The spring has sprung in Gorongosa in so many ways that we
can hardly believe this is the same place as it was in August. The new
green shoots of grass are competing with the new leaf flushes on the trees for
the Most-Vivid-Green-of-the-Year award. The birds are all busy building
nests and chasing lovers around, all whilst keeping the competition at
bay. The oribi have already started dropping their calves - who with a
little toothpick and some garnish would not look out of place on a platter of hors
d'oeuvres... they're simply tiny! And talking tiny - the little warthog
piglets are popping up all over the place. Jos is pushing the
let's-adopt-a-baby-warthog button again, which at the moment is being ignored
quite well. Other bits and bobs from the bush include many incredible
encounters on foot with all sorts of great stuff including the pair of Narina
Trogons in camp and a herd of 60-plus sable antelope on the floodplain.
We have also been lucky with lions again in September with a number of great sightings
of these incredible beasts in and around camp. We even got to see our
first kill in Gorongosa - a pair of young lions caught and terrorised a young
bushbuck on one of our night drives early in the month, before eventually
realising to eat was better than to listen to squealing. Needless to say,
our guests ate vegetarian that night!
Other great stuff from the bush this month has included the flowering Sabi
Stars or Impala Lilies (Adeniumobesum) as well as all the other
flowers that are out in this garden of Eden right now. Like the birds
(and the educated fleas), the bees are making the most of all the new flowers
and buds, and hives encountered on walks are seriously into full-scale honey
production...yummy. We have had some great guests this month at
Explorers, and have managed to take some of them to some really awesome places
in the park where they have had the chance to have some proper one-on-one time
with the wilds of Gorongosa. We had a very successful fly-camp up on the
baobab hill with a couple from the States who seemed pretty thrilled by it
all.
We also have been able to enjoy the release into the Gorongosa Sanctuary of 54
buffalo that were brought up by the park from the Kruger Park in South
Africa. The buffalo endured a 2-day truck journey but were seemingly
happy with their new surroundings as they went about munching grass and mooing
(as they do) as if they were locals. We will follow their progress
closely, as well as that of their colleagues arriving in early October (yip -
even more buffalo coming as part of the park's mission to up the mega-herbivore
populations within the park after they took a hit during the decades of civil
conflict.)
In amongst all this, we've all had time to enjoy the hot weather and some early
rains, whilst still remembering the most important aspect of what we are doing
here: to have a lot of fun, and appreciate what really is a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity to be part of a much greater vision to restore both the park and
its neighbouring people to a much better state of life. Life is too short
to not realise the importance of a place like Gorongosa in the greater scheme
of things...
Hope to see you in the park soon -
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to find out more
about our end-of-season special running from October to mid-December (when
unfortunately we have to close for the wet season). Until then - all the
best from us all at Explore Gorongosa
