March News – Zarafa Camp, Botswana
Thunderstorms and stormy weather dominated the first few days of this month in our gorgeous concession, adding to the lush beauty that summer has created. The occasional showers did, however, provide an all too welcome reprieve from the heat and as the month has worn on, these have become few and far between. As we head toward April, one can definitely feel the morning coolness of spring approaching and the days becoming milder, a very pleasant time of year for comfortable evenings.
The Zibadianja lagoon is full from all the rain and is home to our resident pod of hippos, who deem it necessary to traverse through our camp every evening to graze. There are two in particular who have become fond of the area behind our Executive Chef, Katherine’s house and have kept her company outside her room quite a few times of late! They are, however, very relaxed now as they are so used to the comings and goings within the camp. We still do not advise any nocturnal wanderings of our guests.
This month, we hosted a family of five who could not get enough of spending time out in the bush – so much so, that our Manager, Frank and our dedicated chef, Katherine , on two occasions packed up their dinner and drove out into the night to find them and feed them their dinner in the wilds – long after midnight! Mr Satchu was delighted with this service and was blown away about eating his ‘five star’ meal while observing a pride of lions nearby! Flexibility and the anytime anywhere philosophy is very much Zarafa.
We are forging ahead at getting our new family unit, ‘The Dhow Suite’, up and running – progress has been amazing – especially now that the rain has held off for a while; and things are looking fantastic. Many of our guests have requested a peek at the building site and are excited about telling friends and family about this new option being offered at Zarafa Camp. The bookings are already flowing in and it is not even finished.
In keeping with our wholesome and healthy philosophy when we prepare our food , our kitchen has come up with a fabulous new vegetarian option for our guests – a butternut and mozzarella gnocci. This has become a very popular main course and Katherine has generously been handing out this recipe to our visitors. On a very naughty but nice note, our ginger cookies have become so popular with our guests that we have had to bake countless batches just to keep them satisfied on their morning game drives.
One of our most exciting morning game drives produced a pride of 8 lions resting in the shade. Guests were busily taking great photos of them when a pack of 15 wild dog raced right by our vehicles and proceeded to kill a red lechwe right in front of our guests. After all this excitement and on their way back into camp, they then came across a leopard walking casually down the road in front of the vehicles – an amazing morning to say the least!
Our sunset cruises are beautiful and have been made even more special recently with the African Skimmers sweeping past the boat. Guests, especially those interested in birding, have been blown away by them.
Our area has been busy this month, with a myriad of general game sightings – from baby giraffe and adult giraffe seen lying down; to breeding herds of elephant, wildebeest, hippo, kudu, impala, red lechwe, steenbok, zebra and many many more. As lush and green as our area is, it never fails to produce amazing bird life and animal sightings.
