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Tag: hwange NP

  • African shoestrings – Zimbabwe Day Ninety-Two Hwange

    The restaurant at Main Camp, run down or not was excellent value for money. Waiters in white tuxedos with gleaming teeth and pens poised ready to take orders were at our beck and call. This was not five star but it had the sort of character that only Africa has. A sort of colonial outdoor setting with smells of fresh cooking, candlelit tables and a quiet hubbub of guests enjoying the experience. Occasionally we would here the roar of a lion or the laugh of a hyena. This was so good that we could forgive the preoccupation black African waiters have with whisking your empty plate away almost at the same time as the cutlery hits the empty porcelain. The one thing the Europeans must have instilled in these guys was to ensure that nobody sat at a restaurant table with an empty plate or cup in front of them. “Never mind carrying out maintenance on rail carriages, lodges, roads or even vehicles just make sure there’s no empties left on the table!”

    Trouble is this obsession is starting to spread. Even in Australia young waiters are doing the same thing. What happened to being allowed to leisurely play with your spoon in an empty cup or at least wait until other diners at your table had finished?

    Sinamatella camp is 120 kilometres away, two thirds of which is a sealed road but at least a third of that is the usual tar between the potholes. In fact the unsealed section was a lot better than the majority of the sealed section. We decided to take our time and maybe have a game drive at the same time. Initially the animals seemed to be their usual shy selves; then at a waterhole we spotted two leopards, a male and female. The female was nervous and disappeared pretty smartly. The male on the other hand was totally unfazed and nonchalantly crossed the road in front of us, even having the gall to stop and look at us before disappearing into the scrub. At the next waterhole we spotted six elephants in convoys of three. From then on we seemed to see something new at every waterhole. The next 50 kilometres was spent concentrating on avoiding the potholes, so for all we knew there could have been a pride of lions nearby and we wouldn’t have known.

    The pièce de résistance came at Modava dam 14 kilometres from Sinamatella. There were three or four hippo standing out of the water, which is rare to see especially during the middle of the day, followed shortly after by two white rhino coming down to the water for a drink. A South African couple in the hide told us these two had apparently only just been released into Hwange from Matobo. This retired South African couple were driving around Southern Africa having a great time with their Landcruiser and camping gear. What a way to spend your retirement!

    Sinamatella itself is a lot smaller than main camp and is spectacularly sited on top of an outcrop or mesa (flat topped hill) with 180 degree views for as far as you can see. The restaurant and chalets all back onto a great view of the lower flats and the Sinamatella River where from time to time a distant elephant or giraffe would stop and chew the low thorny scrub. It was a lot drier here so there was fewer waterholes and pans for the animals, making game harder to spot.

    As at main camp they conduct guided walks. This time we were the only takers and Ndlovu, our guide, set up a good pace as we set off down the face of the hill. Ndlovu was short on words in comparison to Douglas but there was no doubting his eyes. He spotted a baby giraffe close by and took us as close as he could to an elephant that, as always, was munching away. Elephants spend most of their waking time munching and are also the vandals of the African wildlife social chain. Everywhere they go they leave a trail of destruction as they tear of branches and knock down trees with their powerful trunks and tusks.

    The restaurant at Sinamatella was called the Elephant and Dassie and was equally as good as the Waterbuck at Main camp. Here though we had quite a number of uninvited guests looking for a free feed, honey badgers. Honey badgers are small mammals that resemble the badger in size, shape, and habits, but apparently are a lot more aggressive and like eating honey as well as bees and animal flesh. These things scurry around the restaurant looking for scraps and then up and over the lodges at night as the pitter patter of their feet awoke us from time to time.

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    Elephants in Hwange NP in Zimbabwe
    Elephants in Hwange NP in Zimbabwe

     

  • African shoestrings – Zimbabwe Day Ninety-One Hwange

    Main camp is’ as the name suggests’ the centre of Hwange. It has most of the facilities, accommodation and the National Park office. It was here that we had to check in and try and organise our spare night.

    The female official was not exactly helpful. “Yus we cun give you anuther lodge for dat night” After establishing that meant we had to change lodge I asked whether we could stay in the same lodge instead of changing. “Noo. Thaat is noot possible” There was no point in pursuing the issue further she wasn’t going to be any more helpful and that was that. She wouldn’t even give us the key to our first lodge until 2 pm. ‘Rules are rules’ in African government.

    We consoled ourselves with a beer in the rather tired Waterbucks head and then attempted to find a picnic spot.

    The road we took was so bad that we gave up after a while but then came face to face with a herd of elephants that came perilous close to the car. Hwange has one of the largest populations of elephants in the world at around 30,000 and most of them seem to be crossing the road right in front of us.

    You know sometimes I can’t help myself, I just had to get a little bit closer to get that ‘great’ shot. It began to occur to me that we might be a little too close when one of the elephants turned and looked us rather menacingly and made to charge us. That was it, I was in reverse and began to move backwards so fast that the elephant was impressed enough to change his mind and went back to his herd. These guys are to be taken very seriously!

    The lodge was quite comfortable if somewhat (like everything else) rundown. It was completely self contained with a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and lounge. It even had a braai and a shady veranda. Better still we had a cleaner who came in to make the beds and do the dishes. But the best thing was that it was so cheap. US$4 per night! At that price rundown or not it was a bargain.

    Hwange covers 14,600 square kilometres of hot, dry and dusty scrub interspersed with clumps of umbrella acacia trees and dotted with a few waterholes. It’s at these waterholes that most of the wildlife congregate, so most of us just drive from waterhole to waterhole looking for the most exciting wildlife we can find.
    It’s sort of strange how we can become blasé so quickly about the wildlife that we do see. Everyone wants to see the big cats and rhinos.
    At Nyamandhlovu (Nya to its visitors) Pan there is a platform where visitors get out of their car and sit for a while. Here we saw almost everything we had seen before wildebeest, kudu, giraffe and even elephants and still we wanted more.

    We visited this spot again the next day but had to return back to camp when I noticed a nail in one of the tyres. Repairing and replacing tyres was a big enough business in Hwange to justify having a permanent workshop there, so getting it fixed was not a problem.
    In the afternoon we returned to Nya and after an hour or so we got back into the car, turned the key and got nothing but a click. Now picture the scene we’re in the middle of an African wildlife park where the only time you can get out of the car is to quickly climb onto the platform and we’ve broken down. My first reaction was to get out of the car to have lift the bonnet. My second reaction when Sue pointed out that I could be risking my life in doing this was panic and then I got out of the car and lifted the bonnet but with my attention very much on the landscape around me rather than the slumbering piece of metal below me.

    Fortunately there was an armed guard who we hadn’t seen nearby and he made his presence known by coming over and without a word just stood guard close to the car. The problem was the battery lead had come loose from the terminal connection and with my limited tool kit and my great versatility as a mechanic, I had it up and running in no time.

    Back at main camp we washed down a ‘coldie’. Actually it wasn’t a beer but a gin and tonic. Gin was so cheap at US$1.00 for half a bottle that we thought we could save a little bit of money. Trouble was a gin and tonic without ice was like having a warm beer, it just wasn’t the same so that idea was abandoned after while and we went back to beer which at least we could have cold and was still only around US$0.80 each.

    That afternoon we went on a guided walk to the nearby Sedina Pan and back. Douglas our guide had good sense of humour and led us through the bush to the pan where we sat and watched in the hide for a while. Whilst peering through slot in the hide Douglas pointed towards one end of the pan. “What dooo yoou see my friend?”

    “What should I be seeing?’ I replied thinking that there was a lion or something equally as interesting.

    “Oh I don’t know. My eyes are not sooo goood”

    What was the point in having a guide whose “eyes are not so good”? We were relying on him to spot those animals that us mere tourists never spot!

    The other two other couples on the walk were from France and USA. I’ve come to the conclusion that yanks who go overseas must all have training before they leave because they all seem act the same way. Once again they wore the obligatory designer label safari gear, were loud and this time had a video camera that they talked to. That was irritating. We would be watching quietly for some wildlife when behind me would come the murmur “heere we ‘re watching quietly for some anemals in Seedona Paan” I’m sure whoever watched that video was bored shitless! I shushed him and neither of them spoke to us again until the end of the walk.
    Later we saw both couples having dinner together in the Waterbuck restaurant ignoring us as we walked past. Some people are just so petty!

    As it turned out Douglas didn’t actually need his eyes. On the way back we walked across a grassy plain full of zebra, wildebeest, jackals, baboon, giraffe and incredibly two kudu having a scrap within a couple of metres of us.

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    Two elephants mixing it up at a Hwange NP waterhole in Zimbabwe
    Two elephants mixing it up at a Hwange NP waterhole in Zimbabwe