July has been a month where we got so busy that we forgot to do the newsletter for June! Apologies for that one.
So in the last news we talked about a new campsite that we were constructing. The ‘Chief’s Campsite’ is a site that we identified and started developing last year. Over the rains we cleared the site and planted grass, ready for construction this year. After all the lodge work that we have been doing the campsite had to wait… Now some of you may know that Julia is a glass artist by training and with her dad being a master builder she has also inherited and learned some serious skills.
I will let the pictures tell the story:
And the finished product! Ready for the first guests, who fittingly are repeat guests and great people.
We also started driving the new “Pools Loop” with guests and we have been very happy with consistent regular sightings of quite relaxed herds of Sable and Hartebeest:
In the same vein of exploring new areas we also positioned a small rubber duck at the “tunnels” area south of Kaingu. This is an area where the river fractures and goes through a series of narrow rock channels. It is highly spectacular. We took two guests down there and spent a morning climbing around the area and trying to get up some of the channels. An absolutely amazing area. For those that know the Kaingu area it is like the river here but on steroids!
This is what it looks like on Google Earth from an altitude of 2km – these channels are over 1km long and some of them are 4m deep:
And this is what they look like from the ground and from the water:
Then we also had an evening with guests doing some star gazing from Mpamba rock. We took a simple pot of stew, a couple of bottle of wine and a green lazer and a camera. It was a lot of fun and a great way to spend an evening.
This then gave us a bit of encouragement to do a few more when we spent two nights down at lake Itezhi Tezhi. All exposures are a bit too long so the stars are starting to blur…
Then at the end of the month we got very excited to get a professional photographer – Anthony Grote – so we will be updating the website and other material as soon as possible.