July 4-9: Ulendo Hwange National Park

Ulendo means “going on safari” in the Chichewa language, one of the native languages in the region.

WARNING, this post is a long one (and the videos are long too) because after leaving Victoria Falls, Nancy and I headed to Hwange National Park, located just south of Victoria Falls, for 6 nights and 7 days.

Hwange NP (5,657 sq. mi.), established in 1961, is Zimbabwe’s largest reserve. Most of the Park is said to be underlain by Kalahari sands, as it is situated on the eastern edge of the Kalahari Desert; however, we found the area we visited to have none of the deep, soft sands of Botswana’s Kalahari. Instead, we drove on mostly hard sands (and, unfortunately, corregated at times) interspersed with rocky soils, past rocky outcrops (or “Kopies”), and over genuine hills. The terrain was in fact highly variable, giving it an aesthetic appeal. The vegetation too was highly variable, ranging from open grassy plains (called a “Vlei” here) and depressional pans (often with water holes) to woodlands of varying compositions and canopy cover – although the vast majority of the area would be classified as mopane woodland because the mopane tree, in either shrub or tree form was the dominant tree species. Here are some shots of the varying landscape:

Hwange NP was our last stop in the Kalahari. The Park has an interesting history. It was never suitable for agriculture due to the sandy soils so it was never developed as such. Instead, it was used primarily as a hunting ground for big game hunters; thus, by the end of the 19^th century the large mammals were almost completely exterminated from the area, with the elephant population declining to as few as 1,000. Eventually, in 1928 it was designated as a wildlife reserve (and then a National Park either in 1949 or 1961, depending on the source) in hopes of rebuilding game populations, and over time the populations slowly rebounded. Elephant populations increased dramatically and have had numbers even exceeding 45,000 during recent times, with devastating effects on the vegetation. The Park has periodically tried to reduce the elephant population through controlled hunts, but the damage to the Park’s natural vegetation is persistent.

The biggest limiting factor on wildlife populations in the Park is water and in Hwange most of the available water comes in the form of “pans”. Pans comprise one of the natural wonders of Southern Arica, and we have discussed them in previous posts. In Hwange, most of the natural pans are depressions 60-100 feet in diameter that fill with water during the rainy season and hold water long after the rains end. They reach a depth of up to 3 feet of water after the rains, but then gradually dry out over time as the dry season progresses. Most are bone dry well before the end of the dry season. Interestingly, the pans have been created by termites and other wildlife. The termites who build mounds bring salts such as lime to the surface. The salts attract wild animals, especially elephants and other large mammals who have a particular craving for it. By eating the termite heaps the animals obtain the salts, and through their physical activity they form hollows in the ground that collects rainwater. The hollows are constantly expanding as animals eat the lime-flavored soil, drink the water, and carry the mud away on their hides.

In recognition of the critical role of pans to the wildlife populations, the Park has created another 60 or so artificial pans to supplement the natural ones, largely by daming the natural drainages associated with the original pans to collect and store the rainwaters during the rainy season and thus prolong their “life”. In addition, many of the artificial pans have their water supply supplemented by solar-powered groundwater pumps to ensure an adequate water supply to the pan throughout the dry season, as the animals have come to depend on these water sources. Note, as you will see in the photos and video below, these artificial pans with dams are really more like small reservoirs than water holes, and some of them are quite large – on the order of several acres. Much of the wildlife viewing in this Park centers around these natural and artificial pans. Here are a few shots of some pans ranging from small natural ones to larger artificial ones to show you the variety:

Our first camp in Hwange was in the northern section of the Park known as Sinamatella at the exclusive Deteema Hide campsite, where we stayed 2 nights. I will let the composite video do most of the talking about this site and our experience there, but suffice it to say it was sublime. Instead, I want to describe our auditory experience on the first night at Deteema since I wasn’t able to capture it digitally with my crappy tablet microphone, and it was a truly memorable experience for us.

