Hwange National Park
is located on the edge of the Kalahari sands in southwest Zimbabwe
on the Botswana border. It’s Zimbabwe’s largest national
park covering 14 000 sq km - the same size as Wales in the United
Kingdom. Famous for its huge herds of 20 000 elephant that migrate
across to Chobe National Park in Botswana, it’s also home
to the Big Five.
Hwange is Zimbabwe’s answer to a proper African game park
but unlike east Africa’s parks, you can escape the camera-clicking
crowds without difficulty. Hwange came into being in the 19th century
when the great white hunters arrived. The animals were pushed
closer together and further into the inhospitable western reaches
on the Botswana border.
Before the hunters wiped them out altogether, Hwange was proclaimed
a national park. The landscape includes desert sand to sparse woodland
as well as grasslands and granite outcrops that support an abundance
of game.
Other than the Big Five, there are sable, zebra, eland, kudu
and giraffe, as well as wild dog that, through the efforts of a dedicated
team of experts, are once again breeding and growing in large numbers.
Game is so abundant that over 100 species of mammal have been recorded
here, along with 400 species of birds. The shallow pans threaded
throughout the park provide easy viewing, especially during the
winter months of September and October when water is scarce elsewhere
in the park. During these desperately dry months the park can appear
very inhospitable to such a large number of animals. The pans
are crusted and cracked, and the grassy plains are yellow and parched.
The park holds no permanent water, so 60 manmade waterholes with
viewing platforms were introduced to sustain the animals through
the dry season. Without these the animals would die. The park is
situated on the main Bulawayo to Victoria Falls road; it has a range
of accommodation; and it’s the most well-equipped of all Zimbabwe’s
national parks with good roads, shops, restaurants and even an airport.
Hwange is one of the few African game parks where game viewing is
consistently good all year round, though many of the 500km of roads
in the park may get boggy during the rainy season.
|
 |
