Having worked hard for two weeks with The Book Bus, we were ready for our next adventure. The wonderful Book Bus team drove us from Kitwe, where we had spent two weeks, to the nearby airport of Ndola.
From there we flew south to Livingstone, Zambia.
This car had met an elephant. The elephant was fine…
Livingstone is a bit unlike the rest of the country because there are many tourists. We saw restaurants and souvenir/gifts shops like we had not seen elsewhere in the country.
I had booked a small hotel through AirBnB. It turned out to be a wonderful cottage in a green garden on the edge of town, with a pool and a lovely courtyard where breakfast was served. Again, the power was off much of the time but we were provided with great solar powered flashlights. That night, we ate crocodile skewers under wide mango trees.
On our first day in Livingstone we were picked up by a driver we had booked. Evans drove us to the famous Victoria Fall, or Mosi-oa-Tunya as the falls are called in the local language, ‘the smoke that thunders’. Zambia has long suffered a drought and has not seen any rain in over two years. Hence, the water is not as abundant as it has been and the falls are not nearly the width they show in photos of the past. But they are still gorgeous and impressive.
We walked the length of the path along the falls. You can also see the Zimbabwe side of the falls from here.
The boys were most excited to discover a zipline. The only one in the world that goes from one country to another! They ended up zipping across the deep gorge of the Zambezi River from Zambia to Zimbabwe.
Later that day we had a more relaxing way of enjoying the mighty Zambezi: we took a dinner cruise on the colonial African Queen. Sipping drinks and munching on egg rolls, we saw elephants come to the river to drink, as well as a few hippos and lots of birds.
But the real adventure started the next day when we got picked up by two smiling guides in a large safari vehicle. Moses and Malik were wonderful guys. And the best surprise was that there were no other guests on this trip! In essence a private safari for a week! When I had booked it, the company noted that there might be 5 or 6 others in the same group. So it was a treat to be with just the four of us plus the two guides. In fact, the driver is also the official guide while the spotter served also as cook.
Soon we were driving out of Livingstone en route to Kafue National Park. At 22,400 sq km, it is one of the largest national parks in the world and about half the size as the country of The Netherlands. It is a much more isolated and less visited park than for instance South Luanga National Park. There are no lodges inside the park. Lodge safaris are very expensive and I was thrilled to, in my pre-trip research, come across a camping safari in this park. The advertisements said that you help set up tents and help prepare meals. That sounded like a fun, active vacation especially since we had two boys with us.
Picnic lunch.
Even the safari vehicle was wonderful to have to ourselves: we each had a bench to ourselves with the luggage stowed in the back. We towed a trailer that contained our large canvas tents and folding cots and mattresses as well as a lot of food! On the side of the trailer was a fold down kitchen. A large battery operated cool box in the vehicle kept our meats frozen. The guides sometimes shopped at a nearby village for fresh vegetables or fruit. And Moses baked a fresh warm bread whenever we needed it.
A pool!
We stayed at a remote lodge with a campsite for our first night. Gorgeous outdoor showers were lit by a full moon. We ate steak and fresh veggies in a large wooden shelter and slept like a log in our large tents.
The next day we reached Lake Ithezi Thezi were we had a gorgeous campsite looking at this immense hydro lake. We couldn’t go near it though because of the huge number of crocodiles in the water. Monkeys kept us on our toes as they would snatch any food left on a table. The boys were happy that we could use the pool at the lodge.
From the campsite we did several game drives. The lake had almost vanished due to the drought but we were lucky to spot several herds of zebra. We came across a pack of wild dogs that had grabbed an impala minutes before. We watched them tear it apart, bones cracking. Within minutes, vultures arrived in a big circle around the wild dogs, patiently waiting their turn. We watched herds of water buffalo and many different ungulates as they searched for water. Storks were migrating, impalas hid among the trees.
Amazingly, we spotted several leopards - thanks to Moses’ keen eyesight. He’d spot a nearly invisible head, the same colour as the surrounding ground. We’d drive nearer and finally we would recognize the shape of a leopard, too. The leopard would lazily stay or stealthily walk away.
At one point we were driving down a bumpy dirt road among dense forest when we came around a bend and spotted a herd of elephants. Usually we could drive up quite closely and watch the regal animals. This time however, one flared out her ears, raised her trunk and trumpeted. Then, without hesitation, she and another large elephant charged our vehicle. The driver floored it.
The elephants kept coming. He raced down the windy path, around the trees. The herd kept running.
They must have charged us for a good 2 KM…. It was exciting but I was never really scared because our driver kept going. I don’t know what would have happened, though, if our road had been blocked.
At Kafue Elephant Release Facility
We didn’t see many other safari vehicles. Kafue obviously was much wilder than South Luanga. We did come across a herd of elephants wearing collars. These were successfully released elephants from the elephant orphanage I wrote a book about: The Elephant Keeper. It was awesome to see the success of this program. We visited the release facility in the park where the juvenile elephants came to learn to live in the wild before being released into the safety of the park. At the end of our time in Zambia we also managed a visit to the new elephant orphanage in Lusaka National Park, with a wonderful visitors information centre. We were taken on a behind the scenes tour and helped to prepare bottles for the little elephant calves.
For two nights we camped on the banks of the Kafue River at Kasabushi Lodge. From this gorgeous campsite we watched herds of elephants crossed the river, often with tiny ones in tow. To hear a wild elephant trumpet in dense forest is probably one of the most wonderful sounds in the world.
On our second last day in Kafue, we found lions. Two full grown males were napping under a tree. When we approached they merely raised their heads, stretched a bit and went back to sleep. After a while, they got up and lumbered away - showing us how large lions are!
That night, we enjoyed games and a steak dinner around our campfire. Suddenly, at 9 PM, our guide raised his finger. “Listen, Listen “ he said, “lions!”. I had to really strain to hear a rumbling roar in the distance. “Two or three kilometers away,” he commented, “we might see their footprints in the morning on the road.” I did not give it another thought as we went to sleep: Nico and I in one tent, Hannah and Aidan in the other and our two guides in their tent a few feet away.
It was 2 AM when I woke up because the wall of the tent bulged in over me. Still half asleep, I wondered if it was the wind and pushed the canvas out. It felt too solid to be wind. That’s when I heard the rumbling roar that made my heart stop… deep belly rumbles, continues very loud growls… more rumble than roar. I fleetingly thought, “elephants?” but quickly realized it was the same sound we had heard earlier. Except now it was just outside our tent… “Holy s@&%!” My heart pounded so loudly I thought they would hear it. I tried not to breathe and hoped the others would sleep through it. But soon Nico was stirring.
Wild Dog Breakfast.
“Don’t move,” I whispered, “don’t make a sound… the lions are here.” In my mind’s eye I saw those two large male lions we had seen earlier. I also remembered that our guides had no fire arms - no guns allowed in the national park. What should we do?
I just tried not to move and not to breathe while my heart kept pounding away and the roars grew louder. They sniffed around our tents. I knew only a canvas tent flap separated us from wild lions.
Finally they seemed to walk away a bit further but then Hannah unzipped her tent! ‘She’s not going outside, is she?’ I thought. But later she said she had to pee so badly she couldn’t wait. Plus she thought it was hippos… Our guide whispered “Stay in the tent! Lions in camp!” Soon the lions came back and spent quite a bit of time right around our tents again. We didn’t get any more sleep that night.
Would I ever book another camping safari? I’m really not sure. It WAS a wonderful week but I could have done without this excitement…
