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?