Mvuu means hippo and it was to the sounds of the mvuu that we were woken; they had been very vocal all night. Once the ellies left the camp, we were left to the grunts of the hippo. We then watched them on the river bank, while drinking our morning condensed milk coffee and then headed off to do our morning camp chores.
Before I knew it, the kids were digging around in the fridges and food boxes for a mid morning snack, informing me they had not had breakfast. After brunch we all gravitated back to the deck and the stunning view of the Zambezi, overlooking Zim’s, Mana Pools on the opposite side.
Shortly after getting comfortable, the resident herd of ellie arrived, we sat and watched them really quietly for about ½ an hour, eventually they came so close, we could almost touch them. The kids seem to have lost their fear of ellies, after spending so much time with them over the last few weeks. Admittedly, the elephants here are a lot more relaxed than we have generally encountered in South Africa. Robs wants to take the baby ellie home with us. Left to her, we would now have a baby turtle, a baby ellie and a baby Tanzanian, Malawian and Zambian.
Gareth has taken a keen interest in photography, with my new camera, so I have left him to take the pictures in the game parks. Had I known he was so zealous with his new task, I would have been a little less eager to hand over my precious camera. It took me most of the afternoon to download and sort through some 860 photos – some stunning ones and some very lame, like his big toe. He also needs to learn to take 3 of everything, not 303.
We had a long and interesting chat with Troy, the camp manager of 8 years. It was fascinating to hear how the camp has developed over the years. We then steered the conversation in the direction of the honeymoon campers. The stunning ‘Mrs H Moon ’ had arrived in our camp this morning to borrow some matches, theirs went missing after the ellies had trashed their camp the night before – she is a beautiful young Swedish blond – Gray tripped over a tree trunk while going off to look for our matches. Troy got a sly smile on his face and said “Oh you mean – the howler”. It turned out they are not honeymooners, just some twenty something’s having a dirty weekend.
We had a great dinner, braaied chicken with garlic mash and salad. Shortly after dinner, watching the full moon come up over the Zambezi, the howling started, much to the amusement of the entire camp site.
Ellie performing for us
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