Into the Delta, Moremi without Bookings

Jenny had flown back to the States for an undetermined period of time, but our hope was about three weeks. Her mother was going through the most difficult part of cancer treatment, thus the ambiguity. I was going to continue on solo, with the plan to rendezvous with Jenny in either Windhoek or Maun. Jenny’s mother is fiercely independent and had already expressed her desire that Jenny’s visit not last too long, that she should return to finish our Africa adventure.

As I’d be alone I didn’t plan to tackle anything too remote. Any safety fears were the mundane over the exotic, like breaking my ankle coming down the ladder and thus being unable to drive.

For other risks, such as breakdown or getting stuck, I had the same strategy as when Jenny is with me, to attempt self rescue or just wait for someone to come along. There was always the sat phone as a last resort.

To kick things off I made the fourhour drive to the Moorings campsite, half way between Lusaka and Livingstone. I was the only guest at this modest but perfectly decent campsite. The previously terrible section of road on this route, near Mazabuka, has been repaired. I suspect was not good for business at the Moorings, where many people used to break the journey to/from Lusaka.

The next day to Livingstone was another uneventful drive on good tar without much traffic. 

Livingstone

There are a few good campsites in Livingstone, namely the Maramba River Lodge, Victoria Falls Waterfront and Taita Falcon Lodge. On iOverlander I noted a campsite we hadn’t heard of before, called Overland Missions Rapid 14. The rapids downstream of the bridge are numbered, and this place is situated with a view of rapid 14, thus the name.

I WhatsApp’d ahead and they said no problem, they had a spot for me. Arriving at the property the first thing I saw was a large and perfectly groomed football pitch and a swimming pool. Not at all what I imagined. 

A woman introduced herself, I could tell she was American. She brought me through a huge landscaped area full of bungalows to a central building. My guide showed me around and told me about the place.

This is the main operations base for Overland Missions, a church group that conducts mission work throughout “central Africa” (by which I understood to mean Zambia and Angola, but I’m not sure). More than an operations base it looked like a pleasant holiday retreat, with manicured lawns, tidy bungalows and a stunning view from the main building of the Zambezi river’s rapid 14 in the canyon below. 

I generally take a dim view of mission work, but these people were so unerringly friendly and upbeat that they were very hard to dislike. I was shown a cliff top bush camp at rapid 13, around 1km up river from the base. They had plans of building some training center for local chiefs here, but until that work progressed they said it made a great campsite.

And did it ever! I was the only one there, with a stunning view of rapid 13 below. I couldn’t believe how pleasant it was. I spent the rest of the day mesmerized by the river canyon below.

I found that if I balanced my phone on top of the snorkel I could get enough cell service to receive WhatsApp messages. By this inconvenient arrangement I was able to check in with Jenny. 

Rapid 14 is also where the Zambezi rafting companies put in when the river is running too high to start below the falls. There is a steep and rugged path down the river gorge where Overland Missions is in the process of installing steps. 

I made the hike down to the river, and after returning my legs were burning from the more than 350 steps down and up again. I didn’t complain though, the guys putting in the steps were mixing cement at the top and then carrying the concrete down in buckets by hand, very impressive. I chatted a bit with the masons doing the work, who seemed like good upbeat fellows, in part I’m sure because they were charged with troweling cement into forms and not with the backbreaking work of hiking the buckets of cement down the gorge. 

On my way back to camp I met the boss of the Overland Missions operation, who had seen the Cruiser and wanted to talk 4x4s. He showed me his quite fancy V8 Range Rover and one of the nicest 4×4 trailers I’ve ever seen. On the way to his vehicle wewalked in front of his house, which had folding glass doors facing a panorama of the river gorge below. As an example, these flashy digs and vehicle are far nicer conditions than what even the most coddled humanitarian field workers live under. I will leave it at that.

In the afternoon I visited the Zambia side of the Victoria Falls. The rains this season had been plentiful and the river was very full with the falls running in full force. I paid my entrance fee, got my rain jacket and made the hike around the falls. 

By the time I approached the footbridge across the spray was intense and falling like heavy rain. So much that I couldn’t even really see the other end of the bridge. Even with my jacket I was soaked through in short order and crossing the bridge felt like traversing the deck of a ship in storm.

Everyone that braved the journey was laughing at the ridiculousness of the spray and the power of the falls, it was good fun. I made this video, all shot and edited on my phone. The iPhone SE 2 is purportedly waterproof to 1m and I certainly put it to the test! 

The next day I hit the road for Kasane, Botswana. I’d been in contact with a shop called Aliboats that could, hopefully, repair the crack in our canopy. It’s an easy drive on good tar to the border crossing at Kazangula. This stretch of road was rife with chameleons, I drove past or over a few and stopped to shoo one off the road so he didn’t get squished. 

Kasane via Kazangula

At Kazangula, what used to be a very African experience with a vehicle ferry has been recently replaced with a modern bridge across the river and brand new border facilities. The border crossing was easy an uneventful. My covid vaccination card was checked, but no testing was required.

In Kasane I spent three nights at the Thebe Safari Lodge campsite. Thebe is pretty nice, inexpensive and has a restaurant on site, well attended by locals as well as travelers. The only drawback, which seems to be consistent throughout all the places in Kasane, is that even though the whole town is along the banks of the mighty Chobe River, none of the properties really focus on the river. I suppose this is because the river is prone to flooding and drought, and thus the river bank moves a lot.

Kasane is sort of a funky town, haphazardly developed to support the tourist industry that thrives between Maun and Victoria Falls. Wildlife lives amongst town, warthogs are busy crossing traffic and the mechanic we visited here in 2018 complained that the elephants always knock down his gates to get at their favorite trees. 

The other great place we’ve stayed at before is Senyati Safari Camp, but it had two demerits for me for this particular visit. It is about 10 km out of town and I needed to take care of a few chores and I didn’t want to be running back and forth. Also, they have no restaurant and I was feeling a bit lazy on the cooking front.

FinallyI managed to get a temporary repair made on the canopy cracks at Aliboats. Their welder wasn’t the best I’ve ever seen, but he is the best in Kasane for sure (as in, the only). We’ll see how it holds up.

