An Adventure through Botswana and Zimbabwe, September 2014 - by Safaridude and Game Warden - Part 2, Zimbabwe

[Game Warden]

Thanks @@Soukous that would make sense. @@Big_Dog I can't recall in Hwange: @@Safaridude, do you remember? Certainly later on in Mana Pools. But not like in the Mara.

[Safaridude]

@@Big_Dog @@Game Warden

 

Hyenas were heard (right near camp) but not seen at Camp Hwange and not heard or seen at Little Mak.

 

There were plenty of them in Kwando, Botswana.

[graceland]

Having just left Camp Hwange a few hours before you and 'Dudes' arrival, I AM thrilled, (yet WAS a bit miffed - no room at the inn for ONE more night, oh please) to read your very emotional and highly accurate accounting of life on safari in Hwange. Brilliant.

 

I was very happy to leave (Rather, FORCED to leave Zim) with Camp Hwange on my mind.

 

Lucky for all of us to having outstanding guiding with amazing sightings. And yes, I thought Dharmesh adorable; Andy -over the top hilarious; and Julian, Ashley, Ruth with the entire team superb hosts. Though I asked for cheese with my baguette (french night?)it did not appear quite as quickly as your "wor".

 

 

Your "African Proverb" shone through on this expedition...

 

 

Looking forward to Mana~

Edited November 2, 2014 by graceland

[Kitsafari]

wow Camp Hwange really delivered. I felt that i was right there at every scene, emotionally and physically invested as I read every word, backed by the evocative beautiful pictures from the 'dude.

 

it's strange that while we enjoy the quiet pleasant long hours, its those short defining moments that make you remember most each time.

[Safaridude]

Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe – Little Makalolo

 

Makalolo Plains Camp (“Big Mak”, now only reserved for large private groups) is where I stayed at when I was last in Hwange in 1997. Just a few kilometers away, Benson Siyawareva was busy building Little Mak that year. Did we cross paths then? Did he drop by Big Mak perhaps to fetch some tools while I was resting in the mess area? Did our vehicle skirt by the construction site while he was taking a breather outside? Never know…

 

Serendipity brought us together in Zambia in 2009, and since then I have never even fathomed being on safari in southern Africa without Benson guiding. So it is a stupendous pleasure to see him driving into Main Camp where Julian is handing us off to him. Having heard so much about Benson, Matt is like a kid in a candy store (that’s “Mr. Benson” to you, Matt). Benson is looking well, and it’s good to see that he has finally relented to wearing sunglasses.

 

Wilderness Safaris leases two contiguous concessions, Makalolo and Linkwasha, in the southeastern part of Hwange just south of Ngweshla where the public road ends. This area is dominated by Zambezi teak and large false mopane (or Rhodesian copalwood) woodlands. Between the woodlands, shallow, grassy expanses (locally called vleis) punctuated by towering ilala palms occur on Kalahari sand, the same silvery talcum blanketing Makgadikgadi in Botswana. In the middle of these vleis, there invariably are natural depressions that hold water during the rains, some of the depressions supplemented by artificial pumping to ensure they don’t dry out. When surface water in the woodlands evaporates, the animals must come to these vlei waterholes, and game viewing at Hwange in the dry season can sometimes be reduced to simply driving out to one of these waterholes and putting on the parking brakes.

 

Teak and camelthorn woodland near Kennedy 1

 

Large false mopane

 

Ilala pams on open vlei

 

Zebras here have faint shadow stripes

 

Kudu near Ngweshla

 

No such luck for us though. The aforementioned excessive rains earlier in the year have some natural vlei depressions without any supplemental pumping hanging on to some water, leading one to believe that there may still be some seeps of surface water in the woodlands as well. As a result, spectacular woodland antelopes such as sable and roan, ordinarily visiting the vlei waterholes daily this time of year, are less conspicuous; big buffalo herds, some 500 strong, are spread out, one tremendous herd having crossed the park boundary (demarcated by a railroad track) into the “forestry area”; and the local pride of lions is split up, following the dispersed buffalo herds.

