With only about 250 kilometers of road ahead we don't have to get up early today. That also gives us some time to visit Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second city. Once the capital of King Lobengula and called Place of Slaughter in Ndebele language, Bulawayo is a pleasant colonial town. Unfortunately, Sunday morning 10 AM Bulawayo is not really awake yet. Shops are closed, streets are quiet and the souvenir stalls near City Hall just started to unpack their goods. But there's a good tearoom on Fife Street serving all kinds of pastry making you forget that breakfast was only one hour ago.

Bulawayo, sunday morning 10 AM.

At 11 AM it's time to leave for our next destination: Hwange NP, Zimbabwe's premier wildlife showcase. Once a royal Ndebele hunting reserve and later the favorite elephant-hunting ground of Frederick Selous, it was set aside as a National Park in 1929 because it was regarded as a vast tract of wasteland useless for agriculture. Now Hwange is home to thousands of elephants, a conservation over-success story as there were less than a thousand left in 1929. As the park can only properly support 12,000 elephants, a culling program is in effect to prevent the park from over-population, which would lead to a destruction of habitat.

A female ostrich.

In the afternoon it's time for a game drive around Main Camp, our campsite situated at the northeastern border of Hwange. Apart from three Sable antelopes that crossed the road and quickly disappeared in the bush, a shy pair of Steenboks and a lonely female ostrich, we didn't see a lot of animals until we ran into a large herd of elephants going to a nearby pan. We followed them and for a while were watching them drinking and playing in the water of the pan. From there we drove on to the Nyamadhlovu Pan. This large pan has an elevated viewing platform from where you'll have an excellent possibility to view animals that come to drink here.

A herd of elephants approaching the pan. Part of the herd walks around the pan scaring off the giraffe.
Nyamadhlovu Pan. A drinking giraffe minutes before the arrival of a large herd of elephants. In the meantime part of the herd is already entering the pan.
Drinking and playing elephants in the pan's water.

While watching a giraffe that slowly approached the water and then elegantly bowed his long neck to drink, we suddenly saw a movement on the right. We thought that we had seen a large herd at the other pan, but this herd was even larger. Some twenty elephants came walking towards the water, frightening off the giraffe. And while some stopped at the waterfront to drink, others were walking around the pan before stepping into the water to bathe and play. After about twenty minutes of frolicking in the water they had enough of it and swiftly moved away again. What a sight!

A different elephant, a different pan, a similar scene.

With the sun disappearing behind the horizon, we had to go back to the campsite again. There Marlene was already preparing dinner: braai tonight! Although the meat was a little bit to well done, it tasted well enough and with our bellies full of meat and coke we sat around the campfire. Under a diamond sky we were ready for our next bottle of Amaruhla.

Marlene preparing tonights dinner.