9 July, Tuesday: Day in Mana

We were up in time to watch the sun light up the Zambezi and went for a drive, watching the bush come to life. As we exited the camp we saw 5 ground hornbills walking past, searching for insects on the ground. We had beautiful sightings of elephant and as we were on our way back, we saw from a very far distance, lions mating. The morning was cool and pleasant and the night was'nt too cold either, it was a good temperature. We now had the day to relax in the wild bush. After a big fry up for brekkie, we sat reading our books with the view of the river, listening to the fish eagles calling right above us and watching the po's wallow in the water.

We had a tuskless mommy ellie wondering into our campsite with a tiny baby right by her side. It was such an amazing experience. They walked so relaxed right between the tents and we sat quietly watching the two interact and very casually make their way across the campsite. Our camping neighbours are from Zimbabwe, two dads with their sons have come to Mana for a few days and invited us to join them for a drink. As the sun was setting, the brightest, most stunning colours, had us all speechless at its beauty, we went to join the friendly Zimbos. We were able to get some advice from them for our route tomorrow and as we have heard from other Zimbabweans, they strongly encouraged us to not cycle the A1, the road going from Mana to Harare. Its the road leading to the main Zambian border post where all the trucks go through and its apparently such a dangerous road, busy with lots of trucks and very potholed. Zim is also currently facing a huge fuel crisis at the moment so they very kindly gave us a number for a guy who supplies diesel privately. After a few beers were shared and had built up an appetite, we said our goodbyes and on our way back to our campsite, we shined our torch onto a big herd of buffalo's grazing right in front of us. We spent our last evening around a cosy fire with an Amarula and listened to the lions roaring loudly closeby. We scoped out the surroundings with the torch and there were the lions, right in front of us. We sat quietly listening to the most incredible, intense lion roars and they were only a 100 m away from us. It was the most exciting, adrenalin pumping experience. As we nervously got into our tents, the hyena's came back, again, looking for any scraps.

After having slept for an hour, I woke up to a loud rustling sound and jumped up with excitement, poking my head out and calling to dad to wake up and look and right there, the tree our tent was under, was an elephant!!