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I stayed in two stunning Zimbabwe safari retreats and witnessed ‘the rarest thing local guide had ever seen’
- Siobhan Grogan checks into Wilderness Linkwasha and Wilderness Ruckomechi, both in Zimbabwe
I don’t see the elephant until it’s almost too late.
Hidden behind trees, she has her head down drinking directly from the camp’s small swimming pool when I pass, inadvertently walking between her and her calf on the other side of the path.
She notices me first, stretches to her full three-metre height, and trumpets a warning so loud it makes my ears ring. I don’t need telling twice to get out of her way quickly.
Up-close animal encounters like this are a thrilling reminder that the best safari holidays shouldn’t feel like a glorified trip to the zoo.
I’m visiting Zimbabwe on a two-lodge adventure with tour operator Yellow Zebra, which employs former safari guides and camp managers to tailor-make luxury African safari holidays to any requirement.
I’d come looking for adventure, wanting to feel like I was really out in the wild surrounded by animals, and Yellow Zebra nailed the brief perfectly.
My first camp is Wilderness Linkwasha, set in an 84,000-acre private concession in Hwange National Park, the largest natural reserve in Zimbabwe and an hour’s flight from Victoria Falls on a small, 15-seater charter plane.
Part of the Kalahari Basin on the border with Botswana, Hwange has sandy desert soils scattered with grasslands, salt pans and unexpected patches of woodlands where lions, leopards, hippos, cheetahs and more than 45,000 elephants roam freely.
Visiting in the dry season between April and October is ideal for game-spotting, as animals gather round waterholes (and apparently, the nearest swimming pool) to drink.
The camp itself has nine tented suites but although I’m sleeping under canvas, I’m not exactly roughing it. My large room has a freestanding bath, a plush four-poster bed draped in mosquito nets, and a complimentary mini-bar including a Kilner jar of homemade ginger biscuits. Linkwasha’s very own waterhole is just outside, so I can spot elephants and buffalos without even getting out of bed.
All food and drink is included, and there’s a tented lounge and decked area for starlit dinners, free-flowing campfire sundowners and afternoon tea served before the nightly game drive.
Two drives are included each day and every one is different.
Rangers are staggeringly knowledgeable and must train for up to seven years – equivalent to a doctor – to qualify in Zimbabwe. Mine, Tongo, points out baboons scaling a tree, hippos wallowing in a waterhole, baby elephants rolling in the mud and warthogs racing across the plains.
Though we didn’t need help spotting the two stately cheetahs that came so near to our open-sided jeep I could reach out and touch them (if I didn’t want my fingers back).
One evening at sunset we chance upon a lioness moments after killing a sable antelope, still panting from the exertion with blood smeared around her mouth.
Moments later, lion cubs appear and set upon the carcass. They’re so close, we see – and smell – them pull the sable’s stomach out of its body and I try not to shudder.
We leave them to eat but return after dark to catch something even more astonishing.
Four hippos approach the carcass, squaring up to the lions and chasing them away, so they can take their turn feasting on the meat, even though hippos are widely considered herbivores.
‘This is the rarest thing I’ve ever seen,’ marvels Tongo. ‘No one will believe you’ve seen this.’
Yet there are more pinch-me moments to come three days later when I fly an hour north to the entirely solar-powered Wilderness Ruckomechi on the banks of Zimbabwe’s Zambezi River in Mana Pools National Park.
Home to more than 100 mammals and 450 bird species, the park is a vast, remote landscape of sandbanks, dried riverbeds and towering acacia trees on the mountainous Zambian border.
There are no fences between guests and animals, so you don’t need to go far to spot extraordinary wildlife.
I’m woken during the night by hyenas howling and hippos honking from the nearby river bank, while rangers need to shoo elephants away when they come a little too close to our lunchtime barbeque.
But don’t panic: there’s a horn and walkie-talkie in every tented room for emergencies.
As well as game drives, I join a walking safari where we tiptoe away from an enormous bull elephant, trying not to crunch the dry leaves underfoot while pretending to ignore the grunting lions in the distance.
Later, I sail down the Zambezi River at sunset, watching crocodiles slither into the water as the sky turns orange.
Once darkness has fallen, Jupiter and Venus glow brightly above and I’m lucky enough to see the white tail of the rare A3 Comet, only visible once every 80,000 years.
As if I needed any more proof that a safari in Zimbabwe really is the holiday of a lifetime.