Last weekend, we went back to Zinave National Park after our first trip in April, this time with Paul, Mandy, and the girls. They rented a car and Jay and I went in our car with Sadhbh, and all was going well until we were nearly in the park. Then, we had our first mishap: while spotting some zebra, the tire of the rented car went over a sharp stick and blew out. We had to empty everything out of the car to try to find the wheel spanners, jacks, etc. After tearing the car apart in an exhaustive search and a bit of arguing, we realized that the rental car was missing repair pieces. Thankfully, Jay had a new toolbox which saved the day.

While he and Paul worked to fix the tire, all the girls decided to do a photo shoot with a well-earned glass of wine.

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After about an hour and a half (longest tire change in history thanks to all the searching), we re-packed everything and drove the final kilometers into the park. We arrived just before dusk, and decided to immediately go for sundowners at the big pan. We watched the sunset and listened to the birds calling and hippos cackling. Lovely way to end the day.

Each day ends with a fire-pit and star gazing, listening to the hippos on the water. The night sky is clear and bright, the Milky Way is so visible, and we spotted at least two shooting stars a night.

The next day, we got up to a misty morning over the river. We sat watching the hippos and drinking coffee while the sun came out of the fog.

Misty morning over the river - some intrepid campers decided to go fishing.

We left on a morning game drive after breakfast. As we drove, we saw lots of plains game, including impala, waterbuck, zebra, wildebeest, and a lone buffalo.

We went back to rest a bit and have some lunch, then sat in a shallow part of the river - where we could clearly see there were no hippos or crocodiles near - for a while to cool off.

Later in the afternoon, we headed out for another game drive. We had a goal this time. We were looking for elephants. We had seen evidence of the elephants all over - tracks, big piles of dung, and broken trees everywhere. Jay told us that often the mother elephants push smaller trees over so that the babies can eat the leaves from the tops. We had seen a lot of evidence of this in a certain area on our morning drive, so Jay thought if we went back there, we might find them. Sure enough, we were cruising through the bush, when suddenly I spotted it: “ELEPHANT!” I cried, overly excited “Shhh!!! They can hear us, you know. What do you think those huge ears are for,” Jay said, slowing the car so we could watch them. Sadhbh, who was with us, and I were just lining up our cameras for a photo when Jay suddenly let out a strangled squawk and hit the gas, hard. “What are you doing??? Slow down, we were about the get a photo!” we both started screaming as the car bumped and raced over the uneven ground. “The matriarch! She’s charging,” he explained, and sure enough out of the bush exploded an angry mother elephant.

This is the only photo we could get of her as we careened away. In the middle of our hasty exit, we ran into the other car full of Paul, Mandy and the others. We stopped and told them about the elephants, and then we all drove back carefully to the place we had seen them. For a while, all was quiet, and then suddenly it seemed like the whole herd came out of the brush. They were not happy. Having recently been translocated, and having babies in the herd, they were wary of cars and people and did not want us around. They chased our two cars all the way to the pan before turning off and disappearing, like smoke in the wind, back into the bushes. That was definitely our excitement for the day.