His name is Ant (Anthony) Kashula and his lovely wife's name is Rawana.
Rawana operates her own Safari Co-ordination business for a number of Safari Operators, and I am glad to say, she has me on her e-mail list.
The last e-mail describes the "feeling" of a Zimbabwe Safari right down to a "T". She calls it a "Bush Snippet" and I would like to repeat it herewith:
You wake up to a cacophony of churring long-tailed starlings in the flowering wild-mango trees and the booming "huh huh huh- huh of the ground hornbills.
Already, at 5.30 in the morning the night is losing her coolness, the promise of warmth and dry heat in the smells of the warming earth.
The colossal Wild Mango trees are thick with yellow flowers, their petals falling like rain as the myriad birds hop about their branches.
The 8th of September was the day that Zimbabwe gave up winter for summer, entirely skipping Spring, it would seem. The first week of September was so cold and windy we were bundled against the chill and longing for a little warmth - yet, not a week later, we were dousing ourselves with cold buckets of water. There is something wonderful about nature's ability to just remind us of that we must give ourselves over to her dynamic moods.
The warmth heralds the eruption of flowers on the knob-thorn acacia, Acacia nigrescens. Looking over the vistas towards escarpments in the purple distance you see puffs of white down marking the sentinels of the bush. Combretum mossambicensis also providing long trails of white brush flowers to the otherwise quite bare earth flood plains.
I was lucky enough to spend two weeks camped beneath the Wild Mangoes with the starlings and some elephant bulls for company, as well as our two children and some delightful guests.
As is always the way however, often the most memorable wildlife experiences happen when you do not have guests!
We arrived back into camp one afternoon to find a resident leopardess had stashed an impala kill in the bough of a tree 4 meters off the path to our mess tent and 3 meters behind the mess tent.
With much parental clucking and concern for the toddlers we dragged her kill out into the riverbed.
We watched the perigee full (Super) moon rise across the sand of the river, reflecting in red, mercurial strips in the water. Huge and ethereal, before taking Tassia to our tent and viewing Mrs. Leopard on route. She sat crouched in the beam of the torch, looking for her errant Impala.
A waft of decay on the wind from the riverbed got her paddling off and there we watched her by the light of the moon happily crunching away.
Not many people think to plan their Safaris around moon phases.... but it got me thinking... why not ?
Rawana Kaschula.
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This so beautifully describes the facts and the moods of an African Safari. Anyone who has not yet experienced it does not truly know what they are missing.
Do yourself the biggest favour... call Rowana or her husband Ant and let them show you Zimbabwe, Africa at its best.
Guess who is just itching to go back there.
Bertstravels !
that's who!
Rowana mentioned the "Long Tailed Starling", the "Elephant" and the "Ground Hornbill"... she also mentioned a Leopard...
Here are 3 out of 4. I could also show you Lions and Cheetahs and all kinds of other denizens of Zimbabwe... unfortunately no Leopard...
Although they are called "Ground Hornbill"
they don't mind hanging out in a tree.
When they just sit aound, they look completely black.
In flight, however, they show their
white wing tips.
Rawama mentioned the "long tailed starling".
This may be the "Glossy Starling"
but what the hey... a starling is a starling. No?
I have literally hundreds of Elephant pictures.
This one will have to do.
Any closer and you'd have to call it :
"Too close for comfort."
True, this is not a Leopard,
but it is a very rare picture of a Cheetah mother
with four healthy cubs.
I hope they all survived.
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