It’s November - the end of the safari season in Mana Pools. The tented safari camps along the Zambezi River are being dismantled, packed up and put away for the next 6 months, and hardworking staff and guides are heading home for a much-needed break.
Grazing animals, after the long, harsh deprivations of October’s heat and dust, with food in scarce supply, wait expectantly for the life-giving rains to arrive. Predators can rest in the shade in peace finally free from the relentless pursuit of people in vehicles, or on foot, with telephoto lenses.
As soon as the first rainstorm hits, almost overnight, the Zambezi Valley begins its yearly transformation into a lush, green paradise. Dust is replaced by mud. The pans fill. Green shoots spring from nowhere on bare ground. The bare bush bursts into leaf. Animals give birth. Insects hatch. Suddenly there is fresh food everywhere. The roads become impassable in places.
Here are some images to show you the staggering contrast between the dry season and the wet season.
When you’re planning your once-in-a-lifetime safari to one of the beautiful tented safari camps in Mana Pools along the Zambezi River, you might wonder why the camps don’t stay open all year, so that visitors can enjoy the delights of this extraordinary seasonal transformation.
Well, the thing is, quite apart from the challenges of tropical rainstorms, everyone and everything in Mana Pools needs time to recover.
The extraordinary wilderness experiences in Mana Pools are idyllic to visitors enjoying the delights of an all-inclusive guided safari, but the reality is that running a small, seasonal, tented camp in a wild place like Mana Pools is a huge undertaking. There are all sorts of logistical challenges imposed by the area’s remoteness (difficult access, the need to be self-sufficient for energy and water supplies, the constant presence of wild, and potentially dangerous, animals etc) which make it much more difficult than most places to constantly bring in supplies, keep food fresh, protect staff and clients etc. Sustaining the high standards required to keep visitors happy and safe for 6 months of the year in extreme conditions when the weather is dry is an admirable achievement. To do this during the challenging wet season would be a step too far.
And Mana’s wild animals need a break too.
When all the guests have gone home, the camps have been packed away, and the loaded safari vehicles clatter their way back up the corrugated gravel access road to climb back up the Zambezi escarpment mountains at the end of the season, you can almost hear the landscape and its wildlife heaving a collective sigh of relief.
It’s time for everything to re-set itself.
If you're planning a safari and would like to enjoy the exceptional, personal, close-to-nature, professionally-guided experiences offered at an intimate, tented safari camp in Mana Pools National Park, during the safari season (May-Oct) then take a close look at the camps listed on the Wild Zambezi website HERE.