Thursday 3 October - Drive to Mucheni Campsite No. 3, Mana Pools National Park

Woke to a grey cloudy day.  It had been very windy all night again so wasn't really a surprise.  Ian was feeling unwell so declined breakfast.  I on the other hand had bacon, eggs and fried bread - scrummy!  Even had time to make sandwiches - cheese for me and bacon for Ian - whilst watching the elephants and before heading to the Main Office.  We had been asked to leave our National Park receipt there which made us a bit nervous and we also wanted to double check we hadn't been double booked as they seemed to have got us booked into Nyamepi for the wrong date which probably meant there was a knock on effect for both Mucheni and Chitake. The warden at the office seemed unperturbed which didn't really allay our concerned but there was no point in pushing for further clarification.

We went for a game drive but the park is completely parched so we saw very little wildlife. We also got aggravated as like Hwange we kept coming to No entry signs due to private concessions that we couldn't access.  We eventually decided to do to our campsite at Mucheni 3 and spend the afternoon relaxing.  The view from our campsite turned out to be the best we had had all day so it was absolutely the right plan.  We watched the hippos, impala, kudu, warthogs and elephants on the "flood plain" below us.

Had an early dinner of chicken and squash curry and were packed up and in the tent by nightfall.

Almost as soon as we got into the tent we could hear an animal in camp.  It turned out to be 2 elephants walking right past the tent - we watched them in the glow of the embers of the fire walking down to the river (ignore the time on the video - clock was at least 3 hrs out!).