Buffalo in the dust at Chitake Springs

The lions were mostly in the trees

"She suddenly came rushing forward..."

Exploring the rocks for dinosaur fossils

There are always elephants in Mana Pools

The last two months of the 2009 safari season in Mana Pools were very full for Kavinga Safaris, and we have had the pleasure of meeting and becoming friends with a mixed group of guests, from local, regional and global destinations.

September and October are always the best game viewing times.  With water pans getting dry, the game is driven to the last remaining sources of water and the concentration builds up daily. The herds of Buffalo at Chitake Springs this season were way beyond the norm and the excitement of being able to get down into the spring and see these magnificent animals coming over the lip of the embankment, with all the dust, low bellowing and the continuous swirling of red ox- peckers flitting from one animal to the next, made it a photographer's dream.

Chitake is well known for its lions.  This year however the pride consisted of two females and four cubs.  The cubs are fairly big now, having been born in September and November last year and we were privileged to experience the females catch a warthog and then leave the cubs to finish off the kill - very gruesome but all part of nature's training. The Chitake lions seem to spend more time up in trees than they do on the ground, and our guests were able to get some good footage of this. The male lion was very secretive and we were only able to spot him on a few occasions. Down at the Zambezi River camp however, the lion population seems to have increased and sightings were a daily happening.

The "adrenalin hit" of the season though was in Chitake where we walked into the six lions who were all sitting up a small rain tree.  The big female came down and gave us a bit of a growl but seemed fairly relaxed and we were well away from her comfort zone. For no apparent reason she suddenly came rushing forward in a low attack position and stopped about 12 paces from us, Clyde managed to get a great couple of shots of her.

Looking back on the past few months it is the wild dog that gave us the most memorable experiences. Jacquie in the shower and the kill taking place 10 meters from her!  The dogs took down 3 impala in about 30 minutes at Mucheni and then in November, 33 dogs chased a bushbuck down the Chitake and killed it about 20 meters from us. Watching them tear apart their prey in literally minutes is something you don't forget.

A great deal of interest is always shown with the walk to the dinosaur fossils at Chitake.  Having Peter on one of the safaris to explain the rock formation made it that more interesting for us. This year a team, under the guidance of Zimbabwe's Museum of Natural History in Bulawayo, in conjunction with National Museums and Monuments,  removed a large piece of the rock in which the fossils were embedded, and took it away for futher research.  A similar excavation was done a few years ago, and a fully articulated skeleton was reconstructed from the bones recovered.  The original name given to the dinosaur was "Syntasis rhodesiencis", but since the reconstruction, it has been categorised as Coelophysis"

Another memorable event was sitting one evening at Mucheni 1 camp and having more than 60 elephants feeding on the islands in front of us.  Sitting there quietly with a cold drink in hand, the sun going down, hippos snorting and the abundant bird life going about their evening chores, made this evening for me, what the river is all about. The complete relax.

To all of you who spent time with us this season, thank you for your support and we hope to see you all again in the not to distant future. May we all hope for a happy Christmas and that the New Year can bring stability to this wonderful country of ours.

From the Kavinga team
Rod and Lou
Clyde and Leah
Steve and Clare
Patrick, Keyo, Kenneth and Robert