These are some miscellaneous items from Hwange National Park.

We rarely got out of our vehicles except for tea and lunch breaks. There were some exceptions such as when our vehicle broke down. But this was a rare exception. In this instance, we saw probably more than a hundred vultures fly up out of a ravine. We couldn’t see into the ravine from the road. Our guides wanted to see what was up, so they walked down to the edge of the ravine to see what was happing down below. In this instance, our safari guide took his rifle with him. They didn’t find anything of note and we never determined why all the vultures were down there. But the guides had to be ready to defend themselves in the event of a big cat that didn’t like to be disturbed.

We heard animals at night at all four of our camps. But at this camp, each night we heard a leopard “sawing” (rumbling noise) all night long. Our guides weren’t sure why but speculated that it was looking for a mate or just warning off any intruders into its territory. We also heard the wild dog pack at night that was just below our tent. This photo lets you see that we were really “out in the woods”. This tent was as in the wilderness as any of our tents but in this case, we were somewhat right inside the woods.

This is our main lodge area where we ate meals, had drinks, and heard our safari guide talks. This facility too was out in the woods. We saw game from here several times.

A big controversy in Hwange is the elephants and their potential overpopulation and what to do about it. Of course, there is substantial disagreement. Some say there are too many elephants and some say there aren’t too many. Some say they need to thin the elephants and some say they don’t. But one problem that we learned which was a probable cause of some of the elephant problems was wells. Somewhere back in time, people felt sorry for the animals not having enough water in the dry season. Of course, back then, the animals migrated to other areas where there was water during the dry season. Now that they installed wells and water holes, the animals don’t need to migrate, but that means that this area doesn’t have an opportunity to recover, which it had when the animals had migrated along. In this photo, you are looking at a man-made water hole, from a well and piping into this pool. The water inlet is the concrete square right below the small elephant’s trunk.

There are at least eight elephants in this photo. You can see that there isn’t much for them to eat here in the dry season. They tend to destroy many trees, bushes, and areas of the ground. Others, of course, say that this is not destruction of the land but rather just the normal life of an area with elephants. We learned about a lot of problems, but we learned very few answers.