Early in the morning of our third day in Matopos, we pack up our tents and pile once again into our safari vehicles -- this time for a trip to Zimbabwe's largest national park, Hwange. Our first stop en route to Hwange is the residence of Mike Scott, the safari guide who was also responsible for leading last year's group of Dartmouth students around Hwange National Park. We say goodbye to the guides from Black Rhino Safaris, and Mike introduces us to two additional guides who will be with us for the duration of our time in Hwange.

Derek is a private guide and tour operator. A good deal of his park experience has been with the anti-poaching unit whose job it is to enforce anti-poaching regulations within the park. Derek also owns his own private game ranch.

Gary is an avid bird-watcher and biologist. His park experience has been mostly with the Malilangwe Trust where he manages the private conservation fund that has set aside land outside Hwange NP for researching and preserving wildlife habitats.

We drive into the park once more in open-air Toyota LandCruisers arriving by midafternoon despite our very early morning start. We stock up on fuel, firewood, stamps and other supplies while Mike and the other guides square away our permits for the next week and a half that we will be inside the park boundries.

We head into the park on a virtually deserted road. Save a couple of other LandCruisers similar to ours, we encounter few other people. The savannah is very dry. We are here in early November at the tail end of the dry season and this part of the country hasn't seen rain in several months. The dry character of the park is actually to the advantage of game viewers though, because obscuring foliage is removed from view. On the way we see numerous giraffe, buffalo and elephant, as well kudu, eland and other antelope.

Our two hour drive from Main Camp brings us to Jumbile, a picnic site converted to a large campsite complete with "dom" and running water. Most of the campsite is covered in Kalahari sands, as is most of the park itself. The campsite is surrounded by a 2 meter high fence to protect people inside the site from predatory animals. The risk of animals is not to be taken lightly either. Mike warns us on our first day in the park that Hwange maintains a firm policy of allowing no one to walk around inside the park without an armed guide. Despite this, the park experiences multiple cases of tourists mauled or killed by lions and other animals every year.

It is nearly dusk and by the time we set up our tents, Collet, the camp chef, has dinner on and soon we are sitting down to eat. At our camp we can hear the sounds of wild elephants snorting, playing, and drinking at the nearby watering hole. We are less than 100 meters away from one of the largest water sources in the park, and the small pool created by the water pump is crowded by as many as one-hundred elephants. Conversation runs late into the night amid bridge games and chess. Around midnight the camp is finally asleep, with only the splashing and playing of elephants in the background.

The following morning our group is divided into three teams. Each of the three teams is led by a separate guide and we split up into different vehicles, heading to different parts of the park for our first day of wildlife observation. Our first day out Gary has our group focus on birds. We walk little and spend most of the morning learing about the coloration of different species and about terrestrial lifeforms in between the numerous rollers, starlings, canaries, and eagles. The savannah where we do our hike is packed with wildlife. Very little of the scenery has been damaged by human interference as there are few visitors (relatively speaking) to Hwange NP despite its impressive size. After a few hours observing, we eat lunch and make our way back to camp.

On our way back we happen to get our first close look at the watering hole just outside our campsite where there are currently a large number of elephants drinking. Gary notices, however, that the herd at the watering hole is in distress. Upon closer inspection, we see a smaller elephant, perhaps no more than four years old, trapped in the thick mud of the pool that serves as a sink for the watering hole. A larger elephant, one that Gary suspects is the mother of the trapped elephant, stomps around the edge of the pool, alerting other members of the herd to the emergency. Unfortunately, none of the elephants know how to help the younger one, including its mother, who runs back and forth between the larger part of the herd and the edge of the pool where the younger elephant is trapped. Over the course of an hour, the younger elephant makes several exhausted attempts to free itself from the mud, but to no avail. New herds come and go from the watering hole but none are able or willing to help the young elephant. As the sun sets the young elephant is obscured by darkness and the deepening mud. The herd has still found no way to help the young elephant out of its predicament, and, sobered by the reality of the natural world, we continue onward towards camp.

The following morning we are woken early by Mike Scott and told to all climb aboard one of the LandCruisers immediately. The only clue given to this early morning rush is the single word "lions." We scramble out of our tents, some of us noticeably underdressed for travel, and drive off into the bush. We circle the campsite and come around to the watering hole where Gary's group had watched the drowning elephant the night before. Coming to the pool to drink is a pride of lionesses, of of them with two young cubs in tow. We watch the pride and they watch us, stalking off into the distance once they have drunk their fill. Our first big game in Hwange National Park.

