Ivory Lodge in Hwange

On our way back home from Victoria Falls, we decided to spend two nights in Hwange (pronounced "wang-gee", or close to that), right by Hwange National Park.

We stayed at the Ivory Lodge which was really great, despite how rustic I thought it was at first. It turned out to be a favorite place of mine, and I can't wait to go back. The max. amount of guests they have room for is 20, and when we were there, there were only two other groups, a family of four and a group of three girls. One thing I really liked about the set up was that they had a communal dinner table, so everyone came together at night for dinner and you could talk however late you wanted. Your room was really just for sleeping and showering, not sitting in. The food there was AMAZING!! And they have a watering hole for animals to come to, which A LOT did.

This was our treehouse we stayed in. :)

It is all enclosed besides the front that looked out to the watering hole. It had shades that you could lower at night, but usually you wanted things up to keep it breezy and cool. There were some bugs, but not a lot.

The other corner, the wall on the right is right opposite of the front door.

Spencer's bed was right by the front door.

Then our bed was opposite Spencer's bed.

This was looking back into the treehouse from the opened side. Behind those shades is the bathroom.

The bathroom.

We were waiting one morning for our game drive, and so while we waited Spencer entertained us with his hat and faces.

"Hey mom, how do you like my hat backwards?"

"Hey mom, do you like it on the left?"

"What about the right?"

"How about gangsta?"

Here are some elephants at the watering hole, and us looking out from our room. One time there was around 30 elephants (big and small) at the watering hole. We also saw baboons, antelope and water buffalo in herds of 300!!!

Funny story about the animals at the watering hole. There is an electric fence that goes all around Ivory Lodge so then no animals try to get in, although they have had some animals force their way, but none while we were there. Anyway, one night at dinner we were all enjoying each others company, and in the family of four that was there (who was another family from the embassy so we knew them pretty well), there was a boy at the age of 7. He didn't like getting too close to animals or anything of that sort, and got scared a few times his parents told us. So we are all eating dinner and the lights go out (which they often do anywhere in Zim) but we had our candles at the table so it was fine. Until Tyler brought up the fact that now the electric fences were down and that the elephants that were out there could come into camp. The boy looked at his mom kinda asking with his eyes, is that true?? Then Tyler continued to go on, which he likes to do and Spencer has learned to know it is Daddy teasing, and Tyler started to say that it would be just like Jurassic Park with the all the dinosaurs getting out and coming at the people. I quickly told him not to say more, and me and the other mom reassured the boy that everything was fine and nothing like that would happen. But it was kinda unnerving to think that the animals could do that, even though I'm sure they wouldn't.

There is a hide right by the watering hole that we went down and sat by, it was so cool to see the elephants up close. And these were no tame elephants, they are the real wild ones.

Daddy telling Spencer a story one night while we were there.