Kasane has suffered during covid, with many shops in the mall vacant and even the touts hawking souvenirs did not have their usual verve in selling their wares to the few tourists that were here. Still, it was just about more tourists than we’d seen on our entire trip so far.

From Kasane I was headed Maun, where Jenny and I planned our rendezvous. To get to Maun there are only two real choices, a long and indirect route on the tar via Nata, or a shorter route through the Chobe and Moremi National Parks. All but 40 kilometers of this is gravel, deep sand and game viewing tracks. I wasn’t in a rush, so I hatched a plan to take a few days to go via the more interesting Chobe/Moremi route.

A Last Minute Visit to Chobe and Moremi

Normally these highly popular parks cannot be visited without reservations made many months in advance. It wasn’t peak season and I was flexible, after calling around I secured one night each at Ihaha, Khwai North Gate and Southgate campsites.

The Chobe Riverfront drive, on the way to Ihaha, is always a slam dunk for wildlife viewing, and so it proved again. Even though I was finding game spotting while driving much harder alone, I had great sightings, lions, elephant, buffalo, impala, kudu, baboons, hippo, warthog, giraffe, and leopard.

Ihaha campsite is wonderfully situated along the Chobe River. Two honey badgers made a pass through camp but upon seeing me left, presumably to wait until I went to bed to see if I’d left anything behind. I also tried my hand at some night photography. After spotting a crocodile in the shallows about 20 meters away, which I had my back turned while photographing, I decided to call it a night.

The second day I had to drive all the way to Khwai, as I’d been unable to secure a campsite at Savuti which would have broken the trip into a more reasonable distance. Traveling solo I’d been trying hard to keep the driving timeto no more than five-ish hours. Today would be a long one, 239 kilometers, of which 200 would be deep sand, narrow tracks and some gravel road. 

It was too long to drive really, and by the time I rolled into Khwai I was exhausted. But the Cruiser had managed the deep sand fine and I still got to see some nice wildlife along the way, though I met people that told me I’d missed a leopard and two cubs by minutes. Good thing, Jenny would have killed me if I saw leopard cubs without her! 

In front of my Khwai campsite (No. 3) there was an elephant browsing in the river about 20 meters away, wonderful. It was getting into winter here and got very cold at night. The morning was a few degrees above freezing I’d guess, and my fingers ached with cold after packing up camp. I was grateful for my closed vehicle when I saw the lodge guests bundled up in an open safari car. 

The neighboring campers struck up a conversation with me and turned out to be from Melkbosstrand. They were horrified to hear that at one point Jenny and I had camped at Ouskip, perhaps the closest approximation of an American trailer park in Africa. They gave me their card and insisted that we come and stay with them, so they could wine and dine us and redeem Melkbosstrand’s reputation. 

In the morning I found fresh enormous lion tracks right through camp. A guided vehicle and I followed the tracks for some time but we never found the lions. 

We did however find water and mud. Botswana had received good rains and the delta was wet. It is a whole different thing to contemplate water crossings when you’re alone. Of course the most common advice for a water crossing is that you should walk it first, to see how deep it is, test the firmness of the bottom, and determine viability of the crossing.

This piece of advice is lacking in two important ways. First, this is the Okavango River Delta, brimming with crocodiles and hippos and all the rest of it. You hardly want to be half way through a water crossing when a hippo shows up on the other side and decides he doesn’t want to share with you. The second problem is that it was really cold, and wildlife notwithstanding I wasn’t going to wade through frigid water just after sunrise, crocodiles or no. 

After a few successful crossings of water and deep mud, where fresh tire tracks had convinced me it was likely I could cross, I stopped at a longish crossing. It didn’t look good, and there were fresh hippo tracks around so I didn’t feel like being out of the vehicle for long. 

I drove around for a while looking for another route and couldn’t find one. I fell back to my father’s strategy when confronted with a problem with no obvious solution, which is to make a coffee and think about it. Jenny makes fun of me for this all the time. 

When I had just finished this ritual a solution presented itself, sort of. The sound of another vehicle came and I rushed to get back to the original crossing point, so that we might help each other across if one of us got stuck.

By the time I arrived they had already attempted the crossing and gotten stuck. It was a young German couple in a rented Hilux. They were very happy to see me and we made a plan to get them out. Unfortunately rear recovery points had not been equipped by the rental company (Britz), so I couldn’t haul them out from this side of the water.

This meant I had to try to make the crossing around them and haul them out from the front. Fortunately, one of them was already committed, wading around in the water to asses the situation, and she walked the path for me. It was hard packed sand, and they had the bad luck to pick the path with mud. I crossed with ease and was able to pull them out with no drama, for which they were very grateful. 

Many a vehicle are damaged every season in the Okavango Delta due to misjudged water crossings. I know at least one of the big 4×4 rental companieskeeps their own team up here during the busy season to haul people out. 

I arrived at South Gate with enough time for a short game drive and managed to see the usual ungulates, a honey badger, and a mating pair of lions. The plains around Black Pools were scenic, and the road was lined with fragrant sage.

The South Gate campsite was nearly empty, just two other campsites had guests. I got the excellent site No. 7. After dark fell lions started roaring not so far away and kept it up almost all night. Oh how Jenny would love this! 

In the morning the roaring was so loud that I thought for sure they were in camp. I did a thorough inspection with my big flashlight and couldn’t find them. I got up and packed up camp faster than ever before, nothing like the roar of lions reverberating in your chest to give one a sense of urgency.

Maun

The other campers were also up, sweeping around to find the lions, and I drove a short loop through the campsite but couldn’t find them. Later, when I checked out of the park, the staff said the lions had been in the adjacent staff camp. My short time in the Delta was fruitful, but it was time to head to Maun. The canopy repair had failed, so I was hoping to get a better repair done. 

I camped at Audi Camp in Maun. Aliboats has a larger branch here in Maun that was better equipped for a repair, but theycouldn’t fit me in until the next week. To fill that time I schemed a few day loop down to Kubu Island, a Botswana staple that I hadn’t been to, and I’d come back to Maun for the repair. 

