An “armchair safari” at the incomparable Kanga Camp

Although our time at Zambezi Expeditions was over, Mana Pools still had more to show us.  We headed south-east, away from the river and inland, to Kanga Camp, home of the “armchair safari”.

I had seen a lot of photos of this camp and watched a lot of videos, but nothing you read or see prepares you for this…

Kanga Camp sits on the edge of Kanga Pan, the only permanent water source within a 20km radius.  During the dry season, the pan is a hotspot of activity for all the animals in the area, day and night.  It is possible to go out on game drives, but with everyone was coming for water there was no need.

Having the time to just sit and observe the animals gives you an entirely different perspective, time to try different techniques and to get up close and personal…

Because the elephants approach you, they are very relaxed, even the mothers.  You get to see behaviours that you just wouldn’t approaching them.

And it’s not just elephants, just before dark these 2 ladies came for a drink…

For me it was such so special to be able to be so close and to spend so much time with these amazing animals!

Elephants were the main focus here, but there were also a lot of baboons, doing what baboons do.  This is a composite of 5 photos of a baboon jumping over the water,  from a rock to the land.  Always good for a laugh and so much fun to watch!

It was hot, really hot.  Sometimes the ellies would just stand in the water and have a little snooze…

There was a hide just below the deck.  It was a great spot to use the long lens to zoom in and capture close ups that you wouldn’t otherwise do.  I was able to capture the following shots from the hide, before I found out there was a snake in there.  After that, I didn’t return to the “snake pit” as I called it!

There were so many little ones!  I just can’t get enough of them!

At the end of the day, dust + golden light + elephants = magic.

At night they were always on the lookout for the nocturnal visitors.  There were so many elephants around that the big cats would do their best to avoid them.  Luckily for us, that forced this leopard close to us when she came for a drink.

Always watchful, a very large herd of Impala visit the waterhole…

High above our dining table, in the massive tree, these bees were very hard at work.  Not a bother to us at all, they worked diligently on their hive…

I’m very proud of this next photo.  It’s not something I would ever have thought of taking, but after spending so much time with the elephants I started looking for something different and this is what I came up with…

Some zebras at the water hole…

Even Pumba came for a visit!

And as the light slowly faded on our last day at Kanga, we saw something I’d certainly never seen before!  A very busy mom, with 3 little ones!  Twins occur in less than 1% of elephant births, so the odds of triplets are extremely rare.  They may not all have been hers, she could have been babysitting, but they were pretty much exactly the same size.  Either way, she had her hands full, it was a good thing that she had a nanny along!

Kanga Camp was such an amazing place!  Some of it was just captured best with video, hopefully you can feel what it was like to just sit, relax and let the wildlife come to you!

With that our time at Kanga was done, but the adventure was not over.  We headed to the Dandawa airstrip for our flight to southern Zimbabwe and Hwange National Park.  Stay tuned!