Zimbabwe Adventures

Ah wait! I forgot completely to tell you about our trip to Zim!

When we were still at Karingani, we were fortunate enough to meet the most incredible couple – John and Diane. John and Diane sponsor conservation work across Africa placing tracking collars on numerous different wildlife species every year with helicopter pilot, Tristan. We had some incredible adventures together at Karingani during their yearly visits and were really sad when we left and those stopped. Last year, John and Diane invited us up to northern Mozambique to help out one of their collaring expeditions in Niassa and it was so lovely to spend the week catching up with them. This year they invited us out to Fothergill Island in Matusadona National Park in Zimbabwe. I have only been to Zim once before only on a day trip to see Victoria Falls so I was extra excited to go back and see more of the country. We stayed at the most incredible camp, which basically was like a minimoon for Ellery and myself. John, Diane and Tristan went out during the day to collar with African Parks and the Zim team while Ellery and I enjoyed the camp, bush walks and lots of birding!

In the evenings when everyone was back, we hopped on the boat for sundowners and to fish on Lake Kariba aiming for tiger fish and vundu (the largest freshwater fish in Africa). It wasn’t really tiger fish season, but after the first 15 kg vundu catch we completely switched gears and only fished for vundu. I ended up landing the biggest one of the trip a “small” by vundu standards, but still massive 16.7 kg one!

Evenings were spent around the fire laughing, joking and telling stories with John, Diane and Tristan. I cannot emphasize enough how incredible each one of them is. Truly salt of the earth type people and I am extremely honoured to call them my friends. Even though we only see each other once a year, it often feels like we were all together only the month prior. Tristan and Ellery are a particularly hilarious duo – I swear they are like a bunch of naughty school boys giggling away to the point of tears at some inappropriate joke. I could spend all day just watching the two of them together! It warms my heart so much!

On our last night there, Ellery and I decided to try and tick off some more birds off our list, so we went on a shoreline boat safari and boy did we get lucky! We had incredible sightings of African skimmers, collared pratincole, goliath and squacco herons and so much more!

Unexpectedly, while we were checking out birds, our awesome guide, Wayne, called out that he sees a lion on shore from the boat. I thought he was joking. But as we got closer, sure enough laying next to a hippo carcass was a young male lion, fat from his extra large meal. We hung out watching him from the water for some time.

As the sun was starting to set, Wayne surprised us again bringing the boat to land and an extraordinary sundowner setup with delicious treats and drinks! Instead of hopping back on the boat and heading back in the dark, we jumped on a game viewer to see if we could spot any nighttime animals. Ticking another off the box, we came across a super relaxed leopard!!

The leopard kept glimpsing up in a nearby tree and judging by her large belly, we assumed that she must have a kill stashed up there. Trolling spotted hyenas hanging out nearby pretty much confirmed that suspicion.

I cannot tell you enough how much my heart needed this bush break, more than I think even I realised until we were on the flight home. It was so amazing to spend the week with such incredible humans and in such an incredible place!