Bush Cricket

Africa » Zimbabwe
October 10th 2011

Published: June 17th 2017

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jc80

01 Nests

Bird nests at the end of the branches.

Geo: -19.1504, 26.5759

After a long boring drive, at about 2pm we turned off the main road and were getting close to the national park. The park is only partly fenced, so there is a chance of spotting animals. I was on the lookout. It took a long time for us to find any animals –which was a bit disheartening. We stopped along the way to stretch our legs. There were two piles of bones. Neil and Paul identified them as giraffe bones. They think that two giraffes were fighting and they both died here, a metre or so apart from each other. The guys found a good use for the bones- a game of cricket. This entertained them for about ten minutes.

In the hour and a half drive from the main road to the entrance of the park, we only saw 2 giraffe, kudu, sable, baboons, impalas and a few birds. The road was pretty bad, so it was slow driving. The impalas were skittish; I really hope that the other animals are not skittish. We were spending the rest of our trip here in Hwange National Park. This park was established in 1928.

We entered the park through the

02 Looking Around

A baboon looking around.

Robin's Camp entrance. My first impression of the park is that it looked very dry. This campsite was very basic. There were no shops here. About half an hour later we arrived at the camp site. Here we met our friend Tony and Nicola. They had told us about this national park and the game count – they are the reason we are here!

We set up our tents. This campsite was fenced, but it was a very simple fence, not very strong looking. From here we could see impalas and warthogs on the other side of the fence.
There was a meeting at 6:30pm. It was a briefing that gave us all the information we would need for the 24 hour game count. There were about 30 vehicles in the campsite, all here for the count. We were put into teams of 4 – Neil, Claudine, Paul and I were a team. They gave us a map and told us where we were to sit for 24 hours to count the animals that we saw.

After the briefing, they provided dinner. We had an early night. I got into bed with an Amarula and read my magazine for