Day 29: Hwange NP: Sinamatella – Main Camp

How quiet a quiet night can be! We only hear the lions once. Otherwise: just stars and silence. This place is great!

While we are having breakfast, the first safari vehicles appear – how brutally close they drive to the lions, crazy. But the customers only have cell phones and want nice photos.

We ask the ranger if we can also drive off the track, but either the lions are gone or we have blindfolds. It is interesting to drive into a landscape that you have previously seen from above in the distance.

We drive to two dams (Mandavu and Masuma) where there is water and therefore – surprise – lots of elephants :-) The picnic site at Masuma Dam is also a great place for a lunch break.

After that, the previously varied landscape becomes a bit dull and the main road towards the main camp is a terrible corrugated in places. Two viewing platforms (Guvalala and Nyamandhlovu) offer further views of the water and elephants – there are probably around 200 animals. Zebras and antelopes are in the minority, and we only see a few crocodiles, hippos, giraffes and warthogs.

Have we had enough of elephants? Yes, after about two and a half weeks of intensive elephant observation, we are "fed up" for now. But we are sure that the animals will delight us again in a week at the latest.

At the main camp, we decide at short notice not to drive out of the park to Silwana, because there is no electricity, no internet, it is already late and it is about 40 km away.

The main camp is "run down" as described on iOverlander. Electricity after dark, water (only cold, but that's okay) only in one of about five run-down toilet blocks, everything pretty desolate. And for that, 17 dollars pppn! We quickly use the trickling shower, eat the leftovers from yesterday, and another day is over.

The good thing is that the place is empty, so it's pretty quiet, a herd of impalas whizzes past us in big leaps and in the darkness we hear elephants and who knows what else...

By the way: It's brutally hot. Over 40 degrees and intense sunlight. In the evening, every object in the car gives off heat – perhaps we had the harmattan to thank on the west coast for the fact that it was hot, but the car didn't heat up so much.