Hello there, I hope that you are fabulously well and have had a fun weekend and are ready for another week ahead with whatever it may bring your way. Here in the Luangwa winter is over and we had a start to the August winds which has, to the groundsmen’s absolute joy, blown plenty of leaves off the trees. This means that absolutely nothing can move around camp with any form of stealth as they gently crunch under even the smallest of feet. Yesterday as a band of banded mongooses sped off, it sounded like a stampede! Anyway, enough from me, this week we are hearing from the team at Kuthengo so I shall stop with my nattering and hand you over to them.
“It is yet another Monday (can you believe it) and it has been a busy few weeks at Kuthengo. Everything from the July African Parks elephant translocation to having cheetahs in camp, to the weather yet again changing and warming up.
July was a very interesting month, and this is mainly due to the massive operation that African Parks was heading up, with the goal of moving 250 elephants from Liwonde National Park to Kasungu, along with other game and antelope to various Parks within Malawi. With Jenn and I being relatively new to the Park it was a great to meet and greet most of the Parks operations team who kept us up to date with all major operations and developments. In the end they managed to move a total of 263 elephants out of the park. The main reason of the entire operation was to help control the current elephant population in the national park.
It was truly amazing, for both guests and staff to witness all this taking place and to see the helicopters at work, some days right in front of camp. It is now mid-August, and it is good to see the elephants relaxed again and living their best life. During the translocation operations there was so much happening from helicopters flying, trucks driving in and out as well as planes flying overhead, but it was wonderful to witness for us and our guests and even better was that it didn’t impede our guests’ sighting in the slightest.
The lions and cheetahs have been extremely active along the river, especially now that the inside of the park is slowly drying up which is pushing most of the game to the river side. It was just the other night when we had a cheetah walk through the main area (probably having a quick look at what we had in the bar). It makes sense now because it was beef fillet night – yum!
We managed to see a very rare sighting of an albino hippo. It did take a second look to confirm that we were not imagining it, and fortunately it was very easy to spot it as it certainly stuck out! We have also had plenty of other incredible sightings of anteaters, rhinos and a swallow tailed bee-eater. All-in-all it’s been great being at Kuthengo and we look forward to telling you more about all that we have been seeing as the season progresses.”
Great thanks so much for sharing, it is so wonderful to hear and certainly sounds like you guys have been very busy, and we look forward to more news from you. As I sign off for this week, we are being serenaded by the wonderful song of a White-browed Robin Chat who is singing its little heart out right outside my window, making sure that everyone knows that it’s there. So without any further procrastination I shall bid you a very fond farewell and hope that you have a wonderful week ahead with plenty of smiles and laughter and don’t forget to look after one another.
