Tiger Tiger, burning bright, 

In the forests of the night; 

What immortal hand or eye, 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Willliam Blake, Songs of Experience 1794

When you sit in the Zimanga night hides in the early hours of the morning staring into the dark void with tired eyes and hopeful heart your mind can play tricks on you.  A distant tree beyond the reach of the lights is an elephant; a low bush a porcupine; that shadow a big cat crouching in wait. ‘Nah’, your rational side whispers mockingly in your ear, it’s just wishful thinking…and sleep deprivation of course.

So when a large spotted cat suddenly appears out of the shadows at 2am taking definite and clearly recognisable form as it slinks slowly into the pool of light where your gaze has been fixed solidly for several hours you don’t believe your eyes at first. You do a cartoon double-take.  Am I awake? Is it real?  Did I drop off again? I must be dreaming, hallucinating, imagining it. Then it sinks in. Hell, it’s real. A leopard… on the prowl in the dead of night. OMG. Suddenly you can hear your heart thudding in your ears as your trembling fingers, on auto-pilot, fumble for the shutter button…

For just one of our two groups of photographers on Zimanga to have the experience of seeing and photographing a leopard just four metres from where they were sitting in the dark is a win (unless you’re in the other group of course!), but for both groups to have it happen is unreal. Maybe we were all of us just dreaming, hallucinating, imagining it. But then we have the wonderful images to prove it. Well worth staying up for.

Our good fortune in night sessions wasn’t only about those leopards – awesome as they were. One group at the Tamboti overnight hide woke in the early hours to find a male lion drinking right in front of them – his gaze seemingly drilling straight into them. The other group had our first night hide porcupines to marvel at – an adult and a youngster – although frustratingly these, shy nocturnal visitors drank twice at the extreme edges of the water where it was difficult to pull off a decent shot.

One group had a white rhino cow and tiny calf in the darkness together with Zimanga’s first ever nocturnal water mongoose sighting. There were buffaloes aplenty for everyone to hone their skills at night hide photography (it’s surprisingly easy to master), from big groups arriving in swirls of dust to grumpy singletons baring their teeth or bringing half the bush along in their horns. Scrub hares, with impossibly long ears, also drank, posing for pictures on most sessions. Getting shots of them is another first for us this year on Zimanga. They appear to be getting nicely accustomed to the lights now and make pleasing shots to keep us busy between the larger mammal visits. We even had two stunning impala rams allogrooming at one point with perfect mirror-like reflections that made a powerful and attractive pattern in the frame. It’s not just the A-lister big cats that make for great captures in the night sessions on this reserve.

We should have sensed our luck was in when on our very first afternoon on Zimanga, en route to drop one group off in the lagoon hide, we found a herd of elephants mud-bathing contentedly on the edge of the big dam. The caramel-coloured mud covered their grey hulks completely and they looked for all the world as if they’d been dipped in milk chocolate. Photographing them at play was a real joy that helped shake off the tiredness of our journey. 

Afterwards they all got in the water for a swim then suddenly ran out of it together splashing towards us with trunks waving. We couldn’t have asked for a better welcome although this fabulous, action-packed start to our trip left head photographic ranger Calvin Kotze scratching his head as to how he was going to raise the bar on future game drives.

He needn’t have worried. The next morning the lions kept us clicking by chasing up and down the dry riverbed ambushing each other playfully from the banks and leaping in the air to land on each other’s backs.

Spring was clearly in the air, providing plenty of animal action and behaviour from mating giraffes and elephants (the latter right by the vehicle at one point) to adorable, cotton-wool ball sized and just-hatched  Kitlitz’s plover chicks, at the other end of the scale, chasing about the shores of the dam to escape detection and predation. Even the vultures at the scavenger hide were stuffing their beaks with dried grasses and sometimes seemed more interested in gathering what looked like nest lining material than the regular food fights we’re used to photographing there.

Thankfully the weather was kind to our photography throughout – even on the one or two sessions that were overcast we were able to turn the conditions to our favour. With less available light we could get creative by looking for the opportunity to practise slow shutter speed panning shots. Everyone enjoyed getting to grips with the technique even if it wasn’t something they particularly liked or had tried before and we were soon making converts and achieving some excellent results.

With busy hide and drive sessions it’s impossible to cover here everything we saw and photographed in our 10 night stay. Seeing spots in the dark will remain a stand out memory for us all of course. That taster of the night-time world of a shy, secretive leopard was truly special and left us all lusting for more.

But all good things must come to an end. This was our final visit to Zimanga private game reserve for 2019. We now look forward to 2020 and more, new exciting photographic encounters on Zimanga –by night and by day.

Before we sign off we’d like to give a raucous shout out to everyone on the reserve who helped make this visit successful and such fun. First the applause goes to our guide Calvin Kotze – our photo trips are fuelled by his positive energy and passion for wildlife photography. When we’re not photographing with him, we’re laughing with him.

Thanks also to the ever-calm and smiling lodge manager Ester Kotze, Calvin’s wife, whose lunchtime visits to our Doornhoek home to check we have all we need will be missed by Steve, myself and all our guests. A big fat thanks must also go to another great husband and wife double act on Zimanga, Alice and Blessing, for the heaps of lovely, homecooked food. Blessing’s biscuits are truly Paul Hollywood handshake-worthy. Then it’s apologies to housekeeper Bongile for all those heaps of laundry we gave you – a sign we were getting down and dirty doing lots of low angle photography on the reserve.

Last, but not least we’d like to thank the third husband and wife crack team on the reserve, Charl and Mariska Senekal, whose vision for this unique photographic African reserve continues to evolve and amaze. Thanks again for sharing it with us this year. We can’t wait to see what 2020 on Zimanga private game reserve will be like.

And so it just remains to give three cheers to our gang of photographers for all the fun, friendship, patience, understanding and special shared experiences on our last visit to Zimanga for 2019 – that’s GF, now known as Mr Peacock for his help spotting that ‘turcupine’ from the night hide, to EP & RP who surely ‘take the cake’ in being the world’s luckiest wildlife-watchers, to PS for getting stuck into the camera trapping project and being without Mrs S who sadly had to cancel at the last minute, and to glamorous GS for rocking the coolest shades on safari and pulling off the shadiest one-liners.