Try to imagine the following: Nancy and I are tucked into our cozy sleeping bag atop the Green Dragon. The sun has gone down and the full moon has not yet come up, so its almost pitch black. It’s rather quiet at first, until the black-backed jackels herald the start of the night’s activites with a choatic ruckus of yips and yelps – their signal to the gang to muster for the night’s foray. Just after the jackel’s “call to arms” fades away, the local hippos signal confirmation of the onset of the night’s activities by blasting out a few grunts and snorts (imagine the sound of a whale surfacing and exhalling through their blow hole and you are pretty close to what the hippo sounds like when they want to make a statement by forceably exhalling through their nostrils), followed by their characteristic “laughter” – one of the sounds of wild Africa that always stirs the imagination – just what are they saying to each other or are they actually laughing at us land-bound terrestrials? In due time, we hear the non-stop chopping of the grass just outside our boma perhaps 20 feet away – no doubt by the hippos that have come out of the water to graze on the adjoining grasslands. The sound of them grazing so close is hard to ignore when you’re trying to get to sleep. Imagine a fat-man’s eating competition where they each have their head in a plate of pasta chomping away at it like a front-end loader – open mouth, push forward, bite, chew, swallow, and repeat, as fast as you can in repetitive machine-like fashion. This is what hippos grazing sound like. It sounds like they are in a race to consume as much as possible and as fast as possible – and perhaps they are given the body mass they need to maintain. While this background grass mowing is going on close by, the water starts to stir and splash. An elephant herd has arrived at the pan and are at the water’s edge, walking through the shallow water and splashing with their trunks. Even though its a fair distance away – probably 100 feet or more – the movement of elephants through the water is deafening. Imagine walking through 1 foot of water dragging your feet as fast as you can. Now amplify that sound 100 fold and you get some idea of the sound the elephants are creating. And then, without warning, an elephant trumpets explosively and the sound waves reverberate through our bodies. Imagine standing at a railroad crossing when an approaching train blows it whistle; this is what the trumpet of an elephant at close quarters feels like. Add to this a few scream-like barks and a couple of deafening, nerve-tingling elephant roars (that put a lion’s roar to shame) that shake the entire vehicle. While this cacophany is underway, 2 male lions start roaring, one perhaps less than 100 feet away and the other across the pan a few hundred feet away. The duo begin, one slightly before the other, with low grunts (or roars), increasing in tempo, pitch and volume until they reach a cresendo and then begin to fade away – the whole thing lasting perhaps 20-30 seconds. Just then, a spotted hyena laughs close by just outside the gate of our boma, as if to mock the lions and dare them to chase. A few minutes later, we hear the sound of marching elephants leaving the pan on their way back to the woodlands to feed. As they pass by the boma they are silhouetted in the now-risen full moon, and one or more of them give a deep belly rumble to communicate their retreat from the pan. As we fall asleep atop the Green Dragon, we revel in the sureal nature of the auditory experience we just had. The only word for it is sublime!

Here is a composite video of our experience at Deteema Hide, which in addition to showing you the site itself is almost exclusively about elephants. SO, if you are tired of seeing elephants and listening to me bable on about elephants, then you may want to skip this video. However, if, like us, you love elephants, then strap in and enjoy the video:

Sinamatella Deteema Pan composite video (22 mintutes)

For our last and 3^rd night in the Sinamatella area we moved campsites to the exclusive Shumba Hide site. The campsite itself is situated back from the pan a 100 yards or so and, unfortunately, without a view of the pan itself. However, the campsite was nicely shaded by several large ebony trees that were a delight to sit under during the mid-day sun, and we had functioning flush toilets, a water tap and warm showers to boot. The latter was obtained by building a fire in the heater behind the shower block and waiting for the water to warm up, but there was a camp tender do that for us so we just had to sit back and wait for the warm water to arrive – sweet. In case you are wondering about this hot water on demand system, here is a photo of the fireplace heater behind the shower:

In addition to building a fire for the water heater, the camp tender also brought firewood and built a campfire for us in the evening. Such pampering was more than we expected or, in truth, wanted or needed, but this is how most of the campsites are set up to run in this Park so you just go with the flow. Here are a couple of photos of the campsite:

Although we saw very little wildlife at Shumba pan, we did have one excting encounter after dark. While we were preparing dinner a lion starting roaring somewhere away from our site, but it could have been a couple hundred meters or a kilometer away as it can be really difficult to judge distance with a roaring lion. No worries, clearly a safe distance from us. A few minutes later, he roared again, this time clearly much closer to our site. Still no worries as it wasn’t like he was at the gate. A few minutes later, he roared again, and this time he was quite close. It was now clear that he was heading our way en route to the water hole and would likely pass right by us. No worries, we are inside a fenced-in campsite – of course the fence was only about 4 feet tall and broken in many places and thus not an obstacle to a determined lion. No worries, because at this time the camp tender walked down to our site from his abode and shut the gate – little good that did with the low and broken fence everywhere else, but at least it signaled to the lion “visitors not wanted”. While we quietly ate dinner, we kept a look-out for the lion who would almost certainly be passing by any moment, but it was quite dark and thus we could’nt see past the fence. Then, suddenly, this:

