Hwange National Park

Today we settle into the pattern that will repeat for the four different camps that we visit on this trip. We start the day with a 6 am wake up call, but we can’t leave the tent till the guide comes back to take us to the breakfast area at 6:30 am. Then get in the safari jeeps for our morning game drive at 7 am.

It’s cool overnight, around 50 F in the morning when we get up.

We have a morning and afternoon game drive in Hwange National Park.

The helmeted guineafowl is fairly common. The guides say it takes like chicken but is on the tough side. He recommended when cooking guineafowl, to add a stone to the pot. Cook until the stone is soft, then the guineafowl is ready to eat, but will still be a little tough.

Because there are not large open plains, the animal groups tend to be smaller and they can be hard to see through the brush.

The Meves’s Starlings are quite iridescent.

We stopped at the lake at Mandavu Dam for a mid-morning break. We can get out of the jeeps, stretch our legs, go to the bathroom and have tea and a snack while looking around. There are some picnic shelters here and a few campground sites for folks doing a safari on their own.

The Rock Hydrox hide in the big rocks on the shoreline of the dam area.

We get back to camp and a have a few minutes to clean up before lunch. Then it’s time to rest and take a shower. I worked on photos during the resting time, as I’m taking quite a few photos. I go through them, deleting the out of focus photos and uploading animal photos to iNaturalist. The hot water is solar heated in the camps, so you don’t have hot water in your tent in the morning. Breakfast does have hot coffee or tea available.

Then at 3 pm we had tea and one of the waiters gave a presentation on napkin folding.

At 4pm, we load back into the jeeps for the afternoon game drive. We were encouraged to rotate positions in the jeep.