Not all tall stories are fake news. A case in point – our second visit to Zimanga in 2024 – when the world’s tallest land mammal gifted our guests with some singular photographic moments. Stand-out had to be the emotional, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness (and photograph) a giraffe being born in the wild.

The river keeps a rhythm. We bend to its beat. Each day at sunrise we head out on our adapted photo boat – a bundled row of excited photographers; senses sharpened by the chill crispness and muted palette of a misty morning on the water. We return several hours later sated, yet hungry, raring to refuel…

One thirty in the morning. Rubbing the eyes. Mind drifting from the task in hand. Must keep watching. Drifting off again. What’s that? A ghost. A white shadow-creature on all fours appears in the gloom just beyond the light. What is that? Quick double take. Now there’s a second one. Both are approaching. A dream? But the shadow shapes are quickly taking substance…

It’s always a good sign when the giants come out to play. So when the thick fingers of cloud across the face of Kilimanjaro unfurled to reveal Kibo’s powerful, snowy-white head and Amboseli’s biggest and most famous tusker Craig bull-dozed through the foliage to say a rare and brief hello it was clear our Classic Kenya safari was already living up to its name.

It was great to be back on Mashatu. Our first afternoon underlined exactly why the place is so special, especially in the company of a camera and a small band of like-minded travellers. Two leopard sightings provided a taster of what was to come, while a sudden and successful cheetah hunt threw up tons of backlit dust and settled our ‘first night’ nerves perfectly.

A giraffe drinking in the blue ‘hour’ – that all too slim window of luscious, inky opportunity just begging for a great subject – gets our trip underway nicely. It’s pretty special when you get the chance to photograph giraffes drinking after dark, but having one show up so timely at dusk, one you can show off against that deep midnight-blue backdrop is something else again.

A massive yawn. Not normally what you’d expect from an African safari. We finished high tea faster than usual after arriving on the houseboat; bolting home-made quiche and sponge-cake because our guide announced a group of elephants were about to cross the river up ahead. We could get to them in time if we jumped on the photo boat ‘now…now’.

A baptism by river, but in a good way. We were barely settled into our seats on the photo boat and still busy locking our cameras onto the in-built tripods, when we suddenly found ourselves, lens to trunk, photographing a line of elephants crossing the mighty Chobe river…

Spotlighting lions by the Mkuze river after dark, close encounters with cheetahs on fresh impala kills, iconic African megafauna drinking just metres from our lenses in pitch black at the night hides, dynamic vulture action plus jackals in the mist…

Getting off to a roaring start is always a win. And this was certainly up there. Just an hour or two after landing in Botswana we were pointing our cameras at a pride of 11 lions feeding on a buffalo they’d just brought down on the banks of the river Chobe…

‘There is magic in this place…you just have to sit and breathe and wait and it will find you…’ Anthony Doerr: ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’

Some waits are longer than others. Some starts are bumpy. That was certainly the case on our first visit to Zimanga private game reserve in South Africa this year…

Driving the Majale riverbed and the open spaces of this southern Botswana reserve’s scenic plains, past scrubby thickets of low mopani and yellow-blossomed rhigozum, scouring the muscular and tentacled branches of the giant Mashatu trees, our visit to Mashatu last month was most definitely all about leopards.

Under the black coral fan of the tree canopy we’re listening intently. As the darkness swells, the mind plays tricks. Although our game viewer is parked in thick bush, it feels more like we’re deep in the ocean. The fever trees all around us are a dense kelp forest. Bats and nightjars, flying up suddenly from the thorn bushes close by, swim through the night sky above like tiny, tropical fish. The strange, yet soothing sounds of the night-world build like waves.

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.

Scrolling through the long reel of memories and subjects still running through our heads following our latest visit to the Chobe, it’s proving difficult to find the best place to begin our trip report. Do we go with that female leopard stretched out over a fallen tree trunk on the river’s edge ? Or the courting lions in gorgeous warm light at Elephant Bay, while the rest of the world was still in bed?

The benefit of being able to set up calmly and ease yourself gently into your photography session – that’s what you imagine you’d be able to do on a night hide session on Zimanga private game reserve in South Africa, especially given that you arrive at the hide in the early afternoon, well before dark. You’d be wrong…

It’s just gone dark. We are watching a lion shake off the lazy slumbers of a hot afternoon while adjusting our camera settings in the hope of some shots of him looking predatory under the spotlight. Dinner will have to wait. This is too good an opportunity to pass up. Our guide gives us a short burst of light to illuminate our subject when the lion begins to stir. We are more than ready…

A baby hippo, round as a ripe aubergine, is relaxing close to his mother on the banks of one of Africa’s mighty rivers. We drift in slowly so as not to disturb them. Peeping over the lush grasses the youngster is eyeing us nervously. Mum barely bats an eyelash on our approach. The cow’s calm reaction affords her offspring just the reassurance he seeks. Taking his cue from his mother he grows in confidence enough to move out from the shade by her side to get a better view of us. ..

The lightning is break-dancing across the Lebombo Hills and the rain that’s collected in the canopy above our heads is gushing down in a mean impersonation of Vic Falls. (Having seen the forecast we agreed flight shots weren’t going to be that likely so a roof made sense for once and we swapped vehicles accordingly.) As a result our camera gear remains dry, but everything else is sodden, including our butts.

Just in front of us a large male lion is guarding a zebra kill. His ginger-gold mane is being flattened by the rain into a perfect Trump-style comb-over…

‘Believe me my young friend,’ says Rat to Mole in Kenneth Graham’s‘’Wind in the Willows’’, ‘there is nothing, absolutely nothing, half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats’…

…and when the boat is a Pangolin photo boat on Botswana’s famous Chobe river, with eight eager wildlife photographers sitting pretty with cameras cocked, the set-up completely stable on the boat’s in-built tripod mounts, with a skilled and knowledgeable driver on board, not forgetting a coffee box in the mornings and a full cooler-box in the afternoons, then we’d have to agree.

It was great to find ourselves back on Zimanga private game reserve with new guests at the start of June, so soon after our previous visit and with a full seven nights ahead of us to enjoy the exciting photographic benefits this growing reserve in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal brings to the table.

Welcomed by a big bull elephant as soon as we got through the gate, we were certain his greeting was a favourable omen for our visit. The close encounter certainly got us into ‘big game mode’…

It’s always an exciting sight when you come in to land at Kasane airport in Botswana and suddenly, after flying high over mile upon mile of Chobe National Park bushland, you’re met with the snaking curves of that mighty blue African river.

Flying in again with our first photo safari guests of 2018 at the end of May the scene was even more breath-taking than usual…