Hwange National Park and Vic Falls

May 3 Hwange National Park

OK I cried a little bit after hugs from Cilla and Jenni.

We started off late leaving Jenni’s house at 8am. Somebody was using the car we had to take and he returned it late with the need to pick up a new tire. Time goes by quickly at 130 km per hour. We were anxious to see some wildlife. The company we are touring with is called Trackers out of Bulawayo Zimbabwe, Lovemore is the owner. He arranged this trip and had hired a Safari company’s truck and driver to take us around Hwange. That company is called Touch the Wild Safaris. We got in the safari truck and headed to the lodge where Touch the wild works out of to pick up some supplies. There is a waterhole just outside that lodge and there were impala, warthogs, baboons, and kudus came down a little bit later. It was neat to see them right away. We left from there and headed for our camp. We arrived at the remote Marara Tented Camp at about 3pm. It is a long bush trail on mostly deep sand roads. The camp is a great place with a main dining area which is built with a thatch roof around a big tree. There are five tents a cooking building and five tents contained within the thatch fence. The tents are the nicest tents I’ve ever seen. There were two queen size beds with quilts, a wardrobe and out the back of the tent is a bathroom with flush toilet, shower and hot water. We dropped of our things in the tent. After having lunch at the dining table we headed out to the National Park back on those sandy roads. We entered through the gate at about 4pm through a gate that was fairly close to the camp. The boundary of the park is a railroad between the park and the lodges without any fences. As soon as we entered into the park we saw giraffes, wildabeast, zebras, impalas then we carried on to a water pan close by. We saw some elephants in the bush in the distance. There was a group of them moving towards the waterhole, which was being pumped by windmill power. We turned the truck around and sat to watch for a bit. There were groups of elephants coming from all directions. They went to the water and started drinking then they seemed to be playing. There was a big male elephant which was heading towards our truck instead of the water. He was about 30 meters away when we had to leave. We took photos but I’m not sure how they’ll turn out because the sun was in the wrong place. Then we raced for the main camp gate 56km away. We got back to the gate at 3 minutes to 6pm when the gates close. We had to go out that gate because everyone has to pay fees at the main camp. On the road out of the park we saw in the headlights zebras, giraffes, elephants and kudus. When we got back to the camp property they pulled out a spot light and started looking for lion tracks. We got back to camp about 8:30 pm three hours from main camp. While dinner was being prepared Lovemore, and I discussed what we would do the next day. I explained to him that I would enjoy more the experience of seeing animals again and being able to observe them. We felt really rushed in the park the night before getting only 1 hour of viewing at the most. Lovemore and the driver discussed more and came up with a plan. We had a great dinner and retired to our comfy beds. Lovemore decided that we would wake up a bit later than the original 5:30am.

May 4 Game drive in a private lease and Victoria Falls.
We were up at 7:15 for lion looking this morning on the camp property for an hour. We didn’t see a thing except tracks. Back at camp Dakotah got stung by a wasp then we had a nice breakfast of potatoes, eggs, sausage and beans then we packed up and headed off to the property that the driver works on. Lovemore made a plan to make up for the rushed trip yesterday and it was a good one. We didn’t see anything on the camp property except a spring hare that jumped out in front of the truck’s headlights, did a summersault and hoped off the road. While Lovemore fetched the car we toured around the property that Touch the Wild operates on, that first place we visited yesterday. We saw all the same types of animals again but we were able to sit and watch them and take lots of photos. We drove right up close to some zebras that were rolling in the red dirt, and drove around a group of elephants, one of which came right up and touched the bonnet of the truck. We met up with Lovemore at the Hwange Safari Hotel. That is a posh place. Then we headed for Victoria Falls.

It was a long trip to Vic falls because we were sun burnt. We passed a sign that showed the elevation of one of the rivers. We had come down in elevation from Bulawayo at 1600 meters to 680m at Lukosi River (another dry river). As soon as we arrived in Victoria Falls we went straight to the office where we would get picked up for the Sunset cruise. While we waited Shepherd called. He is in Victoria Falls with 60 children. Lovemore made arrangements for us to meet up for a short visit. It was great to see him again. We got a couple of hugs and went back to the office. Then we aw a pile of children marching past the doorway and I thought it was Shepherd again. Its awesome to see him with kids. Then a surprise, Philip came into the office. He was so excited and so were we. More hugs and blessings and we were off to the sunset cruise. First impressions… There were about 20 ladies on the party barge. After a closer look we discovered that most of those ladies were men. This was the last night of their overland cruise so they all celebrated by dressing up. We met some nice Australian folks and a few of the overlanders, the Sultan, Brian and a guy who is on a round the world flight ticket. Wouldn’t that be awesome? On the cruise we saw a couple of sets of hippo ears and watched an elephant bathe in the river and saw a marvellous sunset. I tried the Zambezi beer. The tour guy said when you drink it all you just dip it in the river for a refill… As we were departing the cruise they were setting up drumming on the shore. We thought that was included in our cruise but no such luck. We boarded the combi and went back to the cottage. We had dinner at Cattlemans restaurant. I wouldn’t really recommend that place unless you really want steak. The menu looked ok but there were lots of things out of stock, we had a choice of steak, steak or steak. I guess this is still Zimbabwe. They had Calgary stampede posters on the wall though. We had a good sleep after dinner.

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