May 14, 2019 - CAMELTHORN LODGE

May 14, 2019

Our last day at Camelthorn Lodge and last game drive in the Hwange National Forest. Today we did a short game drive just to see who was out and about. We drove out into the wide open part of the park and visited the Wildebeest herds, which were interspersed with Impala herds. We stopped to watch a particularly large herd of impala that was interspersed with the baboons “monkeying” around, and watched as the dominant male drove out the young bucks. Male Impala control a large number of female in their harems and are constantly yammering at them to herd them in one direction or another. He doesn’t like it when they step away from the main herd so he is like a sheep dog continually running around trying to corral the ladies. We saw another black backed jackal today, that didn’t seem very spooked by our jeep, and stopped to pose for us. Mr. Sibs stopped the jeep and we set off on another walking safari, my least favorite thing only because of the uncertainty of what is hiding in the brush. He tells me right as we are setting out for our walk “sometimes the lions hide their cubs or their kill in the bushes to conceal them” so I am thinking why on earth are we walking into this trap? Sibs has a fully loaded rifle of some enormous size that will kill an elephant if necessary, so we feel somewhat safe, but there is always the unpredictable. We first came across a couple of bull elephants which Sibs says are mostly more safe than the females which, if you read my earlier post, will charge to protect their young and in the process ignite the whole herd to charge, so they are very dangerous. We also came across a herd of Cape Buffalo who are really pretty skittish and run away, but the males are the ones to worry about here and they are crafty. They will move off into the brush seemingly in one direction, then a male will circle around through the brush and peer at you to see what you are doing, so you can’t ever turn your back on them. Sibs had us scoot across the ground on our butts and hands like crab walking to sneak up on them enough to get a good view. Eventually we made our way back to where we’d parked the car and now the watering hole has several elephants there, so we give them a wide berth to circle around to our vehicle. I am so relieved to have no scares this time. I feel so much safer in a car. The afternoon was spent driving out to one of the 15 pump sites operated by our lodge where water is pumped from the ground for the animals. The government used to maintain the water pumps but then abandoned them and the safari companies took over. Without the pumps there is not enough natural water for the animals. On the drive out there we saw an ostrich! We had never seen one of those in the wild and Sibs thought the Lion had killed the last known ostrich in the park so we were thrilled to see it! As we approached the pump site (about 1-1/2 hour drive) we saw another new animal for us - the Sable - a very beautiful creature in the antelope family. They were extremely wary of the jeep and immediately took off so we got some fleeting pictures. The lodge brought lunch out to the pump site for us so we sat under a huge shady tree and dined on burgers and salads. Another long drive to get back to the lodge brought us to cocktail hour, dinner and another early bedtime.

Elephants waiting their turn at the watering hole, loved the baby in the shot

Lunch out in the wild

Ostrich sitting down when we first spotted him, the guide thought that he might be tending to the eggs

Black backed jackal

Brown Snake Eagle

Zebras and Impala. I was trying to get multi-species pictures - I have almost every individual animal picture but now am trying to get them co-mingling