I spent the last week in absolute bliss! I was offered an opportunity to go to Mana Pools (pronounced marna), which is the Shona word for 4. So there are 4 pools, well kind of, it’s part of the Zambezi that runs between Zambia and Zimbabwe. This is real camping with tents and metal food containers and fire cooking the works! So we stayed at a secluded camp the closest neighbour we had was a mile away we never saw them, heard them or saw lights, occasional we saw their vehicle. What really impressed me was that the friends I went with, the husband is a vet, which is really helpful living with animals in the bush BUT his son is a professional guide. I was exposed to all sorts of things I never would’ve seen, heard, or known otherwise.

For instance elephants have 6 sets of teeth over the lifetime, the set grows in at the front and moves slowly towards the back of their mouth then fall out as a new set grows in, an elephant life is determined on how long their teeth last, an elephant can live up to 80 years but in places like Mana that are sandy, it causes their teeth the sand down faster, going through the 6 sets faster and thus ending life. I also learned that some elephants are born without tusks. Female lions lead the hunt and kill the prey, the males are last in the pride and once a kill has been made he takes over and gets first bite. Hippos kill more humans than any other animal in Africa! Crocodiles eat once a year unless the kill is easy and available and they only kill in deep waters where they are comfortable and as they also drown their prey to kill it. I learned much more but I’ll get on with the interesting stuff.

Brian, the guide brought a shower, that’s right, a shower. I thought I’d have to bathe in a bucket or in the river or something, don’t laugh I HAVE NEVER BEEN CAMPING AND I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT I WAS GETTING INTO. I did have an overnight test run but showering was never an issue. He hooked up a bag with a shower nozzle onto a tree and put up a canvas wall using poles around 3 sides of the shower to create a little room with an open wall that was open to the wildlife. I was told the bathroom was a hole in the ground called a long drop, I got out there and PRAISE THE LORD there was a toilet seat on top so I didn’t have to squat just hover, so basically it was an outhouse.

We went on game drives at various times of the day because you see different things at different times. There are day animals and night animals, 2 complete sets of wildlife, it’s funny to watch the day animals at about 5 or 6 they all leave what they are doing and go home to their trees or dens or whatever like they’re coming home from work. Hippos live in the water, however at night they come out of the water to eat on land, all day and all night you can hear them talking, laughing, burping all sorts going on, I wished I could’ve taped them, it was really funny. At night they would walk through our campsite and you could hear them blump, blump, blump. Hyenas would also come through the site, I never saw them but you could see their footprints in the morning. Baboons are you’re biggest issue during the day, that’s why you lock up EVERYTHING and I mean EVERYTHING and keep your tent closed. During games drives I saw a pride of lions on the hunt, it was amazing and incredible, and how they didn’t even care we were there they just kept going to attack a family of warthogs. It’s not the kill that’s interesting it’s watching them work, the planning, and the timing. We saw painted dogs on a hunt of impala, painted dogs are wild dogs that kind of look like hyenas. The pack was small only 3 and one was lame, they killed an impala but lions got wind of it and scared them off to eat it themselves. We saw loads of elephants; one came daily to eat the bark off a tree at our campsite. One night we were up later than usual and heard a noise in the bush I walked behind Brian as he checked it out and… it was a leopard!!!! It was amazing these green eyes staring back at us and it turns out lions and leopards and any cat really are very skittish animals, unlike hyenas or painted dogs they retreat around humans as a first instinct, so it was a short visit but non the less I SAW A LEOPARD! The only animal I wasn’t able to see first hand was a hyena, oh well next time ☺