 

Bootstraps, then. We are committed to bushwhacking through the woodlands if necessary to get our game. At the Broken Rifle loop in the thick of teak, we spot a shy young male leopard that bolts as soon as he detects us. The next morning in the woodland near Davison’s Camp, we spot a young female leopard, also shy, perched on a termite mound sunning. Later at Ngamo (we are covering some serious ground now), we follow the descending vultures leading us to a group of lions on a buffalo kill.

 

A young leopard sunning

 

Lions at Ngamo

 

 

Later at Linkwasha, three eland bulls amble toward the waterhole. Approaching them diagonally as to not unnecessarily alarm them leads us to a sable also headed for the waterhole, and indirectly approaching the sable leads us to a roan breaking out of the tree line also in search of a drink. Seeing the three majestic antelope species of Hwange together is a treat. Along with the Vumbura (or Quedi) Concession in Botswana and Kafue, Zambia, this southeastern section of Hwange usually produces the continent’s most visible and impressive sable antelopes, but few are sighted on this occasion and a truly majestic sable bull eludes us. “Clad in their black attire like the chief mourner at a funeral… with all the pomposity and self-importance of village billy goats… so brilliant an addition to the catalogue of game quadrupeds, so bright a jewel amid the riches of zoology”, trumpeted Sir William Cornwallis Harris upon discovering sable antelope for the Western world in 1838. I share Harris’ admiration of these animals, especially the bulls – the sheen of the coat, the powerful sweeping horns, the upright posture, the pugnacity – so proud, so animal… For a sable bull to be considered a proper specimen, he shall have a clean black coat and long horns that rise abruptly and then curl down, the tips pointing at his back. Such trifling matters matter to yours truly, a wanna-be explorer/Great White Hunter of a hundred years ago. We learn from the staff at Little Mak that a monster specimen (a “back scratcher”) haunts an area called Mbiza. While Matt takes the afternoon off, Benson and I, like Ishmael and Captain Ahab pursuing Moby Dick, sail over and trawl every square inch of Mbiza. A sable herd is found but sans the “back scratcher”. The herd is seen browsing Ochna pulchra, which occurs in fairly thick woodland and produces leaves that are palatable only for a very short window in spring. Roan, another predominantly grazing animal along with sable, had been seen browsing Ochna in the woodlands as well. This seasonal phenomenon, coupled with the overwatered condition, may be contributing to the scant sightings of these animals out in the open.

 

Eland bull #1

 

Eland bull #2

 

All three coming to water

 

Sable

 

Roan

 

 

 

A shout-out is in order for Little Mak. It is beautifully appointed and tightly run though in a relaxed, effortless manner. The camp guides are completely switched on, fun and ambitious. In the evenings, the last of the season’s teak pods explode behind camp, reminding one of a scene from Blair Witch. Then, of course, there is the camp’s woodpile hide…

 

Excessive rains or not, you can always count on loads of elephants at Hwange’s artificial waterholes, because dollops of surface water won’t do if they want to not only drink it but also play in it; and there is no better place to observe them watering and playing than at Little Makalolo’s woodpile hide. A short walk with an armed escort is necessary to get there from the mess, and once the escort checks the hide for things like, oh, honey badgers and snakes, one can relax with a drink in hand, protected on all sides by piles of logs, and observe elephants and other animals frolic. Captivated, perhaps even entranced, I sit and watch with my mouth faintly ajar. I don’t even notice that my camera equipment is in danger of being sprayed by a bull elephant hardly a few feet away – until projectiles of fine gobs of mud head my way. No alarm bells ringing though. So be it if my lens is dirtied with bits of mud and elephant mucus. Just privileged I am, really, privileged, to be alive and breathing in the few square meters of what is possibly the best spot in the world to connect, engage, with the world’s largest land animal.

