Saturday 5 October - Drive to Chitake No. 2 Campsite, Mana Pools National Park

Relaxed start to the day with breakfast of omelette and fried bread.  Whilst packing up the "South Africans" from the petrol station appears - turns out they are Czech.  Everyone is looking for lions.  We heard then at 5 am but thought they were quite a way off and as the Czechs heard them from Nyemepi they were probably some where in between the two campsites.  We did a short game drive but as expected saw no lions - they would be fast asleep in the shade by now.  We did however see that they had dug a big hole where the mother and baby elephant had been the day before - we later heard that they had dug the mother out but it wasn't clear if she had survived as she must have been very weak and dehydrated.  We did see a herd of buffalo plus more crocodiles and hippos in Long Pool.

We returned to the Main Campsite to have a quick shower and fill our water tank as we would have no facilities for the next 2 nights.  On the way out we saw another herd of buffalo - it was definitely a good buffalo day.

We had to check in at the second Gate for the Chitake 2 campsite.  Having had no real problems anywhere we were caught unawares when we were told the campsite was already occupied.  Not sure if we were both tired but instead of shrugging our shoulders and dealing with it in the African way we brought our UK frustrations to bear and ended up having a very heated discussion which of course got us no where.  Eventually we headed off in the direction of the campsite, the ladies at the gate had decided the campsite probably wasn't double booked but we had no evidence one way or the other.  They had also provided us with some very basic directions - "after about 2km turn right at a big baobab tree which is on your left, the road is a new road and you need to cross 2 rivers before you see the sign for the campsite."  After at least 10 km we had seen several large baobab trees on the left but none had a track let alone a new road opposite them on the right.  We decided we had gone wrong and headed back.  Just after a particularly huge baobab tree in the middle of the road we saw a track - none of the directions made sense but it was the only track we had seen so we decided to give it a go and luckily it turned out to be our road.

Now that we were on the right road, we found the campsite quite easily but it was definitely not the one described by Safari Drive in their briefing document.  It was however exactly how I had seen it described on a 4x4 forum - in the bush with no line of sight in any direction.  Certainly not on a small hillock surrounded by baobab trees with amazing views.  We were both pretty irritable and snappy by this point, however we set up camp and cooked tea - braaied steak and squash plus what was supposed to be tinned sweetcorn but turned out to be creamed corn which looked vile but luckily tasted significantly better than it looked.

As the sun was setting we started to decamp - everything needed to be put away as there were definitely hyenas around.  The only thing left to do was the awning and I was somewhat taken aback when I asked Ian if we should take it down and he replied "Just leave it!".  Luckily at this point I heard the baboons and realised that there were lions about - Ian had already heard the roars.  We both ascended into the tent in double time, just in time as the roaring was suddenly very loud.  The roaring continued every 15 - 20 minutes for the first few hours which was worrying as mating lions can keep going for 2 days and we had no idea exactly where they were relative to us as we could only hear not see them.  At about midnight the wind suddenly got up to add to the fun and of course as we hadn't taken down the awning it was acting as a sail so the entire vehicle was moving in the wind which was somewhat unnerving.  At about 2 o c'clock the rest of the pride descended on us so we had very loud roaring on both sides of the tent.  The advantage was that about an hour later all the lions moved away, and even the wind subsided a bit so we did manage to grab a bit of sleep.