Meet Mark Van Zuydam

I just spent some time with Mark who recently joined us as our Camp Manager at Kanga Bush Camp. He has vast experience having spent many years canoeing the Zambezi River, walking the raw wilderness of Matusadona National Park alongside Lake Kariba and most of all guiding in Mana Pools.

Our mission was in actual fact to find an old bush landing strip called Dandawa, which we intend on putting back on the map and use it as an airstrip for our camp. It turned out to be an informative walk, where we walked past remnants of an old village; it also turned out to be action packed when we came across a small elephant family and very active warthogs…

We had a small family of elephants sleeping under a dense mahogany tree, and in no time, they rushed out of the thicket and gave us a rather unwelcome display. It did not take us much convincing to move out of the River-bed of the Chivava and change our course. We walked into amazing vistas of open Ilala palm dotted plains where the herd of 300 buffalos had walked the night before, with lions hot on their trail.

On our way back we had a sounder of warthogs erupt from the side of the river bed. They put on a performance of what I would describe as a late morning wake up call with a touch of chaos and confusion, as they all ran back and forth, not sure what and where we were.

Mark will walk and leopard crawl you into a pack of wild dogs or sniff out any lion that is in the area by merely following the signs and tracks using his natural instinct, experience and knowledge on the subject.