those who wait.