My first morning at andBeyond Matetsi River Lodge begins with a gentle knock on the door as a pot of plunge coffee and biscotti biscuits are placed in the hatch.
The sun is rising, and as my sleepy eyes begin to focus on the morning glow I count three nyala and a family of warthogs grazing between my room's plunge pool and the mighty Zambezi River just a stone's throw from the deck.
A half hour later I meet Alan and Maureen from Colorado as we all climb into the game drive vehicle. They caught the safari bug on their inaugural Africa trip a year prior, and their excitement to discover more is contagious.
"If you want to see things you go to Europe," Maureen tells me of a billboard she saw at the airport. "But if you want to experience things you go to Africa."
Photo credit: Jamie Joseph / © savingthewild.com
Photo credit: Jamie Joseph / © savingthewild.com
Photo credit: Jamie Joseph / © savingthewild.com
We ramble along a sandy road, and as we turn the corner we meet a young elephant bull who shows us who's boss with a whip of his trunk and a flap of his ears. If Maureen were transparent I would have seen her heart skip a beat, and I smile to myself as my mind catapults back to my early elephant encounters. We stay with a bachelor herd of elephants for a while as their extraordinary trunks reach for pods under the blooming acacia trees, and dotted to the left of the herd are impala and kudus boasting spiral horns, and to the right a dazzle of zebra with a few suckling calves.
I live in the bush in Zululand, and we have just gone through the worst drought in recorded history. But here the animals look well fed and healthy, indicative that the river is life.
Our guide Clever has been guiding for 30 years, a gentle soul with nothing to prove, his knowledge is abundant. Our tracker is Noah; he is Tonga, speaks seven tribal languages and has the biggest smile this side of Victoria Falls.
I was raised between Zimbabwe and South Africa, and whenever I come back to Zim I'm always engulfed with the feeling of home.
The unemployment rate in Zimbabwe is creeping towards 90%, and what is a holiday to visitors is life-saving to local families. I think most visitors to Matetsi are oblivious to their contribution to hundreds of livelihoods, and it's understandable because Zimbabweans are resilient people, and everyone you meet at Matetsi are also in the happy bubble.
What was once hunting grounds, Matetsi River Lodge has nurtured into an expansive 50 000 hectare private concession, with a small human footprint and signature andBeyond sustainability values that dates back more than two decades. It's critical that private concessions like this exist because we're literally running out of space for wildlife with the explosion of global population - and when the land is gone it's gone forever.
I feel the flux of history as we meander through woodlands, admiring incredibly tall trees that have provided playgrounds for generations of primates. We stop to get a better look at a giant eagle owl perched high up on a branch, and for the longest moment, I am transfixed on his dreamy eyes as he stares down at me and whistles.
As we approach the vlei the land opens up to large herds of buffalo grazing some fifty metres away, and a journey of giraffe saunter on by. It's the first time I've seen giraffe in so many shades, indicative of the variant gene pool in the Matetsi area.
Noah suddenly spots a wild dog trotting like a straight arrow towards us, with blood around his mouth from a recent kill. He turns a sharp right just in front of our vehicle, clearly on the hunt for something to fill his unsatisfied belly.
Photo credit: Jamie Joseph / © savingthewild.com
Photo credit: Jamie Joseph / © savingthewild.com
On that high note, we return for lunch and over a couple signature cocktails we decide today is a good day for a cruise on the river. Four hours later we're pulling away from the dock and sunset begins to work its magic.
The Zambezi River unstitches me, the way Moonlight Sonata spoke to Beethoven. There is a longing to run my fingers across the glossy surface, to sink my mind into a flow of rapture.
Life's list of insignificant starts to dissipate intro streams of light cutting through a blanket of cobalt clouds and casting rays across a bottle green tree line. Our boat chugs towards a sinking fireball we will never reach, like a muse that should never be kissed.
When we return to the lodge I stand under the al fresco shower with cool water on my back and a glittering haul of stars circling my head. In the distance, I hear the baritone roar of lions and the whoop-whoop of hyenas. I feel a sudden ache in my heart because I know I must leave tomorrow, and a flutter because I know I will be back.
Matetsi River Lodge is everything I expected from andBeyond's latest addition to the family; unrivaled luxury and genuinely warm Zimbabwean hospitality where everyone knows your name. But it's so much more than that...
The lodge is a window to the symphony of nature; the place you go to discover the song of your heart from the inside.
Photo credit: © savingthewild.com
Photo credit: © andBeyond
Writer and wildlife activist, Jamie Joseph is the founder of Saving the Wild. Follow her journey through Africa's great wild places on Facebook and Twitter.