Africa & Middle East > Zimbabwe > Zambezi National Park > Victoria Falls > Articles > Chizarira Wilderness Lodge, Zimbabwe

I don’t know if I’m the only writer who is plagued by weather problems at the moment. I seem to be pursued by unseasonal storms. In the last few months I’ve been washed out innumerable times and in one area of Australia, by all accounts, I caused the first recorded rain at that time of year, ever.

Of course it doesn’t help arriving from England because everyone concludes that I’ve brought the weather with me:

“Such a pity you weren’t here yesterday. It was lovely then...” they say, almost as a reflex.

It could be that they’re being a little economical with the truth, but who am I to suspect everyone I meet? Sad for a travel writer, you might think, but the truth is I don’t really mind that much.

“It’s probably the effect of El Nino”, was the more considered judgement of Steve Alexander, the owner of Chizarira Wilderness Lodge in Zimbabwe as I brought the winter storms with me, a month early. Alexander is a man with an impressive knowledge of his own environment, so I was happier than usual to take his word for it.

His lodge stands just outside Chizarira National Park, on a vast finger of rock that points into the Zambezi Valley. A string of stone and thatch chalets are perched on the cliff-face, open-fronted to take in the best of the view, and each with a wooden balcony that hangs in space.

Chizarira is one of Zimbabwe’s least used parks, 196,000 hectares of scrub on a plain above the valley. This is not the ‘supermarket safari’, with large herds wandering over plains or collecting at waterholes. In Chizarira it is the minutiae that count. The country is tight and densely covered and there is plenty of surface water and so you have to go out and look for the animals and birds (it is all part of the fun).

Alexander does it on foot, following meandering game trails and tracking the animals. You need to put in the extra effort, but if you’re not there just for a luxurious rest in the warm weather or to chalk up of the big five, it is an interesting alternative. Alexander calls it a ‘wilderness experience’.

Each morning we drove up into the park at dawn, climbing a rickety dirt road through a crack in the escarpment. It was built on the track of an elephant trail and it was so rough that it rattled our bones and sent the radio antenna into a series of harmonic wobbles.

Whatever my effect on the weather, at least I don’t scare off the game when I go on safari. That was down to the couple who arrived the day before me apparently. “Do you have a problem seeing animals in zoos, Ian?” he was asked. Either way, there wasn’t much on view from the road, so we headed out into the bush in search of it.

I enjoyed the leisurely pace. The mechanics of the walk makes it easier to communicate and every plant and animal, whatever its size, has an interesting story. Gradually, as Alexander paused and gathered us around him, the secrets of life and love in the African bush revealed themselves.

Plants talk. When browsers are around, some acacias raise their tannin levels (to make themselves less palatable and less digestible) and at the same time they release a pheromone which causes other plants to do the same. In response, kudu feed into the wind.

He plucked a meringue-like sponge from a tall grass: a mantis egg-casing. The life of the praying mantis male may seem a little alarming (after mating he is often eaten), but the reproduction cycle is interesting in other ways; the eggs are left in this inedible thing to hatch out in their own time. Also, I had never thought that a pile of dung could be so interesting, but apparently with all that fur and bone the leopard must have been in good condition.

As we made our way through a gulley, three different sorts of rollers displayed above us - purple, cinnamon and lilac-breasted - tumbling and rolling. Then we came across a lone male elephant, feeding as he wandered, and we made a circuitous track downwind of him, creeping within 15 yards, behind a termite mound, with Alexander tapping a small muslin bag of ash constantly, reassuring himself about the wind direction.

The finest moment happened as we headed back after dark. A pennant-winged nightjar put in an appearance, fluttering, diving, zooming us and swooping in its silent and beautiful attempt to impress a mate. The males, who have a long feather trailing from each wing, come down a month before the females to prepare their territory and display. The poor fellow had only one pennant left, so for all his efforts he might not have been such a good prospect after all.

Back in my chalet I was relaxed and cautiously wondering if I’d escaped the unseasonal weather. But then the storm came. This time I actually heard it coming. It poured over the escarpment, thundering down the hill, roaring, rattling every leaf and whistling in the scrub. The frogs were silent and branches broke with a split and crack.

Suddenly the wind hit, overtaking the chalet, shaking the wooden balcony out front, and swirling inside, filling the room. The mat flapped like a floored albatross, the cushions on the next door bed jiggled, jumping spontaneous back flips, and above me the mosquito net thrashed like some threatening negligee. Holding my possessions down, I could do nothing but watch as the loo-roll snaked, suspended, out of the bathroom, double-ply dividing like a pair of charmed pink cobras, and trailed off into the ether. I found it next morning, shredded into sheets of two and three, in branches all around the camp.

The wind felt so utterly pregnant with rain that I was expecting to be washed off the cliffop, but in fact there wasn’t a drop. The winter rains hadn’t come a month early after all.

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