Zimbabwe: Away From It All at Hwange Bush Camp

 

Nyalas are among Africa's many photogenic antelope. They're bigger than impalas, smaller than elands. 

       Our third safari camp in Zimbabwe was  Hwange Bush Camp, one of two very simple seasonal camps (they're inaccessible and closed during the rainy season) that we visited on our 2026 trip to Africa. We arrived on Thursday, May 14, for a three-night stay after time at another camp that is also in Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park. 

        Hwange Bush Camp doesn't provide wi-fi for guests. The cabins are simple metal structures (built by the camp staff) with fixed roofs and canvas walls with netted windows. Bathrooms are in the tent, but the showers are bucket showers, which  involved telling a staff member when we wanted to shower and they filled a high-mounted tank outside our tent that fed the heated water to the shower in our tent. The bathroom sink and the flush toilet had conventional plumbing. With a large comfortable bed, places to charge our devices and built-in game viewing, we weren't exactly roughing it.

     "We don't want guests who'd object to bucket showers," a guide said. "We're not a proper safari camp," another guide said. Nevertheless, we had a pretty good experience here. For most of the time the ony other guest was a woman from Toulouse, France. We had two guides, Sean, who liked walking safaris, and B., who apparently wasn't certified yet to lead walks.  Zimbabwe seems to have a pretty rigorous guide certification program. Guides can give you the Latin names for most animals and many plants.  One afternoon, Sean took Jane and the other guest on a long walking safari, which I didn't think my sore leg could take. So B. took me out in the Land Cruiser and we found giraffes, elephants, and other widelife.  Meals were at one table, which we three guests shared with the camp's manager, a 26-year-old woman, and her assistant, an 18-year-old woman, both from Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. And Sean and B.  

     Food so far on this African trip had not been remarkable.  Chicken Kiev, which I assumed was made in a factory somewhere, breaded and frozen, showed up on my plate at least twice at other camps and was never good. Other than eland at a hotel restaurant in Windhoek, I had not been offered any game dishes so far. It turns out that game dishes are generally not available at camps in national parks where the mission is game conservation, not harvesting. Hwange Bush Camp's kitchen, however, kicked things up a notch, particularly with really good breads and even brownies.  

Here are some photos:

After picking us up at Robin's airstrip, our Hwange Bush Camp
driver veered into the woods right beside the airstrip where
other guides had reported seeing lions. So even before we
were on our first safari at Hwange Bush, we saw a resting
pride of lions. Then we watched as they all left,
perhaps chasing a warthog that had come too close.

The bath towels on our bed were folded and rolled to resemble elephants. As at most safari camps,
the bed faces the entrance with bathroom facilities hidden in the back. The plastic sheeting
on the floor covered a layer of compacted sand. No cement or concrete is evident at 
Hwange Bush Camp, which disassembles its structures for storage during the rainy
season. We were told that staff members were in a rush to erect an eighth cabin like
this because it was already assigned to future guests. 

Jane and I saw warthogs and an elephant while sitting
in these chairs the afternoon we arrived. 

One of the warthogs I was able to photograph without
getting out of my chair. 

This elephant never fully emerged from the brush. It was
about 50 feet or 15 meters in front of our cabin. We saw many
other elephants on game drives.

Giraffes and zebras share a meal. Giraffes are browsers, eating leaves and other tree
vegetation well above ground level. Zebras are grazers, eating grasses much as 
cattle do in the United States.

I think this is a red-capped robin-chat, a common bird south of the Sahara. 

Zimbabwe: Safaris at Davison's Camp

 

We saw this male ostrich several times on game drives at Davison's, or at least we thought it was
the same ostrich. Sometimes it was accompanied by two females. 

           During our 2026 trip to Africa, one of our most pleasant stops was three nights at Davison's, a safari camp in Zimbabwe's game-rich Hwange National Park. It's operated by Wilderness Destinations, the company that helped us plan our trip and was the second of two Wilderness camps that we stayed at. 

       Here you're greeted every day at 5:30am by someone yelling "Good Morning" outside your tent, which is more like a cabin with a thatch roof and canvas walls. The hinged door provided much better access than unzipping flaps. Then a simple breakfast around the fire pit, which for my money was the best meal of the day. By 6:30 you're bounding into the bush hoping to see lions and other wildlife as they start their day. Then return to camp for lunch, a rest,  and back into the bush until sunset. To me, there are few things that compare with safari game drives, especially ones where you see lots of animals. "Sundowner" cocktails and snacks in the bush are de rigueur.

        Our guide here, Paul, didn't have to work too hard to find giraffes and zebras. There are multitudes of both. Lions were found through radio contact with other guides. A highlight was finding an elephant with three of her offspring, an addolesent female and a pair of months-old twins. Paul said he had never seen elephant twins before. We had thought we'd see elephants at Davison's pumped watering hole right in front of the camp, but 2026's unusally wet rainy season had left too many natural watering holes out in the bush, and the camp's attracted few customers. 

      One characteristic of Wilderness camps is a focus on local culture. I think that Paul is probably encouraged to share stories about his life, being raised first by his grandmother and then by another family in his village, gathering termites, cooking and eating them, and more. He knocked a hole in a termite mound to show us its occupants. Paul said he worked four weeks straight, then two weeks off to be with his family.  That seems to be the situation for most guides at safari camps. 

    Here are some pictures:

Odd birds are among the many delights of safaris. This is a secretary bird, so named because
 the headfeathers  are thought to resemble pencils stuck behind a secretary's ear. 

This yellow-billed hornbill was one of many that we saw at 
Hwange National Park. It's called "the flying banana."

This was one of a pride of lions we saw on a Davison's safari. It was mid-morning and they
were mostly napping, though some walked around a bit and some looked directly at us.

Zebras (in Africa they're called ZEH-bras) are always a treat to see. We saw several mother-foal duos such as this. 

     

A adult female, left, with three of her offspring, including months-old twins. 

The twins are protected by their mother and their older sibling.

The kori bustard is another of Africa's large birds.

  

The Cape buffalo is one of the "Big Five" of African game animals, the five animals that posed
the biggest challenges for big-game hunters a century or more ago: lion, leopard,
rhino, elephant and Cape buffalo.