Ultimate Africa Safaris

06/07/2024

Finishing up video shooting at Matetsi... lion, endless giraffe, elephant, hippo, buffalo... this area is thriving!

06/07/2024

More than 30 years ago I sat on the Zimbabwe Council for Tourism and we debated the approval of opening the Matetsi area to photographic tourism.

It has been a tremendous success and today offers the best wildlife viewing in the Victoria Falls area.

Spacious luxury rooms face the Zambezi River and elephant, buffalo, hippo, warthog wander through day and night.

05/07/2024

Early morning at Mpala Jena... a lovely boat ride followed by breakfast with our toes in the soft sands of the Zambezi.

Mpala Jena has to be the most beautiful safari property in Zimbabwe.

With only 5 rooms you are assured the attention you deserve.

Being upriver from Victoria Falls, and the town, you also avoid the noise made by the myriad helicopter and light aircraft tours to view the Falls.

05/07/2024

Mpala Jena has to be the most beautiful safari property in Zimbabwe.

With only 5 rooms you are assured the attention you deserve.

Being upriver from Victoria Falls, and the town, you also avoid the noise made by the myriad helicopter and light aircraft tours to view the Falls.

05/07/2024

Old Drift ticks all the boxes

04/07/2024

Mbano Manor at Victoria Falls... one of the newer boutique properties for those who prefer to be in a quieter location.

04/07/2024

Great value boutique hotel at Victoria Falls. Our clients love it.

04/07/2024

Hanging out with giants.

04/07/2024

Elephant Camp, located 15 minutes from Victoria Falls, is a great base from which to explore the area.

04/07/2024

Videographer extraordinaire, Oli Caldow, traveling with us at Victoria Falls.

04/07/2024

Deteema Springs deep within Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park is home to some serious lion... they regularly walk through amongst the main areas and tented rooms.

02/05/2024

Those of you who have booked a 2024 safari to southern Africa should expect some incredible game viewing... in addition to supporting Africa at a vital time.

An El Nino weather pattern between October 2023 and March 2024, resulted in hot, dry weather and little rainfall in southern Africa. Therefore the region is now experiencing a drought.

Droughts, which occur in cycles, can lead to failed crops, food shortages, and great suffering among people and animals. They also offer spectacular wildlife viewing for safari goers who visit Africa during these times.

Several clients have asked if it is OK to visit the region as they don't want to make the situation worse... we suggest that by visiting safari travelers are providing incredibly vital income, employment and conservation funding when needed most.

Why does animal viewing improve? Animals must have access to water and with dwindling water supplies they are easier to find. Already clients visiting Botswana and Western Zimbabwe have returned from trips during the first few months of the year are reporting game viewing akin to what you might expect during the high season months June through October.

February 2024 was the driest February in 40 years for Zambia and Zimbabwe, according to the WFP's seasonal monitor, while Malawi, Mozambique and parts of Angola had "severe rainfall deficits."

The 2015-2016 El Niño also brought a severe drought for southern Africa, the region's worst in 35 years, according to the U.N. Office for Humanitarian Affairs.

John Steglin, a senior meteorologist at the Department of Meteorological Services in Botswana, said the dry spells are becoming longer and more severe in this landlocked southern African country. Steglin said that Botswana's rainy season, which ran reliably from October to March for decades, has become erratic in recent years, sometimes starting only in December with no guarantee of consistency.

04/04/2024

My friend and professional safari guide Map Ives recently sent us an insightful write up on elephant behavior in relation to seasonal conditions, drought, poaching, and hunting which we have shared below:

As you know, I have had the good fortune of working around wild elephant populations since 1974 and have had numerous interactions with them on foot, in vehicles and even by boat/mekoro the vast majority of which have been completely benign and without the slightest disturbance for the elephants themselves. The main reason for this is that I have always understood, after being tutored by some of the very best wardens in the old Rhodesian National Parks Department (Zimbabwe Parks) where I was fortunate to have spent my formative years, that elephants are and should always be treated as potentially dangerous. I say this despite them appearing to be totally relaxed around each other and around vehicles, especially in areas where game drives are a daily occurrence and the elephants in those areas get used to the sound of, the smell of and the interference of some of these vehicles in their daily lives.

