Hello there. I hope that you are well and excited for the week ahead. Here in the Luangwa, it’s the final countdown before Tena Tena and Nsefu open at the weekend and let me tell you, it is frantic as we get everything ready. Its been a particularly tricky camp opening this year with massively delayed access into the Nsefu sector, but the teams have been working feverishly and shall continue to do so to get the camps looking wonderful for our first guests on Sunday. But the news is not from the Luangwa today, instead we are heading to Zimbabwe and hearing from Mark, one of the guides at John’s Camp. Mark over to you:
“Our season here in Mana Pools has just started. The park is still green with heavy vegetation and the pans are full to the brim with water and wildlife including this stunning saddle bill stork that was just chilling in one of them.
We can happily sit for hours watching the activity around the pans but find ourselves exploring further afield and looking for the painted dogs who look as if they are about to den, this is great news as last year’s pups were a disaster for them, they showed interest in a culvert under a road behind long pool but thankfully moved on into the jesse. Now we hold our breath and wait patiently to see what happens and hopefully we shall have some little pups running around soon.
In bigger news the elephants are regularly wandering out onto the flood plain and Boswell, our Mana movie star (because he regularly stands up on his back legs to reach the tastier morsels in the trees), is in musth but is as always being a real gentleman about it all and carries on in his wonderful calm nature.
The lions are calling nightly around us and two nights ago they had a concert with the Zambian pride across the river which was certainly an impressive noise made even louder when the hyenas decided to add their whooping note in amongst the lions’ magnificent voices. With the cacophony 2 large kudu bulls decided to panic a little thinking they might make it onto the menu at the dinner party and ran into camp with gusto, but they made it through the night and like us, looked a little sleepy in the morning. An impala however was not quite so lucky as last night it was stalked by a leopard down the gulley between the tents and taken as a midnight feast.
Looking to the skies we have had some wonderful bird sightings from the star deck including fish eagle sunning itself in the late afternoon glow. The guests have also been enjoying some wonderful night skies.
It has been a wonderful start to the season including an incredible full moon which we all enjoyed from around the firepit on a cool May evening. We are very excited about the upcoming season and look forward to sharing more of our adventures with you.”
Wow, thank you so much Mark! This all sounds amazing, exciting to hear your news. We look forward to more as the season progresses.
Lastly a little Luangwa news… Luangwa River Camp has been having some incredible sightings of almost everything including the wild dogs who were camped on the riverbank opposite camp for a few days. Not to mention some impressive lion sightings as well, so it has been a fantastic start all round.
Next week we will hear from Nsefu and Tena Tena as they leap into the season with excitement and gusto.
For now, I shall bid you a very fond farewell with plenty of smiles and laughter and don’t forget to look after one another.
