There was too much to write about today and my iPad doesn’t like it when the post gets too long, it freaks out and it doesn’t display properly. So....as I was saying, we came back from our morning village visit and had a nice lunch at the lodge. At 3PM, we met up with a delightful and passionate gentleman named Paul de Montille, a local guy who is running the Hwange Leopard Project which is working to preserve the remaining leopard population. In the 1950’s there were upwards of 750,000 leopards in Africa. Then Jackie O made an appearance in a leopard skin coat and the fashion world went wild. The coat she wore took 8 leopard lives to produce. Designer Oleg Cassini took off with the demand for this coat and was personally responsible for the deaths of 250,000 leopards — just for their skins in the name of fashion. When the consciousness finally came to the surface, the killing subsided but not completely of course, because now we are down to only 50,000 left in Africa. He collars and tracks the leopards (and other “problem” animals, defined as animals that kill villagers’ livestock and such) and when they get close to the villages, they send out a team to scare the animal(s) back into the national park. We then went out with him in the jeep and tried to find this one leopard that he hadn’t seen in awhile so he could set his eyes on her and make sure she looked ok. Leopards are really hard to find, they are very good at concealing themselves, so while we got really close to her based on the signal feedback we were getting, we just couldn’t find her exact location. Paul was here for a week to work on finding her and other animals he is tracking, so probably tomorrow he will find her. By now it is dark here, which happens around 6:30PM, so we are driving around in the dark when in this distance we spot a bonfire. Sibs (our guide) delivered us to the bonfire where the dinner table was set surrounded by lanterns, the fire, and the moon and stars, next to one of the watering holes. It was an absolutely beautiful setting. After we finished off our dinner we sat around the bonfire gazing at the stars, having great conversation once again about the culture here in Zimbabwe, as elephants quietly drank their fill of water in the distance. Sibs or Paul would shine the flashlight every so often just to make sure no game was interested in joining us. All of a sudden Sibs heard something, and shined the flashlight behind where we were sitting, and there in the distance - about 50 years away - were a pride of lions, including a majestic male bringing up the rear. They were setting out for their evening hunting, and just passed us by like any other animal, keeping their distance, not interested in us as prey at all. It was one of those moments we will never forget. The pictures don’t do it justice but suffice it to say we will be talking about this for a long time to come.
Lilac Breasted Roller - again - he is Beth’s favorite bird and the most colorful. He won second place as Zimbabwe’s national bird
Dinner by Bonfire
It’s hard to see, but enlarge this picture to see the lions passing by in the distance
Today’s sunset photo, note the game in the foreground
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