After months of dry, and a lackluster start to the rains, the season many of us have been waiting for finally seems to have 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 actually half past midnight, and what I had taken for glorious sunshine was actually 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.

The Serui River here at Pamuzinda and the Chimbo River at Chengeta have both acquired a myriad of tributaries across both properties and 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 as a 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 and our weir, which normally stands some 9/10 feet high on the downstream side could be identified only by a small bow wave in the maelstrom. Our fleet of canoes had become self drive vehicles and the Dragonfly Walk we have recently introduced is now located under several feet of water.

Some of the before and after images will give some idea of the effect on the landscape.