After leaving the surprising hidden gem of Kazuma Pan National Park, we headed further into Zimbabwe to one of the flagship parks of the country, Hwange National Park:
Nancy and I spent 6 nights in Hwange National Park, the largest Park in Zimbabwe, in 2023 in the first year of this overlanding blog, and I posted a long description of the Park and our visit, including a detailed description of the natural and cultural history of the Park and some vivid descriptions of our “close encounters” along with lots of great photos and videos, which can be found here:
overlandwithkmcgee.com/july-4-9-ulendo-hwange-national-park/
It’s impossible to adequately summarize what I covered in the 2023 post, so I encourage you to review that post if you are interested in the natural and cultural history and some fun stories of our wildlife encounters. Consequently, I won’t provide a synopsis here, as it wouldn’t do justice to the Park or the description of our visit in 2023. Instead, I am just going to post lots of photos and a composite video for your enjoyment. Similar to some of my previous posts this year, I am going to group photos loosely by some broad categories, with descriptions in the captions.
Landscape: I described the varied landscape in my 2023 post, so review that for a good description. Here are a few photos from this year representing some of the varied terrain and vegetation:
Travel/Roads: Travel in the remote Parks of Zimbabwe can be challenging at time. The roads, or rather tracks, are often corregated with pockets of deep sand and sometimes with water and mud holes to cross, but mostly hard sand or gravel and great for wildlife drives. Here’s a picture of one such challenge. Of course, the Green Dragon had no trouble with this little mud hole:
Campsites: The campsites in Hwange, at least the exclusive ones we stayed in, are absolutely amazing, both in the setting and the facilities that come with a full-time camp tender who cleans the ablutions and builds your campfire:
People: It’s important to remember that overlanding is not just about the beautiful landscapes and amazing wildife sightings, but it’s also about the people you share the experience with:
Wildlife: The wildlife observations in Hwange are excellent, especially around the natural and artificial water holes – some of which are small reservoirs. In particular, the elephant concentration is absolutely incredible. We must have seen over 200-300 hundred or more elephants, including multipe family units of 5-25 individuals with young of all ages, and plenty of bachelors in small groups. Lots of close encounters too!
In addition to the many bird species we saw, dramatically increasing Frank and Jane’s species list, we also heard lots of lions at our campsites, both close and far, and were granted an outstanding sighting of a nursery group of 4 lionesses with their 7 cubs as well as several individual lionesses on the hunt. But the highlight of our wildlife sightings, thanks to Nancy’s detection, was a 20 minute private observation of an adult female leopard on the hunt. You really must watch the video, or the last 5 minutes of it, to see this amazing sighting. Otherwise, I included a handful of other miscellaneous wildife pictures just to show you it isn’t all about elephants and the great cats:
Here’s a 14 minute composite video with some footage of giraffes at a water hole, elephants in a few different scenarios, some lion footage, and, best of all, at the end, 4-5 minutes of a female leopard on the hunt:
OK, that’s it for Hwange. Next stop, one of the designated 7 natural wonders of the world, Victoria Falls, for a couple nights and then back to Botswana and the Chobe River front. See you there!