Mana Pools Magic

By Stephen and Jacqueline

In April we lived on the banks of the lower Zambezi River for a whole week. We went there with my sister and her family who made the journey north to spend some time with us over Easter. Our family’s first experience of the Zambezi River was just after we crossed the Kazungula border and entered Zimbabwe. There its waters thunder down the magnificent Victoria Falls. Our trip to Mana Pools National Park in the north of Zimbabwe was a totally different encounter. The lower Zambezi River has a magic about it that is not really easy to describe in words or pictures - it needs to be felt. However, I’m going to try do it justice in this story. 

Big baobab tree on our way in to Mana Pools

Far away from the madding crowd, or any crowd for that matter, Nyamepi Camp - the main campsite in this Zimparks managed park - was empty when we arrived. We had been advised to stay ‘with other campers’ in the main camp, especially with 4 young children as all the camps and lodges in this Park are unfenced and essentially part of the wilderness. All the creatures roam freely through the camp. Just before entering the park, we had also received some great advice via Whatsapp voice note from a lion researcher who had spent over 10 years working with lions. He explained ‘what to do when you meet a lion’. Ensuring that children aged 7 to 10 would not panic, move quickly or make high pitched sounds was not easy to guarantee! Needless to say, our first few days we did keep them close to us. But after a few days of listening to the sounds, sensing the landscape, doing a few guided walks into the bush, meeting some of the wildlife - like the vervet monkeys, the baboons, the warthogs and impalas, and the old bull elephant who ambled right past our tent to find his favourite shady tree for a few hours’ nap - we felt a lot more relaxed. 

We sank into the tempo of the river - unhurried and peaceful. 

The water of the Zambezi in this part is wide, calm and breathless. We watched the water from our campsite (which was situated on a high bank above the waterline), and the wooded mountains of Zambia watched us back across the river.  

Most of our days were stretched around the sunrise (up at dawn to witness the colours), the morning tea or coffee, the light that shifted on the water in front of us, the movement and sounds from the hippos, the vervet monkey and baboon raids on our food during the day, collecting water from the nearby tap, preparing food, and the books we read or drawings we created.

Beautiful trees to climb

Fire-baked mini-breads

Campsite family games

One morning the waxing moon was so bright through the tent flysheet, that we thought morning had broken. It was 4 am, and it seemed like the best thing to do was to get out of the tent and watch the moon set. The nights at Mana are magical. They wrap a thick cloak around any sound that is not of this place. Instead they amplify the native sounds: the hippos’ grunts (or whatever you call their deep-toned murmurations), and the soothing sound of the Zambezi waters caressing the branches and trunks of the Ana tree that has fallen off the collapsed river bank.

Hippos galore in Long Pool, one of the pools that make up the four Mana Pools

There are crickets and cicadas and frogs - all together they fill your senses with a subtle harmony rather than a loud cacophony. The honking of Egyptian Geese are remnant audio from less wild places. Add to that the hooting of owls, the call of the hyena and the bone-rattling roar of distant lions. The most obvious presence among the large animals is that of the hippos. In the middle of the night or day they can break into lively conversation and it seems as though their deep-throated chuckles come at you from every direction. After dusk and at dawn, there is an audible sloshing around as they emerge from the water to trundle up the river bank to spend their night grazing around our tents, grunting and calling to their mates. We all had to get used their sounds at night and by the 4th night we could fall asleep to grunting hippo lullabies. Shining a torch into the river at night you sometimes see a pair of their eyes at water-level drifting silently down-river with the current to a fresh grazing spot.

A lioness and her two cubs on a morning stroll

At night, there are no lights, except for the gentle pin-pricks of floating flashes from the fireflies as they join in the evening’s antics together with other creatures. When the moon sets, the stars assume their rightful role as the brightest source of light. One early evening, the distant lightening shook the eastern skies where thunderclouds, roasted red and orange by the hot and sunny day, hovered over the river’s wide horizon. Even from our small sample of seven days and seven nights in this wondrous place, one can imagine an eternal array of sunsets and sunrises, each one unique in its colours, shape and atmosphere.

The local rangers and workers at the camp taught us a few tips about fishing but we were just never good enough!

Walking in the open wilderness areas is only allowed in Mana Pools National Park

Mana is a place that has its own intentions. It seduces you into its rhythm and makes you forget about everything going on in the outside world, focussing your attention on the present: the Here and the Now. Perhaps that’s because there isn’t much there, except all that is actually there. Just this incredible place, its River, its Mopane Forests, its Animals and the energy that makes this wilderness so alive.

Gabriel in the evening light trying to catch a chessa or small tiger fish