Mana Pools

I went to Mana Pools for a week and it was AMAZING!! Too good for words, unbelievable all that we saw. One of the best weeks the park has ever known!! It's the only park in Africa (or the world?) where you can freely get out of your vehicle and walk around. Elephants were roaming the park, it was always the big danger, making sure you're aware of where they all are, we had a couple incidents of hiding behind a big tree, and one of the elephant standing right next to the car, tusks over the bonet, with my window open, scary, but amazing.
From day 1 we saw the pack of lions, 6 cubs, 4 females (and two males that weren't always around) and the packs of wild dogs, one of 29 and one of 12. And apparently that's a rare site!
We saw them every day for 8 days (including the extra day we stayed longer coz it was so great!) as the first car (except for one day) and all this before 6:30 am. And I had the luck of being there with a tour guide with the knowledge of what to do and the eyes that could spot anything and I'd be looking for it for half an hour!
We saw the lions stalking the buffalo's, and the buffalo's coming back to chase away the lions, we saw the lions chasing after the wild dogs while the wild dogs chased after an impala. They didn't catch up, but it was impressive to see. To top it off, we manages to catch a beautiful view of the lions chasing and killing a buffalo, and then, as buffalo's are a close social group, the herd came back to chase the lions away, in that attempt they gave us a second kill, killing a little calf. During all this the herd of buffalo's came in our direction at one point so we all had to hide behind a tree, though at no point were they aiming at us. Adrenaline rush. Very impressive to see all this so clearly, and it's a very rare site. Amazing!
The wild dogs were, in general, fairly calm and lazy, but we did see some movement now and again, one time as they tried to chase a warthog that got away. Because they are so lazy we managed to get up and close to them, crawling over on hands and knees, an amazing experience!!! Very cute animals.

The camp we stayed in was at the very end of the whole site, and since it isn't fenced off we had daily and nightly visitors: hippo's, buffalo's, hyena's, elephants, and of course many many monkeys. It was awesome, just having some breakfast next to the elephant who's munching away on some bark. And at night stopping every so often to shine the torch around for anything interesting to see. The main rule is, if you don't disturb them they won't disturb you, and it works quite allright:).

All in all a great week's holiday!
And now, one short week left until it is the end of this amazing experience :(.

Pics to follow at a later stage