Friday 4 October - Day at Mucheni Campsite No. 3, Mana Pools National Park

We had booked a guided walk so needed to be at the Main Office at 6.30am but still ended up 10 minutes later despite being up at 5.30am.  Luckily Emmanuel our guide didn't seem bothered - we are on African time.  We drove back to one of the two pools with water - in the wet season there are 4 pools full with water and the ground would be saturated everywhere but with the current drought there is very little water anywhere in the park.

Emmanuel was very knowledgeable but was quite tricky to understand as he was very quietly spoken.  We walked across the bush to Long Pool which yesterday when we drove past it we had thought it was dry - it isn't!  On the way Emmanuel explained about various trees, termite mounds, animal dung and paw prints.  Luckily over time we started to get to grips with his accent and were able to understand a bit more.

At Long Pool we saw nature at its most raw.  A baby elephant had got stuck in the mud and its mother and gone in after it and got stuck too.  The baby had sadly died and was being eaten by hyenas with the vultures and storks in the queue for their dinner.  At first we thought the mother was also dead but it soon became clear than she was still alive - her trunk was still moving and eyes were open!  Apparently the anti-poaching team had gone yesterday to see if it was feasible to rescue her and were apparently still considering their options.

Further along Long Pool we saw pod after pod of hippo as well as some large crocs.

We returned to camp for breakfast of sausage, fried potatoes and fried bread with copious amounts of tea and coffee. We then spent a very relaxing afternoon in the sun watching elephants cross the Zambezi to a small island.

Dinner was chicken and mushroom pasta using the dried carbanara sauce - it was delicious and definitely a recipe to remember for the future as it was so easy.  The evening was spoilt by an African Bush Camp safari vehicle coming down our camp entry track to have sundowners.  The group, who we had seen earlier in the day with all their enormous camera lenses, stopped to take photos of a group of elephants and stayed for over an hour.  The guide must have known that it was a private campsite! The sunset was beautiful and it was clear why they were using the campsite as it had the best views around along with close encounters of the elephant kind.