Zimbabwe 2016 - Ruckomechi, where elephants have right of way

We left Hwange and flew north to Mana Pools National Park, on the banks of the Zambezi River. A glorious place, remote and surreal, filled with enormous trees, floodplains and more hippo than anywhere else in Africa.  And a whole lot more elephantine experiences…

The elephant theme continued on Zimbabwe’s northern border: our two camps, Ruckomechi and Little Ruckomechi, which lie on the Zambezi River, have both been adopted by elephants. Well, when I say adopted… this sounds all warm and fuzzy but actually takes every action, whether managing the camp or just walking from your tent to the main area, to a whole new level of complexity. Elephants clearly have right of way here – meaning that they wander through the camp, between the tents, or indeed right next to your deck, their trunks snuffling along the wooden slats as they hoover up the ana pods – highly nutritious and delicious seeds of the ana tree that the ellies love so much, they tend to get a bit excited when they see one – sort of like me when I see Cadbury’s Bubbly… where was I? Oh yes, so while they do that, we wait patiently until they’ve moved past before going about our lawful business. This means that the statement “I’ll be back in five minutes” should come with the disclaimer: “This is subject to that elephant over there deciding to move over to there and not look at me funny. Otherwise it might be a lot longer.”

(Copyright Dana Allen, photographer extraordinaire, who was at Ruckomechi while we were there)

So for example, at Ruckomechi, we had been taken to our tent by manager Dylan and now we wanted to go back to the main area. But an ellie didn’t want us to. We knew this because we tried tiptoeing one way and then the other and whichever way we wanted to go, he flapped his ears at us as if to say, “Naughty, naughty – I can see you…” Eventually Dylan managed to slip past him and go get a vehicle to pick us up and drive us… a few metres. So one tends to walk about the camp with extraordinary care, alert for any shady characters. (As in, they cast shade all on their own and they’re grey – oh never mind.)

Other “things that should take five minutes” included the drive from Little Ruckomechi to Ruckomechi – officially seven minutes but this became 20 when we stopped to watch a lion pride trying to eat their kill in the mud. They’d brought down a zebra in the night in one of the muddy channels that split off from the Zambezi River, so that they were eating with gusto, but ended being covered in black muck as they did so. The five lion cubs in particular – just like kids – had big flat black paws and faces, but seemed to be enjoying it immensely. Mom not so much; her lips peeled back, she was trying to find a way to feast more fastidiously.

(Copyright Dana Allen, photographer extraordinaire, who was at Ruckomechi while we were there)

Mind you, we had seen them trying to get at something the night before so it was good to see that patience – or rather, persistent hunting – had paid off. The previous evening we’d watched, peering through the darkness, as they had tried to manoeuvre themselves around a herd of unsuspecting impala. Plans went awry when a hyaena walked in front of the herbivores, causing them to alarm call and scatter. It was amazing to see how the lions then adjusted the plan: they moved back, clearly hoping that the impala would be scared by the hyaena and run into their waiting jaws – but the intended prey leapt in another direction through a gap, and left the cats empty-pawed. One young male, unwilling to give up, tried to belly-crawl and grab one, but he was too excited and the impala just sneered at him and ran away. Anyway, it seems that all ended well that night (for the lions if not the zebra).

On Friday afternoon, when the others had left to go on a game drive or fishing, I swam with three elephants. Well, not exactly. I was in the camp pool – glorious in the baking heat of early summer in Zimbabwe (there isn’t a spring season, unless you think spring is 35 degrees Celsius) – when suddenly, three ellies came floating – seriously – down the river. Their heads would pop out of the water, then disappear back under, a trunk appearing instead, or even a foot as they serenely let the current carry them downstream until they got to what was clearly their landing point: a delicious grass-covered island just across from camp. Here, they turned aside and swam for the bank, heaving their glistening bulks out to graze. Apparently this is an almost daily activity and clearly they enjoyed their swim as much as I enjoyed mine.

Birding – my usual “thing” on Shabbat – was somewhat challenging here, mainly because every time I tried to stop and ID something, I had to first take a look around to see if an ellie was coming my way. And often as not there was – ellies were everywhere, scarfing up the ana tree pods or taking a drink from the swimming pool. Then I would have to decide whether discretion was not the better part of valour and skip back to my deck – or just sidle around a tree and try see the bird from another angle.

