There are more than 30,000 elephants in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe so it’s not a matter of whether you’ll see a few elephants when you go game watching, but when. We first saw this mother’s baby at the side of the road and stopped to take it’s photo when we heard the unmistakable sound of an elephant on our right. When I turned round, I noticed her ears were fully...

When the alarm went off on our last morning at Makalolo Plains, none of us wanted to get out of bed. The hot water bottles that had kept us warm when we snuggled under the covers the night before were no match for the cold that had now permeated our tent. I buried my head under the covers, lifting it just long enough to peek at the clock to figure out...

Zebras fascinate me – each one’s stripe is unique. Aren’t they beautiful?

The day before we left Makalolo Plains was bittersweet. The team had made us feel very welcome and we knew we had made friends. On top of that, we had spent many hours watching animals at close range, and that was better than the best episode of a nature program. Towards the end of our morning drive, Godfrey spotted this hippo that appeared to sleeping at the edge of a...

Shortly after we started out on our morning drive on the second day at Hwange National Park, we came across a jackal that had just made a kill. It looked up as we approached. From where we had stopped, we could hear the bones breaking as he chomped down on his breakfast. Godfrey thought it probably had been a bird. Not long after we left the jackal, Sandra spotted an...

With 30,000 elephants in Hwange National Park, it wasn’t whether we would see any, but when and how many. As the sun came down on our first game drive, cold and blackness overtook us immediately. Dixon pulled out his infrared flashlight to make it easier to spot the animals that had become invisible to us. We were following the flashlight as it darted from side to side, and complaining, through...

On the afternoon of our second day, we raced to the spot where Godfrey, our guide, had heard that a cheetah was seen. When we arrived, two jeeps of game watchers sat waiting patiently, eyes trained on a spot in the tall grass where the cheetah was supposed to be. We were looking at the same place for so long, I no longer trusted what I was seeing. Was that...

After driving around for several hours in pitch blackness, suddenly, we were bathed in the lights that signaled the end of our first night drive through Hwange National Park. As our jeep came to a stop, we could see that a party was waiting to greet us. Tracey, Cynthia, Jeremy and Godfrey from Makalolo Plains welcomed us with warm towels and glasses of brandy and ushered us into the main...

I’ve seen some spectacular sunsets but the ones I saw in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park took my breath away. Each evening, I looked forward to seeing a dazzling display of color as the sun stained the clouds pinky blue, gold, burnt orange, purple-red before settling into an inky-black. In all, it took about two minutes for the sun to drop completely behind the horizon and when it did, it dragged...

My idea of the perfect get-away is a beach, preferably on a tropical island where I eat sumptuously, down drinks with lots of ice, party, and watch the sun rise or set, as the case might be. I don’t ‘do’ safaris, camps or animals – well, except for the odd household pet. So what was I doing driving around an African bush in a jeep, binoculars at the ready, trying...