Most guides and trackers will become very adept at looking for signals of any disturbance within elephant herds or even with single bulls which are occasionally encountered. These signals include increased vocalization (increased rumbling and even low level trumpeting and a sort of exhaling through the trunk) that comes about for various reasons including the presence of musth males (more on musth later) or predators especially lions that they bump into, a previous negative encounter with a vehicle or on rare occasions when they come upon the dead remains of another elephant who may or may not have been related to them. Other signals may include a way of carrying their heads which can be held quite high with ears flapping at a greater frequency than is necessary for cooling, milling around and paying attention to calves, and an increase in exudations from a gland situated in the temple of the elephant.

I mentioned musth earlier and which is simply a condition in which mature bulls attain a heightened level of sexual excitement for a period of time. This increase is brought about by increases in testosterone and adrenaline in their blood and which causes them to approach females in breeding herds with some intent and which can lead to encounters with other bulls that may be close to them or hanging around the females. These encounters are most often just pushing and shoving affairs but can deteriorate into some very loud and very aggressive fighting which takes place over quite large areas and which can be heard some distance off. Although these fights are very dramatic, it is best to get well away from them because both protagonists are not in the mood for 'outsiders' of any description and will charge without any supposed reason. At peak musth, some bulls exude a sort of 'slime' around their p***s and which can be smelt very clearly from up to fifty meters if one is downwind and has their nose tuned in.

You have to also understand that there can be a considerable number of environmental and anthropogenic (human) factors that can also fire up elephants, the most obvious of which are hunting and poaching but which also includes thirst, hunger, heat and fire.

• Poaching and hunting:- Although hunting is a far more accurate and less random form of killing elephants, there can be no doubt that the ability of elephants to communicate over relatively long distances which they do on an every day basis and use considerably when stressed, will and does lead them to react badly to the smell of humans and human made property. The poaching of elephants for their tusks has been well documented in Africa where most countries which originally had large elephant populations have had them decimated by illegal hunting over the last century or so to a point where the last remaining large wild elephant populations in Africa are situated in the central and southern portions of this continent. In recent years, the increased price of ivory on the illegal market has brought about another wave of poaching into southern Africa with organized and syndicated groups being active in Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and in South Africa's Kruger National Park. These modern groups are well equipped with rifles and communication devices and who will largely target large bulls in areas that are not frequented by the rapidly developing tourism industry. One of the results of this is that many bulls simply leave those areas and move into areas where there is less or no hunting or poaching which they find through the communication I mentioned earlier. It is very possible that an angry display from a bull elephant in a tourist area may be from a recently arrived bull who is still carrying the trauma of being shot or having his buddy shot recently. This is a relatively un-researched part of elephant behaviour but I am certain that it happens all the time and is another reason I approach bull elephants with great respect and consideration for where they may have come from.

• Environment:- It goes without saying that elephants are very large animals that carry a huge expanse of dark skin and who possess a large amount of very warm blood. This large body requires a considerable amount of food on a daily basis to maintain itself, it requires a large amount of water on a regular basis to keep it's metabolism operating; it requires that both food and water are not too far from each other so that they do not lose condition moving between the two; it requires good shade on hot days or periods under which to shelter so as to keep the sun off that large skin which gets bloody hot especially when moving.

Myself and most guides know that in the southern hemisphere 'hot months' of October and November the elephants can become 'cranky' because of the very hot weather that prevails at that time of year. October and November come at the end of a very long period of no rain at all (rain here pretty much ceases in April and starts again sometime in late October or even in December) and which coincides with temperatures which can reach 40 Deg C plus in the day and also which coincides with a general deciduous leaf loss on most of the trees leading to very little shade. Elephants become hot, thirsty and hungry at that time and we all know to take extra care when approaching elephant to get photographs of just to study their behaviour. It is actually a great time to observe elephants because they are exposed and display a variety of behaviours that are interesting especially during visits to water where they bathe and cool off.

This year (2024) we have had a terrible mid-summer drought between late January and the end of March with rainfall being nearly non-existent and several episodes of 'heat wave' conditions where for four or more days at a time the temperature exceeded 42 Deg C. These conditions covered most of northern Botswana, north western Zimbabwe, most of Zambia and eastern Angola as well as parts of the DRC. The upshot of this is multi-layered and which will have serious effects on everything throughout this year, but for elephants it means that many of their food plants, especially lush green grass which is their favourite summer intake, has shrivelled and become either dry or has been eaten by other ungulates. Some of the browse plants have also slowed their rate of leaf production or have shed leaves which became dehydrated in these extreme conditions.