While this added a certain je ne sais quoi to the whole experience, I felt honoured to be spending Shabbat with some of Earth’s most sagacious creatures. And it occurred to me that these immense creatures deserve their own special mention in Genesis – their own verse that would in my humble and probably blasphemous opinion go something like this:

And God said, “Let there be elephants.”

And there were elephants, great and grey, mighty and dignified, playful, wobbly-trunked babies and wise and wrinkled elders.

And God saw that it was very good.

I took this one from my deck, Ruckomechi Camp

[Mind you, the Mishna Brurah 225:30 in fact does state that when seeing a monkey or elephant for the first time (in thirty days), one should make the bracha of Meshaneh HaBriyot. Just saying.]

Zimbabwe 2016 - The Importance of Hawtering Woles

All through Hwange, it is the waterholes – known here as pans, or in fact as ‘hawtering woles’ as our guide Mike likes to call them – that are the lifeblood of the park. There are no rivers that flow through the park and so the pans often dry up in winter. They are then pumped - in our concession by Wilderness - so that there is water for the animals during this time; I’ve written about this before and it’s fascinating, but on this trip, I truly appreciated just how vital they are. Each hawtering wole has its own character and sense of place.

For example, the pan just next to Linkwasha Camp had more buffalo than I’ve seen in a while, just hanging out there for the day; showering with buffalo just outside my window was a great first. Mind you, we had seen this enormous herd heading to Scotts Pan earlier that day. Mike had positioned the vehicle in a way that had them coming directly towards us – a sea of black amongst the grass, with dust billowing up around and behind them. The front line had their horns and bosses facing forward in a veritable phalanx of Roman shields and I distinctly heard the music of Star Wars – you know, the Imperial March – as they came closer and closer.

Then they mooed like cows so that interrupted the music in my head somewhat.

Big Sam is another pan, one that is now famous for being where the Lone Pelican lives. Pelicans are not usually found here, but he arrived unexpectedly with some 60 other pellies one day – a migratory anomaly during which the birds quickly found that there was not enough food for all of them so they upped and left. But perhaps in landing this pelican had broken its wing – the bone could be seen poking out its skin – and so it can no longer fly. He is therefore grounded for life – and indeed it seemed that that said life would be fairly short, as the others left, leaving him to his fate. But he (or she) has become a familiar white shape paddling about ‘his’ pan. There seem to be enough fish to sustain him but he does look a bit lonely – well, to our eyes anyway.

Little Sam is where the lions were hanging out. Well, one of the three resident prides, this one made up of two females, five young males and Pubhesi, a collared male. We watched them sleeping in the morning (riveting stuff) and then found them still there in the afternoon when we made our way back. We sat at the pan to watch more and more elephants coming down to have sundowners, the red sun setting behind them creating Little Prince silhouettes. Or were they all snakes that had swallowed hats? (You either get it or you don’t…)

One mother ellie decided to shout at the big cats as they lay a little way away behind a very large termite mound. She charged them and we thought they’d get up and scatter but she gave up shortly and they flopped down again. As it got darker though, the lions got up one by one and went down to drink… and then had to flop down next to the water as it was clearly all a bit too much. The hippos were quite a sight too as they rolled completely over and over, so that their cartoon paws waved comically in the air.

Moving away from the pan, the night drive back was one of ‘those': a great – if quick – sighting of a young leopard, his spots showing up well in the red filter of the spotlight. Then a young white-tailed mongoose scurrying across the road and ending with a side-striped jackal (SSJ, says Mike, you know, as opposed to a BBJ – black-backed jackal. I guess that there are different acronyms to ours. We have ASAP, they have BBJs. I prefer theirs…)

We also saw boing boings on the way back – that’s spring hares to the unHwanged. And we’d also seen our first YBK of the year that day. See what I mean? 