Jenny’s trip home was going well. It was a huge morale boost for her mother, who was now over the hump in her chemotherapy treatmens. This was fantastic news on multiple fronts. Of course it was the biggest relief to hear her Mother was doing okay (or as okay as one can be with a cancer diagnosis), and that Jenny was returning, and that we know had clarity to our plans. 

A morning of phone calls and a stop at the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) got me bookings for Baine’s Baobabs, Makgadigadi National Park’s Tree Island Campsite, Planet Baobab and Kubu Island. Stopping by the DWNP office to make bookings directly was much more straightforward than the arduous and frustrating process of making bookings remotely. 

Botswana was taking covid precautions more seriously than anywhere we’d been since October. Masking in public places was being almost entirely complied with, though more chins were protected than mouths and noses. Hand sanitizing was ruthlessly applied at the door to every place of business and by the end of the day my hands were covered in a disgusting sticky film, but were no doubt free of covid. 

Fully fueled, watered and provisioned I set forth, and in a few hours arrived at my first booking, at Nxai Pan National Park’s Baines’ Baobabs. 

The Nitty Gritty

Livingstone

Overland Missions Rapid 14 Campsite – From some iOverlander reviews I get the impression that this campsite might be seasonal. I would urge anyone that wants to visit to contact them ahead via WhatsApp. Sadly the campsite that I got at rapid 13 will be displaced by a training center, I don’t know where they will put people then. That said, it was a very interesting experience to camp there, I recommend it. 

They encouraged the use of their pool and they have nice ablutions at the base, some distance from the rapid 13 campsite. I just peed in the bushes and took a bush shower with my own water out of expedience.

Royal Livingstone Hotel – I stopped here to have a coffee and enjoy the view from their deck at the edge of the river. You can’t help but compare this fancy hotel with the Victoria Falls Hotel in Zimbabwe, both occupying a lofty price point. For me the Royal Livingstone was much more corporate feeling and didn’t offer nearly the same experience. I personally will go back to the Vic Falls Hotel for food and drink with a large dose of history, but I probably will not go to the Royal Livingstone again. 

Kazangula Border Crossing

I was literally the only customer in a huge hall that included both Zambian and Botswanan officials, and still exiting Zambia ended up taking quite a while. They couldn’t believe I’d been issued a 3-year multiple entry visa, which is only given to US citizens (some sort of reciprocal arrangement I’m guessing). After I showed them that a 3-year visa is offered on their own website, and they called a supervisor, the finally stamped me out.

Kasane/Kazangula Mechanic

I tried to get our front diff gasket repaired here, which has had a very minor but consistent leak for some time. Every time we ask someone to fix it they tell me it’s okay and then haven’t touched it, which is annoying.

I went back to Mario’s Garage, that had been so good to us in 2018. Sadly I discovered that Mario had passed away. The garage is still working under new management, and Frank the new owner, seemed good. Sadly he couldn’t find a diff gasket in all of Kasane, so that job will have to wait, again. We keep some diff oil and I check it and top it up every once in a while. It only consumes oil when we’re in 4×4.

Aliboats in Kasane can do aluminum MIG welding, but not very well. Later the manager in Maun told me that they’d had to lay off most of their staff in Kasane due to covid, so perhaps the work quality will improve in time. 

Maun Camping

I camped at Audi Camp for 110 pula ($10 USD) per night. Ablutions here are pretty great, with high flow hot showers, solar hot water. Toilets do not flush particularly well, but hey, it’s Africa.

They have a restaurant with well executed but uninspiring food. They did have beer from the local brewing company on tap that was excellent.

The campsite itself is totally adequate but sort of uninteresting. A huge sandy lot with dust blowing through in the wind. The solid concrete walls that ring the property are topped with razor wire, with does detract from the atmosphere. 

Maun Food 

There are several excellent cafes in Maun, a rarity in lots of African travel. The Okavango Brewing company has great beer, great G&Ts and almost as great pizza. The Dusty Donkey serves excellent breakfast and lunches, as does the Duck. There are other cafe’s in a similar vein that we haven’t tried, such as Marc’s Eatery. All these seem well frequented by locals.

The confusing Botswana Campsite Booking situation

Decoding how to book campsites in Botswana seems at times to require some sort of codex. Most of us throw up our hands in surrender and hire one of the many booking companies to take care of it. Botswana Footprints, NDM, or Ultimate Routes, to name a few.

We have tried hiring booking agents and booked things ourselves. If you’re in Botswana I don’t think it’s hard to manage on your own. If you’re outside Botswana then maybe save yourself the stress and pay an agent their fee (usually about $50 USD, though more if it is a lengthy or complex itinerary). 

Park fees are all paid to the DWNP, but campsite fees are paid to whomever runs that particular campsite, as the operation of most campsites within the national parks are leased out to private companies. This is confusing because, for example, Moremi National Park has campsites run by multiple operators, meaning you might pay three separate entities to visit a single park. On top of this you can only pay your park fees to DWNP by credit card in Gabaronne, Maun or the Sedudu and Ngoma gates to Chobe National Park (possibly also the Ghanzi DWNP office, unconfirmed). At all other gates you must pay park fees in cash. The only accepted currency is Pula, whereas in the past USD used to be accepted. 

Botswana Campsite Rosetta Stone – which sites are run by which companies

Ihaha – Kwalate 

Savuti – SKL (which incidentally stands for Savuti, Khwai, Linyanti)

Khwai – SKL

Linyanti – SKL

Xakanaxa – Kwalate

Third Bridge – Xomae

South Gate – Kwalate 

Nxai Pan South Camp – Xomae

Baine’s Baobabs – Xomae

Khumaga – SKL

Tree Island & Njuca Hills – DWNP (no website that I could find)

Central Kalahari Game Reserve Campsites, (*see exceptions below) – Bigfoot Tours

Central Kalahari Game Reserve Kori, Deception, Xade, Phokoje, Bape  DWNP

Mabua – Intertourism Group

As a rule, all the privatized sites are more expensive than any DWNP site.

If you are in Maun, all of the offices for the companies above are within a kilometer or so of each other. Just walk in and book in person. Alternatively I had good luck booking on the phone. The DWNP booking office in Maun was also efficient and helpful in person. 

