Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe 18 – 20 August

This is a rather speedily written blog as time is short this afternoon (20 August) and the battery on my laptop is getting low.

 A dawn start on 18 August saw us packing up camp, shopping for fresh rations (we have no fridge so have to buy daily or live off tins) and then leaving for Hwange National Park by 9am.  After an hour we turned off the main tar road onto a very corrugated dirt road for some 30 miles until we reached the entrance gate into Hwange National Park.  With four people and two weeks rations on board the Landrover was heavy and wallowed on the uneven surface so we had to drive slowly.  At Robins Camp, just inside the Park we paid our entrance fees and began a slow game drive towards Sinamatella Camp where we were to stay the night.  The Park was empty of people and we had it all to ourselves.  At first we saw little game but as the afternoon progressed we came across more and more elephant.  The highlight of the day was Deteema Dam where we watched some 30 elephant, 20 buffalo and other game coming down to drink.  The afternoon went quickly and we had to rush the last 15 miles to reach Sinamatella before the gates closed, being hindered on the way by countless elephant crossing the road in small family groups, on their way to drink.  We hear there may now be up to 60,000 elephant in the Park – far too many for the good of the vegetation which was badly damaged.  Sinamatella Camp is built on a ridge overlooking the bush and an enormous herd of several hundred buffalo grazed below us in the evening sun.  An elephant had knocked over one of the electricity poles the night before so the camp had no power and we cooked on wood outside and the sat in the dark listening to the sounds of Africa before retiring to bed.  The campsite was virtually deserted and only three of the 15 or more lodges were occupied.  Very peculiar as the Park used to be so popular with tourists and South Africans, but it is now very run down so that might be the reason.

The next day, 19 August, saw us up again at dawn.  We drove in the half light to Mandavu Dam some 8 miles away for a breakfast of muesli and tea whilst watching hippo and crocodile in the water.  Rock hyrax scampered through the undergrowth within feet of us.  As the sun rose we drove on, seeing little except more elephant, until the afternoon.  Then, at Nyamandhlovu Pan (a well known haunt to Mike Moody and me from years gone by) we watched growing numbers of game coming down to drink, risking the hunger pangs of the three resident crocodile in the process.  A small group of hippo had adopted the Pan (about one hundred metres wide) as their home and lay submerged in the centre.  Fifteen giraffe drank quietly.  At intervals of 30 minutes or so small herds of some 20 elephant came down to drink and then dawdled around the edge of the pan, intermingling with the ease of old friends. In all we saw over one hundred elephant at this pan in the space of three hours.   Several kudu gracefully but timidly approached to drink but a couple of young adolescent bull elephants charged them like young hooligans at a seaside brawl, trumpeting with ears outstretched and tails held rigidly behind, to chase them away.  Impala came and went with little fuss and dodged the lurking crocodiles. Yellow billed hornbills ate undigested seeds from the elephant dung.  We left with reluctance just before dusk to find our lodge in Main Camp before the gates closed and supped in the small restaurant to save cooking uninspiring tins of processed food.

We rose an hour before dawn on 20 August, our last day in the Park, so we could be back in the bush as the sun rose.  It was very cold.  Ian’s thermometer registered just over 6 degrees Centigrade (it rose to 34 degrees by noon) and we shivered in the sharp wind as we sat silently in a hide watching for game. The bird life was prolific but few animals came to drink and then we heard cheetah had been seen some miles away so we set off in pursuit as Tony, who flies back to the UK tomorrow was longing to see one.  Our search was fruitless however so we packed and left for the three hour long drive back to Victoria Falls to camp overnight before putting Tony on a plane to Jo’burg and then UK. 

As I write this blog the sky above me has clouded over slightly.  The first clouds I have seen since early July.  The wind has got up too so we may be in for a stormy night – no rain of course because this is the dry season.  Tomorrow, having dropped Tony at the airport, the other three of us will begin the long 350 mile, two day drive along dirt roads to Matusadona National Park on Lake Kariba, stopping overnight at the remote Sijarira Forestry Lodge on the way to rest.