 

Hurrying to the waterhole

 

A view from the woodpile hide

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Broken Rifle Pan

 

From the woodpile hide at dusk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kori bustard displaying

 

Sunset at Little Samavundhla

 

Dagga Boys at Madison Pan

 

Not quite a "back scratcher" but a fine specimen nevertheless at Little Samavundhla

 

 

 

Hippos occur at the bigger artificial waterholes

 

Zebra line-up

 

Alone

 

Little Mak

 

Pierced

Edited November 3, 2014 by Safaridude

[michael-ibk]

Love this entry, Safaridude! Great seeing the Roan and Sable, the bulls look impressive enought to me. And good to hear you liked Little Makalolo so much, I´m there next October.

 

But...

 

 

 

While Matt takes the afternoon off

 

Can´t believe what I´m reading here. Our fearless leader skipping a game drive?!?!?

[Safaridude]

@@michael-ibk

 

To be fair, Matt hung out at the woodpile hide that afternoon… there is so much going on there it's not like taking any time off.

[Game Warden]

We arrived early at Main Camp. Set in nice gardens reminiscent of a Kruger Park public rest camp, everything was tidy, clean, khaki stuccoed walls and overhanging thatch roofs. The shop was open, as was the bar: there was fuel at the pumps – that SADC meeting had been something positive for Hwange, well, at least this part of the park. I popped my bepithed and bearded head into reception and said hello. Everyone laughed when they saw me. They always do. I’d been told to look at the pictures on the display boards. They were all old and faded B&W images obviously from way back before colour printing was the norm, none of the in your face TV screens running wildlife docs on repeat. It had an old world safari charm: the word Rhodesia had been scratched out and recently over painted with Zimbabwe. I found references to Wankie. When had the park been renamed? But for me that was/is the charm of Wankie/Hwange National Park. It’s not a sterile environment: it feels wild, slightly uncared for. What would have happened had Zim not gone through the turmoil of recent years? Would the park have become saturated with camps and lodges? Over developed with tarmac roads and Starbucks concessions and minibuses? (There were tarmaced roads but in such bad condition with pot holes and cracks it would make sense to strip them all and just grade what is left…) It’s swings and roundabouts. What happened is in the past, now Hwange NP is starting to recover and I feel grateful to have seen it on the cusp. Perhaps in another 5 years its airport will once again host scheduled jet flights disgorging masses of visitors. A line of safari vehicles picking them up and ferrying them to new places that have risen phoenix like from the ashes. That won’t be a bad thing: Hwange deserves more visitors but will they be visiting a modernised park devoid of this old world charm?

 

In the parking lot, waiting for Benson to arrive, Julian and I talk with a lion researcher: we discuss the big fight we’d seen the night previous. Also the pride at Big Toms which we’d encountered on foot. I mention my dream to see a pangolin. Apparently one had been spotted with a baby clinging to its back only a week previously, here in the Main Camp gardens. And only one person had seen it, a member of staff – everyone else was out looking for lions…

 

When Benson arrived – it was like a meeting of two heavyweights of the Safari world, him and my old pith helmet... It’s funny, we’d both heard so much about each other, and of course, I’d interviewed him previously for Safaritalk here and @@Safaridude likewise for the magazine here so there was little ice to break and when you have my beard scratching across your face in the embrace there are few barriers left anyway. And from that moment on, conversation between us was punctuated with great bouts of laughter, enthusiastic exchanges, anecdotes and experiences. I just knew, driving out through the gate, throwing up a salute to the security officer who smiled back but with somewhat of a perplexed look on her face that we were in for a grand adventure. We’d said goodbye to Julian, leaving him to greet new clients: our time at Camp Hwange was over – our adventure in Little Makalolo was about to begin…

[Soukous]

awesome stuff @@Safaridude

love the elephant photos and the sables too. Some terrific sightings

[Kitsafari]

That sable bull at Little Sama. is great looking, which makes me wonder how awesome the back scratcher will look like.

 

And the Dagga Boys look extremely happy.

[Big_Dog]

Great new entry. The antelope impressive, the scenery great. I especially like the dusk photography; a simple photo I.M.O is made so much better and more excitting with a darker sky and eye shine.