Chobe and Moremi Without Bookings

Conventional wisdom is that you can’t visit Chobe or Moremi without bookings. I suppose in pre-covid times that might have been true. What is still true is that you can’t rock up and expect to camp where you want for however long you want. However, I didn’t have trouble finding someplace to camp in one of the most wildlife rich places on earth, providing you are flexible. I certainly wound’t encourage anyone on a two week holiday to wing it and expect to visit Moremi without disruption. But for those on extended trips I think it’s more practical than many might believe. 

Ihaha has 10 (more?) campsites and when I visited only three were occupied, even though I was told on the phone it was fully booked. Khwai also has 10 sites, and only four were occupied. South Gate had three of ten sites occupied. I talked to the camp staff at each camp and they all said that they could accomodate me for additional days, even though they were technically fully booked. This discrepancy, empty campsites that are fully booked, I attribute to no-shows and block bookings by third parties that have gone unsold. I suppose taking up the staff on their offer of staying longer would open up the possibility of the dreaded double booking, and I certainly don’t want to poach anyone’s campsite, but clearly they have an idea of when the campsite will be full, or not. 

Khwai North Gate – Sites 2, 3 and 4 seemed the prime sites to me, right along the river.

South Gate – Sites 7, 8, 9 and 10 are the most private. Six is not bad. Sites 1-5 are not as good. Ablutions here were spotlessly clean, very good all around.

Planet Baobab near Gweta

A great stopover campsite when traveling between Nxai Pan, Magadigadi, Kubu or beyond. The fillet steak from the restaurant was excellent. Campsites have power. Showers and dishwashing station have scalding hot water. 

For our first night back in Zambia since November we stayed at the Flowers and Ferns B&B Campsite. There is no sign, but after some trial and error and asking around we found it. It’s on a working farm and we drove around the maize fields and irrigation pivots to arrive at the campsite. It is a nice wide open spot, maybe a repurposed old horse paddock, surrounded by greenery and on a gently sloping lawn.

There is room for a dozen or more campers, but we had the place to ourselves. Firewood is provided, along with a very nice private ablution with hot water from a donkey boiler, what luxury.

There were fresh herbs growing in the campsite and we harvested a few. Several places we’ve stayed have a small herb garden and it really brightens up our meals to have these from time to time. Jenny preserves them for as long as possible in the fridge, misting them with water and wrapping them in a damp paper towel and storing them in a zip lock works very well.

It’d been quite a while since we’d seen a reliable source of meat so we kept to our vegetarian diet and enjoyed a quiet evening around the fire, contemplating how different East Africa is to Zambia and parts south.

I think a lot of this is because East Africa is much more densely populated. Rwanda is the second most populated country in the world, at an astounding 441 inhabitants/km². Kenya (79 inh./km²), Uganda (165 inh./km²) and Tanzania (56.6 inh. /km²) are less dense, but still much more than Zambia, which is 22 inh./km², while and Namibia and Botswana are around near empty, at 3 inh/km². There are of course cultural differences in all these countries, but just the population density changes the feel of a place quite a bit.

Our plan was to shoot south pretty quickly, with the intent of visiting the remote Marienfluss Valley in Namibia in late May. Namibia had received good rains for the first time in years and there was a possibility to catch the valley with rare green grass, as opposed to the sandy desert scape we’ve seen it before.

With that in mind we got cracking, slowly, from Flowers and Ferns campsite. The owner stopped by and we had a great chat about Zambia, farming and the like. I also saw a group of the beautiful Livingstone’s turacos in the trees around camp just after I got up. 

The day before we’d picked up some eggs at their farm shop by the gate and we made eggs and toast for breakfast. These were perhaps the finest eggs I’ve ever eaten. The finest eggs I ever will eat? Could be. After the mealy texture and weak and pale yokes found in much of East Africa’s eggs, these were decadent.

With the success of the farm fresh eggs on our minds Jenny noted a place on iOverlander that sells meat from straight from farm not far south. There was no sign and it took us some back and forth to get there, but once we did we managed to pick up some marinated spatchcocked chicken, bacon and t-bone steaks, rare luxuries. 

Back on the road we cranked off the miles, continuing to listen to Bill Homewood’s excellent reading of Dumas’s masterpiece, The Count of Monte Christo. The trials and tribulations of Edmond Dantes being even greater than our suffering on the atrocious Old Great North Road, who’s potholes could swallow a giraffe and sometimes devolved into dusty clouds of gravel pits hundreds of meters long. Given the magnitude of Dante’s misery we kept our complaints about the road to a minimum.  

Somewhere along the way we were stopped at a checkpoint and were charged for what we think was a council tax. I forget the fee, 50 KW? Or was it 200? A receipt was provided and some northbound travelers were paying the same fee, so it all seemed legitimate. 

Not far south of here we encountered our first road toll point. Here we explained that we hadn’t paid the road tax yet, having just entered from the north. The toll booth attendant was very friendly and helped us pay our road tax. We had a nice chat and after a few minutes in the office we had our road tax certificate. This is one of the things about Africa that I love, that things have a curious way of being inconsistent (must pay x/y/z fees at one border but not another), but then things also seem to have a way of working out. 

Roadside sellers had new products this time of year. Instead of the loquats and huge mushrooms we’d seen in November, they now had raw peanuts in the shell. I bought a huge bag of them for…peanuts. 

After many hours we arrived at the very wonderful Kapishya Hot Springs. This lodge and campsite we had been to before. The campsite, recently expanded, is set on sloping green grass with foliage all about, alongside a river. We were the only guests and managed to get the same spot as we’d had in 2018, right alongside the river. 

As soon as possible we took advantage of Kapishya chief attraction, the hot springs. At near 2000 meters of elevation it is cool in the mornings and evenings and we partook of a soak soon after arrival.

The hot springs are only a hundred or so meters from the campsite. On our short walk we passed through a forested area that surrounds the natural spring. The greenery around the pool forms an oasis, with steaming water rising up from a pristine pool about 15 meters in diameter. The spring is natural and devoid of any sulfur. It has been dammed to form a soaking pool that is the perfect depth, allowing one to find a spot to sit on the white sandy bottom with the water just below your chin.

