The Linkwasha Safari Lodge where we are staying is in a private wilderness area owned and managed by the ‘Wilderness Group’ with properties in eight different African countries. The camp is located in Hwange National Park on Zimbabwe’s western border with Botswana. Hwange is the country’s largest game reserve comprised of some 3.4 million acres of woodland, saltpan, scrub and grasslands.
On our morning drive today we took a long drive to the western edge of the park. This area has some of the densest concentrations of wildlife in Africa – especially elephants and buffalo. It’s quite interesting how much the landscape changes in a short distance. While driving through the woodland section, Livingstone had to clear fallen tree branches from the roadway.
Much of what we drove through was grassland with different wildlife than seen near our camp. This area is known as the Makalolo Plains. We saw quite a few interesting birds – Grey Crowned Crane, Crested Korhaan, Yellow-Billed Hornbill, and Secretary Bird.
In the taller grasses were a group of Ostriches, Impala, and the tiny Steenbok. We saw a few Spotted Mongoose atop an abandoned termite mound. Elephants and Warthogs gathered near the pans, some of which had hippos cooling off in the water.
The big hit of the drive was watching a pair of male lions stalking prey in the grassy areas.
They took no notice of our Land Rover and walked right in front the vehicle. Amazing.
For our afternoon drive we again headed towards the west end of the park, passing Davison’s Camp, another Wilderness Group property. Davison’s is one of the more rustic camps in the park. Along the route, we ran into the lions again, along with a few sub-adults. Livingstone set up our Sundowner stop near the Makalo pan and we were shortly joined by a massive herd of African Buffalo! The Buffalo are one of the ‘Big Five’. That gives us three of the five having already seen Lions and Elephants.
Oh yea, nice sunset too!