Zimbabwe 2016 - A Pachyderm Tea Party

Dear all,

In September, Carol and I went wandering off into Hwange. (See what I did there.) Seriously, we spent a week in Zimbabwe, in Hwange National Park and then in Mana Pools National Park with wonderful people and magnificent wildlife. A couple of fabulous experiences follow...

We began at Little Makalolo Camp in Hwange – a sunny, simple, friendly dusty place – the latter because it is the end of the dry season and boy, has it been dry… Its waterhole is a magnet for some of the 30 000 elephants that roam the Park. To say nothing of everything else – what a pile of animals we saw! After two glorious days at “Little Mak” we set off for Linkwasha Camp, an opulent opposite to Little Mak, with large tents, and clean lines.

But throughout the time we were there, it was the elephants that ruled…

One afternoon, we took part in an elephant tea party. After having our own tea of course; it would be bad manners, we felt, to bring our delicious ice rooibos tea or coffee with us – without offering them any that is.

We were off to watch the elephants come down to drink at the pan just outside Little Makalolo – at the camp’s famous logpile hide.

What's a logpile hide, I hear you ask? 

At the edge of the pan, a pile of logs are placed surrounding a few safari chairs set out in a row, ready for the show. You have to get there before the stars arrive – which we did, with a couple of minutes to spare. The humans sit inside the hide (I guess that depends on your point of view) at ground level and get to look up and out at the enormous grey bulks as they ponderously get closer and closer – sort of a shark cage diving thing – only without the sharks. Or the cage. Or the… never mind. It’s just you, and the rest of nature out there, separated by a few logs.

So we sat in a row, keeping quiet obediently as per our guide’s instructions. We’re the outsiders here but we’re not safely behind steel bars or on a large heavy vehicle, but out in the open, so best we obey the rules and be polite. After all, as at all the best tea parties, there are things that Are Done and things that Are Not Done.

After a couple of minutes, there they came, deceptively slow yet astonishingly fast – it seems that one minute they were grey blobs in the dusty distance and the next they were looming over us as they splashed purposefully across the shallow water. Thirty great grey bodies moved into the middle of the pan, some heading straight for us, and then wading across our field of vision to settle in to drink. As they walked past, one eye would stare at us from a truly almost unbelievable height and I found myself crouching down a little, feeling the need to say “sorry, sorry,” and they, supremely aware that they’d won that conversation, turned and waded past – as the cameras clicked and whirred.

Finally the whole herd was in the water – most of which is currently just knee high. An elephant knee high that is. Wading around with enthusiasm, they began sucking water up those trunks then sloshing it into their mouths, or slapping it onto their sides until each grey bulk was bright-wet and glistening brown. The babies moved their little legs madly (I use the term ‘little’ advisedly), splishing water up and around, rolling over with their legs in the air and completely disappearing into the slightly deeper sections; one Disapparated with a gloop noise into a hole, only his trunk showing.

This whole cavorting, playing, wallowing event, you’d think, would come complete with squealing, shouting and general noise – just like kids in a pool. But instead, there wasn’t a sound from them. The only sounds were those of very large splashes and almost frenzied slapping of water on skin, but surreally, no other noise at all could be heard from such enormous animals. Except for the occasional plop of… well, let’s just say that I wanted to call this “the pachyderm poo party” but while the alliteration works, and it’s true, I thought it might be a bit rude.

I was just admiring the grace with which they were conducting themselves, (poo notwithstanding), when this elephantine idyll was interrupted by another herd coming down to drink – and everything changed.

It seems that my anthropomorphic assumptions were wide of the mark – like humans, ellies sometimes don’t like to share.

The smaller herd of ten arrived at the edge of the pan and, with an unexpected surge of spray, a few members of the larger herd wheeled around and headed towards them. They moved fast and aggressively, shouldering up to the interlopers and blocking them from entering, indeed moving forwards so that the unwanted visitors were pushed backwards. Right next to me, on the other side of a few very flimsy logs, one tried to push back – trumpets sounded and it seemed that an international incident might take place - and not six feet from me (did I mention that?). We all held our breath – as did all creation it seemed – and then the smaller herd backed off and the others turned around and resumed whatever they had been doing before in ‘their’ water. Play resumed amongst the youngsters, but it did seem a little deflated after that display (although again, that could be my anthropomorphic ruminations).