It is difficult to state how luxurious this was and we soaked away any stress and road weariness we had. We were only two nights here, soaking morning and evening and braaiing over the fire, generally laying about. A third night would not have gone amiss. 

I took a stab at roasting the peanuts. After brining them in salty water for a while I slow roasted them in the dutch oven over the fire, stirring often. This did not work very well. Or I should say not very consistently. There were a few delicious peanuts amongst a lot of overcooked and undercooked ones. After we ate as many as we could I gave the rest to one of the staff, who with a big smile declared them perfectly roasted. 

Since 2020 I’ve been in contact with a fellow overlander couple, Bud and Mary Melcher, before we both started our trips. They are also one of the few Americans over here and they were northbound, and it seemed we’d be able to rendezvous at Mutinondo Wilderness. Unfortunately we’d miss Mary, who’d gone home temporarily for some family reasons, but it would be great to meet up with Bud in person.

On the road out from Kapishya we drove through the wondrous Shiwa Ngandu. It is indescribable, a sort of Zambian piece of merry ol’ England. It’s an estate of sorts, with a village, clinic, school and also a manor house built by the eccentric Stewart Gore-Brown. He began building Shiwa sometime after World War One. The whole bizarre history is documented in the wonderful book, The Africa House, by Christina Lamb.

To go meet up with Bud we continued to another spot we’d been before, the wonderful Mutinondo Wilderness, another good hop south. At Mutinondo we shared a campsite with Bud for two nights. Many an hour was spent discussing the minutia of life on the road, of 70 series Land Cruisers, Africa, and of places to camp and see. 

It was a real pleasure to share a fire and spend some time with Bud. He was northbound and we swapped notes on various places and generally had a nice social time in camp.

On top of this we enjoyed Mutinondo’s surroundings and had a chance to meet and chat with the wonderful owner, Lari. She has owned and managed this private wilderness reserve for many years (20?) and has tales to tell. On top of this we discussed politics, covid and Trevor Noah. She was wonderful to talk to and it was fascinating to think of moving out to the bush to live here for so long. 

Interestingly she said business has been good during covid, with all the Zambian’s that couldn’t leave the country. This echos what has happened at home in the States, people went camping during covid. It also matches what we heard in November, that a lot of budget and midrange priced accommodation did well during covid, while the high end safari camps had to shut down and wait for things to improve.

After two days at Mutinondo we said our fair wells to Bud hit the road again, making for the Forest Inn. This well known campsite is a perfect stopover on the way to or fro from points beyond. Again we were the only campers, but there were a few guests staying in their chalets and their restaurant was clearly a popular spot with local farmers. This is not far from the interesting “farm block,” where many white Zimbabwean farmers fled in the disruption of the early 2000s to start anew.  

The region around the Forest Inn is the only part of Zambia that we have seen large scale production farms, whereas everywhere else it is small hold and subsistence farming. Some of these farms are highly technologically developed, pioneering new techniques that are beyond me, but a guy we met went on for a while about how impressive it all was.

At the restaurant we sat next to a businessman traveling for work who solved a great African mystery for us. He was originally from Ghana, but had emigrated to the UK and worked all over Africa for the World Bank. Previous to Zambia his most recent posting had been in Somalia, but now he was here in Zambia surveying the roads for a report on their condition (spoiler alert: they need some work). 

He was some sort of civil engineer by training. Given his expertise we asked him our question, why is it that much of the tar road in Zambia and Tanzania (mostly between Kapiri Mposhi to a bit north of Mbeya) has ruts in parts of the tarred road? 

These grooves run longitudinally and are the width of a big trucks wheel base, a bit wider than ours. This means that one of our wheels is in one groove, and a second sometimes riding on the corner. It’s dangerous, and particularly makes overtaking so hazardous as to be impossible. The possibility of catching the edge of a tire and rolling the vehicle just seems too easy. 

What the heck causes these, we have often wondered? Locals have told us it is the heat, but many other African countries are hot and have no such problems. Some sort of road quality was our guess. Our newly met engineer friend knew exactly what we were talking about and said it is trucks that are overloaded on certain axels. 

Weigh bridges are common, to prevent overloaded trucks on the roads. He said that the problem is the uneven distribution of the loads, that a truck will comply with the overall weight limit, but have particular axels that are far over the limit. This combined with poor road construction and heat will produce these dangerous ruts in the tarmac. Mystery solved.

At The Forest Inn we began to confront a topic that had been weighing on us for a while. Jenny’s mother had been diagnosed with cancer just after we left the States and was now going through a particularly rough stage of chemotherapy.Jenny wasn’t at ease being so far away, galavanting around Africa during this difficult time for the whole family. For a while now we’d been discussing the possibility of her or both of us going back to California for a visit, and recently it was feeling more and more pressing. 

Jenny’s mom had insisted that we shouldn’t interrupt our trip and hated the idea that her illness might be detracting in any way from our journey. She has been to Africa and is excited about our Adventure. We’ve always understood that taking an extended trip comes with the possibility of events that warrant traveling home. Of course the lives of your friends and families do not just stop because you are on holiday. We were counting our blessings that this trip home was for for moral support and not something much worse.

With this urgency in mind we headed off after one night at the Forest Inn, bound for Lusaka. There was some thought to stopping at Fringilla Farm to camp and visit with the friendly owner, Andrew Woodly, who we’d met when northbound. Instead we stopped for lunch. He was about farm business but Jenny managed a brief hello after having some delicious Fringilla pies (chicken for me, pepper steak for Jenny). 

Lusaka was calling, though the big cities of Africa do not usually attract us. We had a laundry list of chores to attend to, and we needed to reckon on whether Jenny would fly home. 

There were numerous errands to run. We made good time on the way and stopped by Mudpacker’s, the 4×4 shop in Lusaka, to talk about the work list on the Cruiser. While I was inside working on what would be done the the Cruiser Jenny was busy buying a ticket home on her phone. 

