After months of dryness, and a lacklustre start to the rainy season, heavy rain arrived at Pamuzinda Safari Lodge. The season many of us had been waiting for finally arrived here at Pamuzinda Safari Lodge and Chengeta Safari Lodge.

I woke up to a beautiful bright dawn on Tuesday only to find that it was half past midnight, and what I had taken for glorious sunshine was continuous lightning accompanied by what, in this area, apparently amounted to 80/90 mm of torrential rain.

Don’t you just sometimes wish the season could even things out a little? If it could only spread the deluge over a number of days, and time it from say 3 to 4 in the morning how much more convenient it would be.

Heavy rain at Pamuzinda causes flood

The Serui River here at Pamuzinda and the Chimbo River at Chengeta both acquired a myriad of tributaries. Across both properties, all traffic through the parks had to be temporarily curtailed. Access on foot was also impractical as every footstep taken added 2 more inches to one’s height. The combination of red and black soils proved to have the adhesive properties of superglue.

Water levels on our restaurant deck at Pamuzinda were at table height. The weir at Pamuzinda, which normally stands some 9/10 feet high on the downstream side, could only be identified by a small bow wave in the maelstrom. Our fleet of canoes became self-drive vehicles while the recently introduced Dragonfly Walk relocated several feet underwater.

Some before and after images will give an idea of the effect heavy rain at Pamuzinda has on the landscape.