We took down our tents in Victoria Falls and went to Hwange National Park, which took a few hours. We were told that if we needed to get up in the middle of the night, to get our lights around to absolutely make sure there were no wild animals, such as lions and hyenas, as we were camping in the park.
After lunch we were picked up in safari cars to spend a few hours going around the National Park. We saw heaps of elephants, giraffes, hippos, baboons, impalas, as well as a lot of birds, though not a lot of animals were up close. It was my first time seeing wild elephants up close, and saw a herd of them crossing the road behind the car which was amazing.
We left the National Park in the dark, then went back to the campsite and sat around the fire until it started to get late. The next morning we took down our tents and went to Matobos which took the best part of a day to get there, then we put the tents up. In the evening we went for a walk/hike in an area near the campsite.
The following morning we set off for Matobos National Park, where we set off to find some rhinos. Once in the park, our guide took us to an area where he told us about the challenges that are being faced by the parks to stop the rhinos being poached for the horn, to the point where there are armed guards in the park who are instructed to shoot to kill any potential poachers.
The rhinos are being poached for their horns, which are wrongfully assumed to have medicinal purposes. Despite the fact that the horns actually grow back, they are being killed, and sometimes left to die whilst their horns are being cut off. It seems as though the parks in the country want to be able to sell the horns that they have collected in order to prevent poaching in order to bring in profit to help prevent the animals from becoming extinct.
After this, we got back in the van and drove for around fifteen minutes, then we got out and went on foot to get nearer the animals. We ended up getting around ten meters away from them.
Afterwards, we were taken around the park, had some lunch and stopped off at a locally-run souvenir market, then we went to climb up one of the big hills in the park. Afterwards, we were taken to a cave where there are paintings from the Bushmen over 30,000 years ago still marked on the walls, which is painted the same way as the paintings in Ayers Rock. The animals painted are thought to show the animals in the land, to show others what was available to eat, as well as the dangerous animals in the area.
It’s interesting to hear about the similarities of the Bushmen to the Aboriginals in Australia: they both treated everything, and each other in their environment with respect and only took what they really needed from the land. For instance, they wouldn’t kill an animal that they could not finish eating, and were resourceful as to how they would use the inedible parts of the animals. It is also thought that they had the same beliefs as to how the human race started, despite being thousands of miles apart.
After, we were taken to a local village to meet the chief, and then back to the campsite.