It happened very quickly, Jenny was headed back to California. It turned out that there was a reasonable deal on a flight, but only if she left the very next day. This was all very sudden, but definitely felt like the right thing to do. Family is much more important than whatever travel plans we have, and Africa will be waiting for us when she returns. We were assuming she’d be gone for a few weeks, but a small part of us wondered if this was the end of our trip? If it was we were eternally grateful for our adventures thus far and this would make for a logical break point in the trip. 

To avoid rush hour we wove through the back streets of Lusaka, in something of a daze at the rapid change to our plans. The new plan felt right, but also sudden. I would be overlanding Africa solo, and Jenny was headed home. 

Instead of staying at Pioneer Camp, as we have the two other times we’ve been to Lusaka, we elected to try a new spot, Lukasa (not a spelling error). Lukasa lies in the Balmoral neighborhood, in Southwest Lusaka. We arrived to find a large old looking farmhouse with a big swimming pool and beautiful grounds. It is mostly a B&B, but has space for a few vehicles to camp on the lawn. 

It’s run by a Dutch expat couple and we felt welcomed home, the perfect thing in our somewhat muddled state. We signed up for dinner, a social group affair at a big outdoor table. It was a perfect antidote to distract from our worries, to chat with fellow travelers and enjoy a night outside with good food and good people. 

The next day was spent on logistics. Laundry, packing, organizing for Jenny’s trip back and for my onward solo travel. My plan was vague, but more or less that I’d continue south to Botswana and once Jenny was home we’d make a plan for a rendezvous spot, probably either Maun or Windhoek. 

After a whirlwind of activity she took a shuttle to the airport for her evening flight, and all the sudden I felt very alone. I haven’t traveled solo since I was in my early 20s, and even that wasn’t much of a success. 

I was optimistic, curious, interested, but not excited about my solo time ahead. First I had to survive Lusaka. Often Jenny does the city driving and I do the city navigating, but this time around it was just me. Mudpacker’s had agreed to work on our electrical system and a few other odds and ends, which was about 45 minutes away through the back streets of Lusaka. 

You may laugh at my dependence on Jenny, it’s just a drive across town, right? I can’t stress enough how much of a team we are in our Africa travel efforts. And what would she say if I got into a fender bender in Lusaka?! It was a little unnerving the first time, but I made it to the shop alright. 

Technical Digression 

At the end of the first day the work wasn’t done and I resigned myself to more driving back and forth across Lusaka. 

The work was chiefly installing a Victron 712 battery monitor with a shunt, as well as a fuse block. This would solve two problems. One, it’d clean up the mess of wires attached to the axillary battery. Before each load had a wire run all the way to the battery, creating a nest of wires stacked onto terminals and a host of inline fuses all over the place.

The second problem, more interesting (to me) but less important, is the shunt allows reading of how much load (amps) is on a battery in any given moment, and the cumulative debt of amp hours (Ah). This means we’ll be able to count the amount of Ah being taken out of the battery, compared to its theoretical capacity (102 Ah), and thus be able to accurately tell how badly we’re torturing the battery.

Without a shunt the only way to tell how much capacity a battery (non-lithium) has remaining is by measuring its voltage. The problem with this is it’s an incredibly imprecise method. To accurately asses a batteries remaining capacity by voltage it needs to rest unloaded for 15 minutes, then have the voltage checked. A battery monitor to check voltage is cheap and simple, but it is rare that a load does not kick on for 15 entire minutes, usually one of the two fridges we have. This means that any check of the battery voltage is likely to read lower than the true voltage, resulting in thinking the battery is more depleted than it actually is. 

In truth all this electron nonsense is probably unnecessary, but the care and feeding of the auxiliary battery does cause me some stress, on top of being interesting. Thus, the shunt installation. 

Finally Mudpacker’s got the shunt and fuse block installed correctly, and lo, detecting of Ah was possible and easy. And fantastic. I learned that we are nicer to the battery than I assumed, and because all the loads were run to the fuse block instead of the battery it was possible to remove quite a bit of wiring. Less wiring is less opportunity for chafe (chafe can cause fires, like that one time) and less weight and easier troubleshooting. All good stuff.  

We also bought two more 20l jerry cans. I loath to add more weight to the rack, but we have found that we just don’t have the fuel endurance to manage what we hope to accomplish in Kaokoland or possibly Angola. Perhaps someday we’ll get a proper auxiliary tank and be able to take the weight off the roof, but that costs more money and auxiliary tanks seem to often cause other problems, so we’d stick with simple for now.

They also checked our suspension. We had concerns that our bushes were done, but they checked all the shocks and leaf springs and so far the Old Man Emu suspension was holding up very well after ~40,000 km of hard service in our fully loaded vehicle.

They were not able to get our canopy repaired, even though they are theoretically the Alu-Cab technical representative in Zambia. The shop has an aluminum welder they use sometimes, but he never showed up. The crack repair would have to wait until Botswana. This was causing me some stress, but in looking back at photos it’d been cracked since Rwanda, and I planned no hard off-roading in the mean time, so it should hold up.

During all this I was able to have lunch with the wonderful Ilse Mwanza, her husband and grandson. It was great to visit and talk travel tales. Her grandson is a professional who is very much in the know with Zambian politics and it was fascinating to hear the banter between him and the grandparents as they discussed the latest news. 

After the work was done on the Cruiser I spent a day getting ready for the road solo. It took much longer to get the vehicle ready alone than with Jenny’s help. After provisioning, laundry and a couple odds and ends I couldn’t think of any other excuses, it was time to tackle the roads alone. 

The Nitty Gritty

Border Crossing Notes – Kaseysa/Zombe South Bound into Zambia from Tanzania

Crossing at this border is easy. The Tanzanian immigration officer recognized us from last time and stamped us out in just a few minutes. We were then sent to health, which is telling. 

If they really were serious about screening for covid or covid vaccination cards they wouldn’t stamp you out of immigration first. What if you didn’t have the right paperwork? I suppose everyone always makes it through the health screening one way or another. Our covid vaccination records were inspected and our names entered in a ledger, and in another few minutes we were waved on.

At customs there was some minor kerfuffle, looking for a particular piece of paperwork that wasn’t the TIP. Finally we found it and again were sent on our way in short order with no vehicle inspection. We were officially out of East Africa and into no-man’s land.

