We trekked out early, with late summer mist swaddling the valleys and the hills rising above like a water-colour wash. The countryside is looking rampantly verdant with all the rain. We talked of the floods at the southern end of the lake and along the Shire, but here there is an aura of well-being. The white bauhinia flowers are fading and falling, and the air is tinged with the tom-cat smell of wild asparagus fern. A sprinkle of huts in tall maize lands have large leaved pumpkin plants trailing gracefully over their roofs, ablaze with big sulphur yellow flowers.
Glossy goats teeter on rocks or skitter across the road with startled ears and wagging tails.
Their milk white and chocolate brown kids exude a defenceless innocence and play chicken with the traffic. Just before Selima we branched off to the left amid rolling maize fields under tall acacia trees. Here the ground alternates between swampy hollows and dry ridges - the pretty miombo and dambo mix that reminds me a little of Zambia. The Ranch itself is being turned into a conservation area by a private group, and though most of the game will have to be introduced, the current manager has seen quite a lot of wild creatures, some quite surprising. Most surprising of all, he s seen a leopard.