Ruckomechi Camp Newsletter - February 2009
27 Mar 2009
STAFF AT RUCKOMECHI
This month we welcome a new addition to our Ruckomechi family. Jeremy Claringbould, who completed our Work Experience Programme at the close of our season last year, has returned. He joins us this year with full determination to become a Learner Guide and Host for Ruckomechi and hopes to fulfil his dreams in the coming years.
Ruckomechi Camp has been operating on skeleton staff while we continue to push through and complete our camp. With the amount of rain that we have had over the past few months, we have found it a huge challenge to move vehicles, making it difficult to collect materials to complete the stone 'cages' for the new rooms.
Our guides continue to study the environment and spend many days walking the concession and returning covered from head to toe in thick sticky mud.
Our challenge for the season was a camp of 30 guests for seven days for Sue Goatley's birthday. Sue runs the community-related projects for Wilderness Safaris Zimbabwe, such as Children in the Wilderness Zimbabwe, so she's a great favourite amongst everyone. All the staff worked really well together and we managed to pull off a fun and entertaining week. We now know what we as a team are capable of! A game of cricket in the Nyakasanga riverbed kept us all in fits of laughter as guests and staff played together forming world class teams that fortunately drew at the end of the day.
WEATHER
Over the past few weeks the rain has slowly begun to settle down. We are now at the end of February and we are still receiving light thundershowers in the afternoons and rather heavy downpours in the early hours of the mornings. This time last year, we were receiving no rain at all as our last day of rain for 2008 was the 1st of February. We are now sitting on 833.7mm of rain for the season which is more than our annual average total.
The first few hours of the night have been fairly clear and many of us have spent a lot of time seated on our star-gazing deck staring out into the galaxy. The nights are still rather warm making it very pleasant to sit out in the evenings.
VEGETATION, LANDSCAPE AND THE RIVER
The Ruckomechi River has surprised us all over the past few months as it continues to alter its course by sending the majority of its flow to the left and in so, joining the Charara Tributary which previously was fairly insignificant. A direct result of this is that our 'harbour mouth' has been dramatically increased in size making it very user friendly.
The Little Ruckomechi offshoot has attracted most of the remaining flow from the Ruckomechi River leaving only a small flow to enter the Zambezi from the Ruckomechi mouth. Parts of the Ruckomechi riverbed are still covered in grass which started growing in the beginning of 2009.
The floodplains are now dominated by stands of Vitaveria, (known to many as the adrenalin grass) and a variety of dense herbaceous plant species - the floodplains are now damp and difficult to negotiate, allowing walking to take place mainly along what's left of our roads.
At this time of the year, the mopane veld is at one of its peaks. Stunning in beauty and fascinating in contrast to its previous face - harsh, hot, dry and very plain and of course home of the relentless tsetse fly. Now, a transformed scene, fresh green-leaved mopane with small scattered pans of water edged by short palatable grasses and the occasional flower growing amongst it all compliment the colourful geese which now frequent these pans.
WILDLIFE NEWS
Kevin had a very pleasant encounter when he had the honour of hosting two very large elephants on his front doorstep. Actually attracted by the shelter from the rain of a large Natal mahogany and the cool moist soil upon which they slept, the two proceeded to snore, exhale and ablute all whilst resting their heads on the doormat! On one occasion, sand was sieved through the gauze as one bull threw soil down his side. With the bulls' tusks knocking on Kevin's door thoughout the night, he barely had a chance to fall asleep.
Sibs and Julian were fortunate enough to watch a male buffalo swim across the main stream from an island in front of our camp back to the mainland. The buffalo fought the main current of the Zambezi River before taking a rest on a much smaller island just a few metres away from the mainland. After about 20 minutes of rest, the buffalo proceeded on his mission to get onto more solid ground.
BIRDING NEWS
This month we sighted a total of 182 different species. Over the past month, our guides have been fortunate enough to have seen Olive Bee-eaters and Purple Herons. These birds are an uncommon species to our environment, so the sightings of these two species have inspired our guides to keep a watchful eye for anything else that may come out during our wet season.
A Pond Heron, which is the new name for a Madagascar Squacco was spotted by Julian and Sibs near Parachute Pan just a few hundred metres away from our camp itself. Unfortunately no pictures were taken of the Pond Heron.
An Osprey was seen diving twice into the river just in front of our camp by Alistair and Sibs at the beginning for February. The Osprey was seen again in camp later on in the month.
Best Wishes
The Ruckomechi Team
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