Take a deep breath and imagine my week last week.
We flew into Tembo Plains in anticipation of a momentous wildlife relocation again, which is a story for another day, but on the way to the camp we both fell absolutely in love with this area again: the change in wildlife, the baobabs, herds of elephants and waterbuck and the river.
The Zambezi River. I suddenly remembered days on the river from before and so was keen to get us out on the water again.
In a week, we logged up well over two hundred elephants swimming, buffalo herds of roughly the same size, male lions just off a dead hippo, hyenas, leopards, impala everywhere, with warthogs and associated mongoose, and so many ground hornbills it was ridiculous. Bushbuck wandered through camp as if we were just visiting, but not long enough to interrupt the bounty of sausage tree flowers and nectar.
Virtually every morning, a leopard had an impala kill from those who also couldn’t resist the maroon flowers and didn’t look up. It’s crocodile nesting season, and I was keen to get a sense of just how many were obviously sitting on eggs. A lot!
An elephant herd was determined to cross away from the raucous Carmine bee-eaters’ nests, but the smallest of them, just weeks old, was uncertain. His mother carefully stepped over the calf and helped him upstream so he would float against her, not away from her, in the current.
As our small film crew followed, the introduced Tembo wild dog pack, running with new puppies, chased an impala to the river. She leapt in to escape and, in an instant, disappeared in a splash; crocodile!
Best of all, which is becoming the most precious thing to me now, more than kills or wildebeest crossings, was that in a week we didn’t see a single other vehicle, and I wondered about this as we drifted down the river.
Is an experience in nature the same when alone as it is in a crowd? Can we effectively filter out the human noise and diesel fumes? And then what is luxury?
Time and space.
If that is true, Tembo Plains in Zimbabwe has the finest luxury any safari can provide.
Next month I will circle back to the momentous relocation!