At Zambia we did the health screening first with a more professional health officer, but again it was quick and easy. From the health tent we went to immigration. On our way to immigration we saw the same customs officer that had helped us through this theoretically closed border post on our way north. He also recognized us and took our carnet and began processing it while we were in immigration. This is technically a no-no, what if immigration denied us entry, but the vehicle was processed in?

In the immigration office the junior officer stamped us in and wrote our details in a ledger while we gossiped with the senior man. In no time at all we were done, and when I popped my head into the customs office the officer handed me back the carnet, already completed. What a pleasure. I asked if there was anything else and he said no, waving us on.

It wasn’t until later that I remembered that when you enter from the south of the country there are a whole other list of steps. You must pay a carbon tax, road tax and council permit, which we now had none of. We hoped that if any police officer stopped and asked for these that they’d be understanding that these weren’t on offer at the small border posts. The road tax gets inspected often, at the various toll crossings, and we’d try to buy one at our first toll point. 

Also there is no interpol or police clearance required here, that seems to be only at the southern border posts.

The Forest and Ferns B&B and Campsite has potable water at the campsite, as well as a small farm shop at the gate. The ablution is a single shower and toilet, really convenient, clean and nice. 

With Jenny heading home the Marienfluss plan is on hold for the time being and we’d just have to wait and see how things transpired.

Lusaka Recommendations:

Mudpacker’s seems to be a pretty good 4×4 shop, the only one in Lusaka as far as I can tell. Has a fair array of accessories to replace things that might have broken.

The Butcher Block is adjacent to Mudpacker’s and has very good meat, eggs and a few other specialty items.

The Zambean Coffee Company, also adjacent to Mudpacker’s, has excellent food and coffee (add an extra shot to the Americano), and the best green salad I’ve had in months.

November 26th – December 1st, 2021

After an unremarkable night at Samfya Beach Marine we got underway for Lumangwe Falls. There was almost 400 km to cover to Lumangwe, but we heard it was worth the effort. If we fell short, there were a few other campsites along the way. We were also interested in taking the route along the DRC border, just to flirt a little with that mysterious place and because we’d heard the road would be quite scenic. 

Not too long after getting going on a pretty decent tar road we found ourselves in Mansa and fueled up. We didn’t know at the time, but there is apparently a Shopright in Mansa, the last proper supermarket we’d likely pass for quite some time. 

A note on buying beer. Now that we were further north, beer in cans was becoming less available. Even finding where to buy beer at all is not as obvious to us as you might think. We asked at the fuel station and got the usual response, some vague directions that didn’t pan out. We kept an eye out for the telltale stack of plastic bottle crates and just on the north of town found a spot. We had managed to buy one of these plastic crates in Mpika, 35 ZMK, and were able to exchange our bottles here. Normally we prefer cans because they are lighter and save space, but that was no longer in the cards. Beer supply topped up, we pressed north and west. 

Mangos were being sold in abundance at the side of the road, in buckets or little stacks, and now they looked ripe, not the green ones we’d being seeing to date. We bought a heap of them. Small yellow mangos were priced at the equivalent of just 3 US cents each. Amazing considering they cost a dollar or two back home. What would the Zambians think if they knew?

We branched off the M3 onto the D79, and the road actually improved a little bit. It was a paved road, narrow but in reasonable condition. I think this remote part of Zambia doesn’t see enough heavy trucks to destroy the roads as fast as main routes.

First stop today was Mumbuluma Falls, which we had hoped to reach the day before. It is signposted and down a pretty nice dirt track. We bounced our way down to a formal car park and sizable entry kiosk, but it was empty. Parking, we wandered down to the falls to find the attendant finishing his morning bathing and laundry next to the falls.

He was welcoming and pointed out the features of the falls, where we could swim if we wanted to and said that we could pay our fee when we were departing. The fees for the Zambian falls are standardized across the country, foreigners pays $15 pp plus $5 vehicle fee. We are all for supporting Zambia and tourism development, but we felt that for a short visit this seemed a bit steep in pricing. If we were camping, sure, no problem. But one could easily visit a few falls in a single day while driving some of the routes, and at $35 dollars per stop, it became unreasonable. I wish that they would institute a ‘day pass’ system.

The falls were nice, a two tier fall with a pool below each one. The lower pool is seven meters deep, we’re told, and you can easily climb around either. The first fall has a shallow pool below it, and incongruously there is a half barrel braai stand in the middle of the pool on a big flat rock. I can imagine that at a party, braaing in the middle of the falls would be fun, but for now it was just getting in the way of my photos. 

We pressed on and eventually we met with the DRC border. Bright green hills in the distance as we wound our way along the eastern side of the Lupala River that forms this part of the border between the two countries. 

Part way along we came to one of the typical police road blocks found in many villages, but unlike the dozens we’ve passed in the last weeks this one had a line of vehicles waiting. We came to a stop and saw that we were in line behind a V8 Land Cruiser 76, right side drive, rare in these parts. They had Congolese registration, tinted windows, and there were several of them. I wondered what type of important people from the DRC had vehicles like these.

We waited a while, wondering how long this might take. Eventually I put on my best “tourist who has no clue” face and wandered up to the police barrier with our documents. The police quickly determined that we weren’t part of the Congolese contingent, and we were allowed to cut the line and drive onwards. Encountering these vehicles, and knowing that only people high up the food chain in eastern Congo would have several V8 land cruisers, only enhanced the mystery. 

The huge mango trees continued to drip equally huge crops of bright mangos, and little villages were more or less constant as we went along. Huts, bicycles, green trees, lots of children. This was true rural Zambia.

We stopped at the Lupala Rapids, marked on our map, to get a view of the river. Here we were quickly singled out by the government official waterfall steward. He was friendly but insisted we pay the entry fee to view the rapids. Reluctantly we paid and then were unwillingly drawn into a short hike and tour of the falls, all the while trailed by a bunch of village kids interested in the foreign travelers.

