This is our last few hours in Zimbabwe as we leave late morning for the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve, adjacent to Kruger National Park in South Africa.
We had some excitement during breakfast at the hotel before our departure. The Palm has an open-air dining room (covered) where a breakfast buffet is set up. It’s quite nice with a large variety of fruits, meats, & pastries. Dick was very excited when he found some apricot Danish and added them to his plate. We had just sat down at the table and in the blink of an eye a monkey grabbed the Danish from his plate and dashed off!
Our shuttle driver to the airport was an older gentleman who might have been a university professor in a previous life. During the drive, he gave us a non-stop discourse on the Falls, Victoria Falls town, the British occupation, tribes from the area, wildlife, the current government, etc.
Victoria Falls Airport is surprisingly large. The Chinese government provided loans to upgrade the runways and build a new terminal in 2013 as part of their “Belt and Road” initiative. It has some special facilities especially suited to oriental customers. Seemingly every wall at the port (including the restroom facilities) has a picture of His Excellency Cde. Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe’s President.
We flew “Fastjet Zimbabwe” to Kruger National Park’s Mpumalanga Airport, then boarded a “Federal Airlines” bush plane to take us to our camp’s landing strip. The transfer at Mpumalanga to our bush flight was a little weird as we were ushered into a tiny waiting room off to the side of the terminal, escorted on to the tarmac to our plane, sent back to the waiting room while the plane refueled, then back on the tarmac to board. Confusing but at least the staff were all quite pleasant.
Danie, our guide for the week, met us at the strip and drove us to the “Rockfig Safari Lodge” and our beautiful suite. After a quick lunch we headed out for afternoon game drive. We were joined by Jeremy and Christina, a couple from New York City, here on their honeymoon. This was our third safari camp and the first one where we had both a guide (Danie) and spotter (Trust).
What a great couple of hours for game spotting! We immediately came across a male lion and a small herd of elephants. Then, a rhino! That’s number four of the “Big Five”.
As we headed back to camp, Danie was alerted via walkie-talkie alert to a leopard kill. We found the site – a leopard resting in a tree with his/her impala kill hanging nearby. It was really dark so the pictures are crap but the scene was awesome. Plus, the leopard sighting gave us number five of the “Big Five”.