[graceland]

To be able to sit with the elephant families and watch for hours on end their interactions with one another; their joy and the apparent care for the little ones was a special moment in our trip that I'd never forget - had a hard time expressing it, but these photos do just that. Wonderful!

 

I fell in love with them all over again. Being so close, seeing their eyelashes; bewitched by their trunk and feet antics, and a tug at the heart that so many have been so horribly taken from their herds. They sing Africa to me with their sounds.

 

Seeing them running to their water always made my heart sing. That was a great shot; so true in the moment.

 

Of course the Sable is most elegant and the Roan quite good as a court jester. Reminds me of the hats worn (well at least on "The Tudors")

 

And Dagga boys; Mana sees you coming

[Safaridude]

More photos from Hwange (Little Makalolo)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Safaridude]

@@graceland

 

Well said...

[graceland]

@@graceland

 

Well said...

Thanks, 'Dude -- and your photos are bringing joy back to my life this week.

[twaffle]

I have to say that the elephant head with the water dripping from the trunk, post before the last one, has left me speechless. Along with the ear piercing and the blue sky. Lovely 'seeing' of those two comps.

 

I inherited a set of 12 etched water glasses made by Roland Ward back in the 1960s. Beautiful, delicate engravings of animals on them. My mother's favourite was the sable and now that she has gone, it is mine to drink out of on very special occasions. Truly the king of antelopes.

[madaboutcheetah]

I absolutely love the third one - the water drip; also the last one very arty with the GW watching the action.

 

Great stuff!!!

[Treepol]

Lovely photos @@Safaridude - I like the lioness and the way the light softly catches in her fur and lights up her eye.

[Game Warden]

I told Benson that I was keen to spot and hoped to prove worthy: he stops the car at a tree and tells me to spot then. I'm looking round but other than an obvious antelope, see nothing. A few minutes pass. Haven't you "spotted" it yet? he asks and points out a small chameleon blending into a green leaf. How on earth he saw that whilst driving I don't know. Maybe that's because you're a Conde Naste top 15 guide in the world... I tell him, winking. I hoped to learn just a sliver of what he knew on this trip...

 

Benson had told us the drive to Little Makalolo would be around 50 kms from Main Camp - this took all afternoon and enroute we passed The Hide and its pith helmet logo'd vehicles. Some of the guests did a double take upon seeing me wearing mine. The road took us past the stretching Kennedy Pans, (1 and 2), Somalisa Camp, the very popular, (both for visitors and wildlife), Ngweshla Pan and then up into the Wilderness Safaris concession. Driving through the Kennedys, once again we were reminded, this time by Benson, that back in the day, here you would have expected to see a number of rhino around the water holes...

 

The forest loops which skirted Kennedy Pan were stunning - the golden light of the later afternoon was just coming into play and thus filtered through the trees: it was a cool and shadowed haven with dappled light and sun rays cutting through the canopies as @@Safaridude captures in photo #1 of this post.

 

Once past Ngweshla, you enter the concession: there's no visible boundary, just a signpost and a track which climbs up to the woodland. Here is where we see interaction between impala and a young leopard. Not that we see the leopard at first but the impala are snorting out a warning. Benson knows there's something there - the impala are all looking in the same direction. We approach slowly and suddenly the young leopard slinks out from behind a fallen tree and dashes into the cover of bushes and we lose him. But that is our welcome to Little Makalolo and would be the highlight of the first afternoon.

 

The Makalolo Plains, where Big Mak is situated are broken by a number of pans - the flat areas surrounding them are dusty, stripped of all flora bar stumps and a few hardy fresh growths. The tree line is far back on the perimeter. Is this due to the pans being pumped all year round? The constant pressure of elephant herds coming to drink, eat? With a seasonal pan or vlei at least flora would have a chance to re-establish itself but like so many of the waterholes with their tuckatuckatuckatuckatuckatuckatuckatucka diesel generators, the degredation to the surrounding environment was clear to see. It was the focus point of many discussions we were to have whilst in Hwange, elephant populations, man made waterholes, seasonal water levels, stress on the ecosystem through a constant demand for water. But pumping started many years back and there is no way it can be reversed now without a mass die off of not only elephants but all the other species which have become dependent. So what is the answer? I really don't know and there are many opinions, some of which I heard voiced: but no one concensus. Until an action plan is established, Hwange will always be defined by the sound of those diesel generators...

[Soukous]

@@Safaridude I do believe your photos are reaching hew heights

[TonyQ]

@@Safaridude

Wonderful photos - great one of Matt sitting by the waterhole with the elephant, and to echo twaffle - the close up of the elephant with mud dripping is superb

@@Game Warden

Excellent very enjoyable writing - keep it coming

[Game Warden]

By the time of our arrival, it was already dark. We'd spent an hour at Madison Pan watching the sun go down, snacking on nibbles sent out from camp and slurping down a G&T. Standing by the water in the glowing embers of the dying sun's furnace, reflecting bronzed fire upon the rippled surface: on the far bank, the open sleep over hide with just netting as protection. As much as I'd like to try it, it seemed just a little too cosy and intimate for the 'dude and I. I'd seen a small herd of Sable enroute in the dusk before anyone else, hopefully that impressed Benson and the 'dude whose influence upon me was growing stronger: I was the padawan, he, the Obi Wan Kenobe of antelope...

 

To guide us into camp a series of tilley lamps and it looked romantic and my ideal of what a classic camp should look like at night - we were met upon arrival by the wonderful Buhlebethu Ncube, AKA Bea, (you can see us together in photo #6 of this post), who is camp manager and an inspiration to other young Zimbabwean girls wanting to work in the safari tourism industry. It's worth reading about her background in this article from Wilderness Safaris. I had already heard much about her from Jo Bestic, the WS social media manager in Cape Town, and likewise I think she'd been primed about my arrival: from the moment of clambering down from the vehicle and giving her a hug till my final wave goodbye, we always found time to talk, laugh and joke and it was a real privilege to get to know her a little in this time.

 

We quickly dumped packs in the tent, a torchlit, rifle holding escort from a guide, (boots clacking on the wooden walkways which had recently been implemented), keen to shower up and get back to the campfire, have a drink and settle in. It wouldn't be long till dinner and the drive from maincamp had stimulated my appetite. Dining with fellow guests at a communal table drove interesting conservation discussions, it was a good group of people all keen on conversing and all the guides and Bea sat with us, joining in. After, we sat at the fire talking with Benson and I fired a volley of questions at him about the history of Little Makalolo - he had personally helped build it and the log pile hide had been his idea and design. With the flames glowing in my eyes, food descending through my system and a slight net curtained haze in my vision courtesy of wine and gin, I could barely see into the blackness and felt to be in some primeval forest from which strange sounds were echoing. Crunching, splashing, billowing - the roar of lions not far away, hyenas: it was all going down just past the periphery of my vision. I did not realise that the water hole was out there and I was disorientated but in a good way: I felt hemmed in by the darkness and it was an exhilarating sensation.

 

Daylight the next day - initial view to my tent.

Each tent is situated in mature teak forest. Pop pop pop go the pods as they explode overhead like shots from a .22 calibre rifle.

Comfortable well appointed rooms, every tent looking towards the water hole and its constant procession of elephants.

The scene of my malarone dreams...

[ld1]

@@Safaridude and @@Game Warden such beguiling prose and photos that take my breath away.

 

A fellow admin-chimp has just said to me "why are you smiling at your computer?" and I reply "because I'm back in Zim"...they wander off to the photocopier looking bemused.

[Game Warden]

Now just to take you quickly back to Camp Hwange - I stated earlier that we'd met Dave Carson whilst there. Well, now I realise that it was George van Wyk and in fact, Dave joined us every night for dinner with his group at Little Makalolo. Sorry for the confusion. Blame it on the malarone screwing with my head

[Safaridude]

@michael-ibk @Soukous @Kitsafari @Big_Dog @graceland @twaffle @madaboutcheetah @Treepol @TonyQ @Id1

 

Thanks all!