Hwange: January floods

Since I last posted to this blog over a month ago the Park has changed dramatically. The good rain that fell at the end of November was followed by a long dry spell. We went home to Bulawayo for Christmas and it was even worse there, with the grass hardly changed from its winter brown, and when we returned to Sinamatella, it was to the depressing sight of wilting bush and drying grass. However, all that changed a few days into the new year.

The first sign that we were in for some heavy rain came while we were in Victoria Falls, returning a Land Cruiser axle we had borrowed (our own had a bearing and half-shaft problem). The clouds built up during the morning and a lot of rain fell on us while we were shopping (and Sue’s new Chinese-made umbrella broke on just its second outing - why do they bother to make such rubbish?!)

Back at Sinamatella the roads were wet and we were told there had been a good, heavy shower there too. When the view from Sinamatella hill is so often like this………

Sinamatella floodplain, September 2012

It’s great to see it, for a few months, like this…….

January 2013

And even more amazing, after it had rained all the next night, is to see it like this……..

Overnight the Sinamatella river had burst its banks and filled most of the flood plain for the first time in the almost four years we have lived here. It slowly receded during the course of the day and this morning it is not far from normal so, over the last three days, we have watched the water levels rise, rise again and then fall - to reveal quite a lot less damage than we had expected.

At Kashawe View the high water of the first day …….

Became something altogether more serious on the second day…….

At the bridge near the start of Sinamatella River Drive, the first day the water was high……

But the second day we couldn’t get even within sight of the bridge because the approach was flooded ………

The road is somewhere under all that water – or at least it was, because when the water receded, the road was gone……

Luckily, that was the worst of the damage we found. On the Sinamatella River Drive we had to clear a fallen tree off the exit from the bridge …..

I let Sue go ahead and probe with a stick to make sure there was concrete under the water before I crossed with the car. ….

I’m not sure if that makes me a) lazy, b) sensible, c) a pig or d) all of the above. Choose for yourself!

On the road to Mandavu Dam the vlei which was as flooded as this yesterday……

Was back to normal today…….

A pair of Saddlebill Storks was hunting bullfrogs in the still wet grass and this one got lucky….

It took a long time to swallow!

There were other beneficiaries such as this terrapin that found itself a quiet pool next to the road…

And fungi are springing up everywhere…..

Of course the vegetation is loving it.

And amidst all that water there were some surprising survivors. Ants and termites were back at work in grassland that had been under at least a meter of water for most of yesterday….