We return to camp briefly and collect things for the morning's game walk. Our game walk is similar to yesterday's, in a different part of the park with some different species and landforms in view. After we return to camp for a late breakfast/early lunch, we are met by Peter Mundy, one of the wardens of the camp. Peter is the first of our lecturers to alert us to the elephant "problem" of the park. Since the creation of artificial water points (established by boerholes like the one right outside Jumbile) water-dependent species such as elephant have grown substantially in number. For a long time, elephant populations were endangered in Hwange and all over Zimbabwe, but water points have allowed the elephant population to flourish to the point where it is not uncommon to see more than one-hundred elephants at a time at a given water-hole. Unfortunately, Hwange's elephant population long ago reached a level that should have enabled it to exist without special protection. Because elephants are large animals, consuming massive amounts of food and water each day, they have a substantial impact on their environment. Exploding elephant populations have actually caused the decline of species such as rhino. Moreover, elephants are specially protected from culling (killing of elephants) to maintain ecosystem viability by CITES and other international agreements. Much of the problem, Mundy says, comes from the international perception that the African elephant is still endangered, and indeed it still is, but only in some parts of East Africa, not across the entire continent. Translocation is horribly expensive, especially for most African nations, and other means such as contraception to control the elephant population have also proved prohibitively costly or have failed. Zimbabwe, therefore, remains stuck with an elephant population that is endangering other species and will soon endanger even itself.

Evening approaches quickly after the close of Mundy's talk and most of us merely sit around the campsite, relaxing in the warm weather and pleasant atmosphere of the park. The following morning we set out on yet another hike, followed by another lecture. This lecture comes from the director of wildlife management, Andy Searle, who reinforces Mundy's argument that the only way to save Hwange NP from losing biodiversity to the elephant problem, is to begin culling the elephants. Our discussion on the way back to camp from Andy's wildlife management center, focuses on this issue, and continues late into the night.

The following morning we break camp and head on to our next campsite in Hwange, Shakabika. Shakabika is unique because it is one of the most remote (and most primitive) of the sites in Hwange. It is also one of the hottest and driest, located in the mostly deserted southern half of the park where few tourists are inclined to go. Our purpose in going to Shakabika is to perform our 24-hour game count, an effort that will provide current and reliable information to the park management authority on the approximate number of different species in the Shakabika camp area.

Our first day in Shakabika is unbelievably hot and most of the time we spend sitting and drinking water that we've brought under the shade of a tarp tied between a LandCruiser and trees. Our guides have dreamed up the idea that some of us "tourists" would want showers at our campsite and have asked some of us to fetch water from the (mostly) dry riverbed nearby. The water is buried in a table beneath a couple of meters of sand, but thankfully, most of the digging through the sand has been done for us by the herd of elephants last at the riverbed. Elephants have the unique ability to sense the presence of water beneath the soil and have the capacity to dig down towards it for a couple of meters. Tbough the pool of water is exceedingly shallow (not to mention dirty) we manage to retrieve enough of it to fill a barrel-size tub with water which we (supposedly) will use for showers. The water is definitely not suitable for drinking, however, much to our dismay as our drinking water supply begins to dwindle in the high heat.

We fall asleep at Shakabika, some of us outside to escape the heat despite the warnings of park management, and before long the camp is silent. The next morning we spend in preparation for the 24-hour game count, and by 10am we are split into three groups, each with a different guide, and different location/waterhole assignments.

The site occupied by Martin, Jaimie, Steve, Leslie, Christina and I, overlooks the southernmost waterhole. The waterhole is actually a mostly dried up riverm and our vantage point on the south bank gives us a good view of the water and the north bank beyond. We set up tents in a formation directed by Derek, one of the guides, and proceed to watch and record animals.