Yes, that’s right, a roar from the dirt track just outside the fence on the backside of the ablution block perhaps 50 feet away – loud enough to rattle our bones (note, the audio recording doesn’t do justice to the sound of this lion). A few minutes later we heard him roar again down at the pan. Somehow, we never did see him even though he passed by so close to us, but in our defense it was quite dark as the moon had not yet risen. The following morning, based on his paw prints in the dirt track, I confirmed that he walked right passed us to the pan and then returned the same way later on after we had fallen asleep. We decided to rename this pan from Shumba Pan to Simba Pan.

After one night stay at Simba Pan, we headed to the Park’s Main Camp area and the Jambili exclusive campsite for a 3-night stay. Instead of taking the main track to Jambili, we decided to take a secondary road that would be just about as long but keep us off the main track, which we learned immediately after leaving Simba Pan was highly corregated and thus very unpleasant driving. Moreover, we learned that it was apparently asphalted some years ago, but was now in such a state of disrepair that in sections the asphalt was entirely gone – leaving only the corregations, and in other sections is was a mine-field of potholes. We figured that some years ago they got some money from somewhere and paved this section with a single 1-inch layer of asphalt and then did absolutely zero maintenance for the next 20-plus years. The end result was a road worse off than if they had never paved it. Anyways, we were keen to get off this main road. On the Park tourist map it showed a secondary road that would get us there in about the same distance but keep us off the main road, so off we went with high hopes. The road started good – no corregation and nice hard sand. It gradually closed in and it became clear that no one had driven it for a very long time as there was no evidence of tire tracks to be found. However, the road right-away was clearly visible and every so often we did see what looked like two tracks, so we forged on. Eventually, the “road” became a single-track elephant path, but we pushed on because this is what the Green Dragon was made for, right? We pushed through the encroaching brush on either side and rolled over the elephant potholes with relative ease. Eventually, however, the corridor in the vegetation was no longer discernable and the Green Dragon was getting squeezed on both sides and from underneath. So, we reluctantly gave up and retraced our path to the main road and suffered the corregation until the next secondary road, which turned out to be in great shape and got us to our campsite in good time. Moral of the story: don’t trust the Park maps! Nevertheless, it was the kind of overlanding Africa adventure that I love! Here is a photo of the road/sand track before and after it turned into a single-track elephant trail:

Our Jambili campsite was, in truth, somewhat of another let-down after our spectacular Deteema campsite. The site was situated in the trees well away from the pan and on the other side of the main road with no views whatsoever. However, we did have nice shade trees and functioning ablutions as well as a very nice young camp tender, as before. Here’s our campsite:

As with the Simba campsite, the highlight of Jambili on our first night, or morning I should say, was yet another encounter with the king of the savannah. Shortly after dawn, while we were preparing breakfast, we heard 2 lions roaring from the edge of the pan near our campsite. Moments later, we heard them again, this time even closer, and then, a few minutes later, this:

Yup, that was one of the males roaring from the end of our foot path that led out to the pan, the very same one we walked (not drove) on 3 times the previous evening to see whether there was any activity on the pan. One of the lions was roaring right where we were standing the previous evening! At one point, he even turned and looked down the path right at us. In retrospect, we probably shouldn’t have been walking out to the pan from the campsite – but how else are we going to win a Darwin award?

For the next 2 full days we drove the roads around the Main Camp area of the Park, making roughly a 140 km loop drive beginning and ending at our Jambili campsite on the first day and then a much shorter drive on the second day. Once again, we had some phenomenal wildlife encounters on our drives, especially with elephants and lions. I will let the composite video below do the talking, but as before, if you like elephants and lions, strap in and enjoy the long show; otherwise, have a nice day. Note, if you are tired of watching elephants, unlike us, and just want to see lions up close and very personal (i.e., mating), then you can jump to the last 5 minutes of the video)

Main Camp Jambili composite video (26 minutes)

That’s a wrap for Hwange; see you in Binga if you stay with us.

Photo Gallery: