Makalolo Safari Camp Sept 1 Monday

Today was our first full day at Makalolo Camp. We started out the day with a chilly early morning game drive. Even though it will be 90 deg later today, it gets quite chilly here at nighttime, and we started out at about 55 deg. This part of Africa is entering its spring season, so back in June and July, it was down to the 30’s at night.

Our guide Douglass is a native Zimbabwean who has been a guide for 30 years. His wealth of knowledge, humor, and driving skills kept us entertained for 3 hours. The roads are all sand, many of them with quite deep tracks, and challenging for drivers. We were split up into two open air safari vehicles and will do all of our game drives this way. We saw a giraffe, a sable antelope, and an ostrich at the first watering hole. Many of the watering holes in Hwange NP use pumps running on solar to keep them full during the dry season. We also saw impalas, kudus, wildebeests, roan antelope, vervet monkeys, and tons of colorful birds. We saw a hippo family with a baby, but they stayed in the water instead of trying to kill us. More people are killed by hippos than any other animal in Africa. True story. We also saw elephant tracks and lion tracks but no elephants or lions. Wah-wah, sad face.

When we returned to camp, they had a beautiful brunch set up for us. Mind you, they fed us a pretty big breakfast at 0630, so they are definitely trying to fatten us up for the inevitable kill. We had some free time after lunch, and boy did those tents warm up wile we were out. No AC, of course. There is a big fan to blow all the hot air around. Yay. I cannot imagine coming here in December when it’s actually Africa hot.

Our first giraffe sighting

Our first hippo sighting

Our Trip Experience Leader, Wonder, is also a native Zimbabwean who speaks seven (!) of the 16 local languages in Zimbabwe. He is from the Tonga tribe, so he gave a talk about the local Tongan culture. We also talked about the history of Zimbabwe. It was called Southern Rhodesia when the white Europeans took over the majority Black population and drew national borders for the first time. Later, Rhodesia declared its independence from Great Britain, but was never formally recognized as a country. Through a series of civil wars, the country of Zimbabwe was born in 1980 when the Black majority finally gained self rule. Today, the country is plagued by corruption in government, but many people are working hard to correct this and put reforms into place.

After the talk, we sat out on our early evening game drive where we finally saw elephants! Tons of elephants. There is an estimated 45,000-65,000 elephants in Zimbabwe, and they are beginning to be overpopulated, so the government is looking at options on how to deal with that. We also saw lots of Zebras, watched a huge lone male elephant eat from the top of a tree from about 20 feet away, sat in a chair made of elephant bones, and talked about poop. Elephant poop, that is. We pulled over to another watering hole for Sundowners, which are drinks in the bush at sunset. It could not have been more amazing with elephants and hippos in the water behind us and the setting sun shining down on us. This place is magical.

After another lovely dinner, we sat out at the fire pit and watched some Africa bush television, and learned about the constellations in the southern hemisphere. On the US mainland, we cannot ever see the Southern Cross, but depending on the time of the year, the North Star (Polaris) and the Dippers can be seem from Zimbabwe. Without light pollution, it is amazing what you can see when you look up at night. (Please pardon any typos, I’m in a hurry to go see lions that just showed up at the watering hole in our camp!)