Under normal rainfall conditions there would be a large number of 'pans' or watering holes scattered throughout the elephant ranges of southern Africa well away from the main rivers and lakes and which sustain large numbers of elephants for up to six months of the year. What happens in higher rainfall years is that there is plenty of grass, leaves and water in areas away from the rivers and lakes and where the elephants enjoy much of what passes for summer here. They do not have to move far between water and food and pick up considerable condition in that time. When the water in the pans starts to dry up and grass starts to shrivel they move gently back towards the more permanent water where they also find sufficient grass and leaf to get them through the dry season or what passes for winter here when there is no rain and plants do not produce.

Although there is no need to be alarmed, I have been warning those who are out in the bush to expect elephants to be a bit cranky a lot earlier this year because of these extreme conditions. They will have had to reduce their time in the back country because there is no water in the pans and the quality of food is severely reduced and so they are concentrating on the very little water and food around permanent water along the Okavango, Linyanti, Chobe, Zambezi and Kafue systems. I imagine that amongst them will be some who will be inclined to shout and scream at people but the vast majority will just be in a sort of slow and lazy mode as they conserve energy until a return to better times.

Having said all of the above, we are having some very late rains in the region which are actually a sort of medium drizzle and which will cool things down in terms of temperatures but will struggle to fill pans and which will certainly not bring on any improved growth of grass of leaf. Here in the Okavango, the annual inundation or 'flood' as some call it, is arriving at a very opportune time and which itself will bring on a growth of emergent grass and improve ground water under islands which will maintain some leaf on the trees so we can expect that the elephants here will remain as calm as we know them to be, but I must stress that this still means that we have to at all time still understand the physical and environmental conditions that affect the behaviour of all animals including elephants and humans and to take into account that there will be more encounters or 'meetings' between the two as both populations increase over time.

A last comment from me to is to say that dangerous encounters are a very rare phenomenon because the elephants themselves prefer to avoid confrontation with others if they can.

05/03/2024

Things are hot in Botswana... we received a weather alert from the Botswana met office today.

03/02/2024

IT'S SOUTH AFRICA'S WINE BIRTHDAY!

On 2 February 1659, a diary entry announced, “Today, praise be to God, wine was made for the first time from Cape grapes.” 2024 marks 365 years since the first wine was produced in South Africa, and it is an occasion that wine lovers the world over will agree warrants a celebration!

If you want to join in on the fun Cape Town's 5 star One&Only Hotel hosts an annual wine birthday party with over 600 guests.

This year, guests can experience 17 wine farms from across the region sharing their delicious vintages, delectable tapas and canapés prepared by the One&Only Cape Town chefs as well as great live music, good vibes, excellent conversation and much more!

Make your plans now for 2025!!! And of course spend a week on safari while in South Africa... we are happy to assist!

12/12/2023

It's about time... Kenya is getting rid of entry visas!

Visitors to Kenya from across the world will no longer require a visa from January, President William Ruto said on Tuesday. Ruto said his government had developed a digital platform to ensure all visitors would receive an electronic travel authorisation in advance, instead of needing to apply for a....

15/11/2023

Brand new Trevor Noah ad for South Africa tourism. Brilliantly done!

02/09/2023

The story behind Ultimate Africa Safaris.

14/07/2023

Ultimate Africa's Ian Proctor with the guides from Verney's and Deteema.

Nice lunch guys!

14/07/2023

Ian and some elephants.

14/07/2023

Verney's is an intimate gem of a camp filled with smiley Zimbabwean service.

14/07/2023

Great day on safari deserves a refreshing drink. Evening at Verney's Camp deep in Hwange.

13/07/2023

Sand storm blowing from Namibia into the Atlantic... captured by NASA.

13/07/2023

Fothergill Island and Lake Kariba from on high...

13/07/2023

Had to visit Jono since we were in his neighborhood.

Former manager at Victoria Fall Safari Lodge and Mpala Jena he now runs the new Fothergill Island.

Great to see you Mr Hudson!


island

13/07/2023

Best way to safari... boating, walking, game drives, fishing, and our own private pro Zim guide.

12/07/2023

Nothing like a Kariba sunset... table set for dinner...

11/07/2023

Our floating home on Lake Kariba... the MV Matusadona.

Largest and most luxurious boat on the lake at 90 feet with 3 ensuite guestrooms sleeping 6, 3 crew, and 3 tenders.

Barefoot luxury on board with ability to do game drives and walks in Matusadona National Park.

11/07/2023

Flew 30 minutes to Kariba (once the world's largest man-made lake) for the next part of our adventure.