The animals often come in herds. Impala, the most common of any of the animals coming to drink, arrive in herds of up to 60. Zebra also are common, as well as baboon, eland and elephant. Around 2am we hear the sound of approaching lions. Derek, an expert in lion calls and behaviors, recognizes the sound of 6 or more lionesses, hunting for game. The elephants at the river are clearly unnerved by the calls, trumpeting loudly and bumping into each other as they move quickly around the bank. Even more nervous, however, are ourselves. Derek loads his rifle, only two rounds will fit, and works the bolt back and forth to make sure the gun will fire if needed. Normally there are only two of us at a time on watch, counting the animals at the river. Now all six of us are awake and alert. Derek is busy scanning the hilltops for the shadows of the pride and Shep is alert now too. Calmly, Derek warns us to stay low to the ground, move as little as possible, and to make no noise. Derek is nervous too, aware that the lionesses will treat us as prey just as easily as the elephants drinking at the river.

The lionesses continue to roar, coming and going around the hilltop just beyond view, for several more hours. We are aware that several of the vocalizations are coming from the direction of another group of Dartmouth students located to the east, along the same river but far enough down that we are unable to see them in the dark. The lions approach and recede, again and again, at times seeming to come from less than 100 meters away and at times sounding as though they are too far away to return. When the pride ceases roaring, we know that they are on the move. It is impossible to tell where they are; an animal that already blends well with the color of the savannah is now deliberately trying not to be seen. The roaring keeps up for hours and as visibility dims by the occasional clouding of the moon, the nervousness in the group increases and our awareness that our only protection against the lions is a couple of canvas tents and a single rifle is definitely piqued.

Luckily, the night passes without incedent and as morning approaches, we continue to maintain our game watch, recording hundreds more animals in the early morning that come to drink at the river. At 10am, we break camp and head down the road to visit with the group previously east of us in order to hear their story about the previous night's lions. We are not disappointed.

The other group claims to have come within 10 meters of the lions, a pride of lionesses perhaps eight in number. We search in the sand around the LandCruiser for proof and sure enough, there are the tracks of the pride. The other group says they were nearly scared to death by the lions, so many that Gary, their guide, doesn't believe he could have shot them all if they had attacked.

We head back to camp with our stories of the previous night's encounter expecting to awe the third group. We do, but they in turn tell us what it was like to encounter a leapord that night, and what was probably a black rhino as well.

We spend the early afternoon swapping stories and mutual shock at the close calls of the previous night. Gary's group's lion story is hard to top, and is something that we continue to talk about even back in Harare.

Our next camp is Masuma Dam, a camp with a blind for tourists overlooking another water hole. At Masuma Dam we meet Norman English, another warden of the park. By now, a good deal of our attention has been turned to our upcoming Hwange papers, and Norman English becomes one of our primary resources. His lecture, and proceeding discussions, also generate a good deal of what would become source material for our eventual 84 paper.

Our three days at Masuma Dam also give us a lot of free time to read and watch wildlife. We have daily game walks, once again each in different parts of the park, but some of the best game viewing is right outside the campsite from the blind. Baboons and elephants are the most common animals, but herds of cape buffalo and zebra also come to the water-hole to drink. A number of us even take to sleeping inside the blind rather than in our tents, in order to go to sleep to the sound of the animals.

The highlight of our time at Masuma comes in midafternoon of our second day at the Dam. One of our lecturers suddenly asks everyone in the blind to be quiet, and carefully points off in the distance, up a barely visible trail. Walking down the trail is none other than an adult leopard, casually making its way towards the water-hole. None of the other animals at the water-hole have noticed, and the leopard is obviously being careful to disguise its presence by approaching slowly and ducking behind the low mounds of dirt along its approach.

Surprisingly, a jackal first discovers the leopard and of all things, begins barking at it. Clearly annoyed, the leopard stalks off away from the water-hole but even more surprising, the jackal follows. Continuing to bark, the jackal chases the larger and more dangerous leopard away from the water-hole. All of us have by now come down to the blind with binoculars but the leopard gradually fades from view as is eventually lost behind the far tree-line.

Our time at Masuma Dam is relatively relaxing, with a good deal of unstructured time in the afternoons for game watching, reading, and journal writing. Our last night in Hwange our guides decide to throw a small party for us and we stay up late into the night talking amidst the sound of more animals at the Dam.

Our final day in Hwange we pack up our things and say good-bye to Gary, the only guide who will not also be coming with us to Victoria Falls. The five of us who had been in Gary's safari group get up and sing "You've Lost that Lovin' Feelin'" as a good-bye and the twenty of us head out of the park, on to our next camp at long-awaited Victoria Falls.

-- Eric Bielke