However, all was well that ended well. The ten just walked behind us (neck-prickling stuff I must tell you) to the other side of the water which, apparently, the herd of thirty didn’t feel so possessive about, and drank. They did however do it quickly and with none of the verve and splashing that one would assume was required – then turned and left. The thirty continued their vigorous yet silent splashing, sliding and rolling off one another, babies ‘diving’ or rather falling head first into the murk with such exuberant joy. On one side, an enormous bull stood contentedly slurping water at the point it was emerging from the pipe, flanked on either side by two youngsters.

At a hidden signal, it was over and they all turned and sploshed their way out. Glistening baggy bums disappeared, as rapidly as they had arrived, into the distant woodland. We were left bereft in the sudden silence, with only the gusty, dusty wind for company.

Rocktail – hidden depths

One of my favourite things about Rocktail – if you don’t include the wonderful people, gorgeous camp, canvas, wood and glass rooms that are just right, looking out over a swathe of green coastal trees to the glinting, white-flecked seas, the excellent food, incredible dives on pristine reefs…. Where was I? Oh yes, if you don’t include those, then one of the aspects of this place that most intrigues me is its hidden depths.

What do I mean, you ask?

It came to me as we sat on the boat today on what is known as an Ocean Experience (and boy, was it an Ocean Experience – the sea was rough and the waves enormous; roller coasters are nothing to the launching of the boat into space to come down in the trough of the wave with a thump, the slap of salty spray on your face or across your back…). We had just come across two humpback whales – a mother and a ‘baby’ (if you can call a baby of 10 tons or so) and we were standing up (or in my case sitting down abruptly at every wave) to see them as they moseyed around our boat. Every time a flipper or the tail appeared out of the water we ooohed and when the enormous glistening black-grey back with its distinctive “hook” or hump on the apex of the curve slid out of the water and then back in, we aahed. We made many delighted noises when they ‘spouted’ – with two blowholes nogal so that the spray went upwards in a brief heart-shaped triangle of water. We never saw their faces though, and Michelle told us that they can weigh 40 tons and were twice as long as the boat – the adults that is. And then it occurred to me that we’d not really seen the animal as a whole. We caught a tantalising glimpse of a part of her, but her bulk, her enormity, her magnificence was all hidden from us, and short of diving in, she was shielded from our gaze by the blue and white of the waves.

I then considered other hidden life here. When you walk through the dappled coastal forest, the path curves ahead in a green-brown tunnel. A bird calls, but you’ll never see it; rich red brown flashes by as a suni or duiker slips out into your gaze and then back into the brush. You peer impatiently around large leaves and twisted branches – there are a great many creepers that twist and twine about other branches so that a Sleeping Beauty-like impenetrable mass of growth literally creaks and groans as the wind moves it this way and that. And the duiker is gone.  

The beach allows you only a hint of the full story too. As you walk along, a ghost crab trundles like a mad runaway Hypermarket trolley along the sands, his pop-up eyes bulging at you in terror before swiftly disappearing into the sand. Shells and different seaweed remains, a fossilised piece of wood complete with a rusted anchor nail, flotsam and jetsam – they all tell only part of a tale on the beach, the rest is a story to be told under the waters – and you need to venture there yourself to find out how it begins and ends.

Which brings me to the final depths – and these are deep and literal indeed. On the seafloor, the bursts of shapes and colour that are the reefs explode out of the sands. Under these living structures, lurk and live a myriad creatures, strange and wonderful to our landlubber eyes. Snorkelling at Lala Nek today, we saw a honeycomb moray eel, spotted and speckled with black on gold, his malevolent eyes glaring at us (sorry, anthropomorphism) as he hung back under a rock. Then, when snorkelling from the boat on the Ocean Experience, we saw the long, sharp tail of a stingray lying along the sand protruding from the coral – what the rest of him looked like we’ll never know. Fish large and small flit out and back in, over and under, again a tantalising glimpse. You can get closer if you like, but it is not your world, you cannot breathe down there and so you must leave the secrets of the seas, and rise to the surface, leaving behind a world that is will remain just that – mysterious, hidden and thus most wonderful.