At the end we were finally released from the tour and got to actually look at what we wanted to look at. During this time we were also assaulted by the kids, demanding that we give them money. It was off putting, and again we found this to be the sort of place that had just the wrong amount of tourists. If there were fewer tourists, I don’t think this attempt at extracting funds, which felt like a bit of a hail mary, would have happened. More tourists and they’d be aware that if you pay for a tour, part of the deal is that the guide is expected to protect you from begging. Or that is our view anyway.  

After having paid twice to see falls today, and planning on paying again at Lumangwe, we skipped the next waterfall that was on the route, Ntumbachushi Falls, but it’s just as well as we didn’t have time anyway. 

At Kazembe we turned east from the river, inland, and off the tar. The dirt road, the D80, was of medium quality, but joining the D19 it went back to pretty good tar. Somewhere after Kawamba the road changed again to dirt, a frontage road for a new tar road under construction. The dirt frontage road was actually in excellent condition, and we made great time zigging and zagging around villages and the new road. This was yet another Chinese effort part way through construction. 

I’ve just finished Richard Dowden’s remarkable “Africa, Altered States, Ordinary Miracles”, who has some interesting thoughts and observations about the Chinese efforts in Africa. Definitely worth a read, he is a truly unique experience in Africa.

Finally, late in the day, we bumped down the dirt turn off for Lumangwe. Tracks4Africa’s excellent Zambia guide (thanks Ilse!) helpfully noted to not take the first turn we see on the map, as it takes you to a viewpoint of the falls on the opposite side of the river as the campsite. What a frustrating mistake that must be.

Lumangwe Falls

The entrance to Lumangwe is much more grand than the other falls we’ve visited. We signed in at the office, and even though it was November, we were told to make the date in the entry ledger December 1st. This seemed odd to us, and we pointed out the discrepancy. The park staff appealed to us that we had to make it December 1st, because his boss had closed the books for the month already. This made no sense, but we did it anyway. Then we were told that even though we paid, he had no ticket or receipt for us and would bring them tomorrow. Another red flag, but it was late in the day and we were ready for camp, so we accepted. These are the sorts of oddities one contends with on independent travel in Africa. He did in fact bring the receipt the next day.

The campsite is another couple kilometers down the track. Tight green forest flanked the road, everything looking pretty damp from recent rain. Puffy dark cumulonimbus threatened, but we thought maybe the rain had passed over already and were hoping we’d get a rain-free night in camp.

As the road brought us towards the falls, we saw the spray rising above the forest before we arrived, and drawing closer, we could hear the rumble of tumbling water. The mist rising above the trees at the end of the road is a small version of Victoria Falls, Mosi-Oa-Tunya, the smoke that thunders. This was quite a set of falls, much more water than what we’d seen so far.

The campsite is a little unclear, but there are three sites set in the back, among the trees at the top of a small slope. Down the slope there is a fourth site, with a sign that says “camping area”, and a nsaka with a thatched roof that has seen better days. We chose this one, and parking, we tentatively stepped out to see the roaring falls. Just fifty meters from our car, maybe less, was a tremendous waterfall. Amazing. We stood at the top of a smaller version of Victoria Falls, a huge cascade of water tumbling 40 meters or so, white ribbons of water plummeting down, stretched across a wide rock face in the river. It was stunning. 

Being right here at the top of the falls made it an incredible campsite. It is hard to believe that we had this place all to ourselves. It was the weekend and we thought others might be here, but not today. 

The clouds made for a dramatic sunset over the falls. After that the sky looked more ominous so we thought we had better get to it. I started a fire, we had chicken that was due for cooking, and we hoped to grill, weather permitting. 

Not long into the effort the rain started. The original plan was grilled chicken over the fire and “hobo packs,” diced potatoes and onions in foil, cooked in the coals. Instead we invented a new meal on the spot, braised chicken and potatoes. We moved the stove into the nsaka and dumped all the ingredients into the dutch oven on the gas burner. And it worked. Hiding from the rain pattering down through the hole in the roof we ate our delicious braised chicken and potatoes, cracks of lighting and thunder nearby, and the persistent roar of the waterfall just meters away.

Rain again, which we were getting tired of. But still I slept like a rock that night, the falls making the ultimate white noise machine.

The next day we relaxed at the falls. A small jungle forms in the humid spray at the base of the falls, and we took mossy stone steps to the bottom for a new viewpoint. There is also another viewpoint where you can see the full breadth of the falls. I tried to take long exposure photos of the full falls from here, but the waves of spray washed over me, and the camera, making it difficult. 

Entry to Lumangwe Falls also includes Kabweluma Falls, a few kilometers down the road. We began to gear up for a hike to this second fall but ran out of steam. Sometimes you just need a lazy day in camp. I feel a little silly complaining about waterfall prices, and then at the one place you get two for one entry, we didn’t take advantage of it! If you make it this far, don’t follow our example. 

This river seemed much more full than the others we’d seen so far. Most are low as we are at the end of a long dry season, the rains just getting going. But this river was running strong. 

Again we experienced the small irony of visiting the waterfalls of Zambia. No running water. Which in and of itself is no big deal, but there is an ambitious ablution building with men’s and women’s toilets, sinks and showers. Also a large water tank on a tower to provide water pressure, but I guess the pump is long broken. It must have been this way for some time, as every report of visiting here I’ve read says the same thing. 

That night rain came again, but we were well prepared this time and had a pleasant evening. We purchased our 270° awning a while ago, but only got to use it for a week before we had to dash home for the initial stages of covid in March 2020. This time around it was proving to be a really great addition to our camp setup; being able to set it up and put it away so easily meant we could pop up shelter from the rain without a fuss.

Leaving Lumangwe we had decided to make for Mpulungu, the town on the coast of Lake Tanganyika and land locked Zambia’s only port. There are other waterfalls between here and there, but the Lumangwe falls were so spectacular it seemed like the others might pale with the low water levels in many of the rivers. 

Also we were feeling a bit soggy, having been rained on many successive nights. Our camping setup is still not very rain equipped, even with the success of the awning. We need to work on that.

Mpulungu and Covid Testing

We made a bit of a strategic error in applying for our Tanzanian e-visas. The e-visa means you apply online and provide all your details and receive a letter of approval to present at the border. At the time of application we just guessed on our arrival date, and the visa letter says, “Not to be issued before December 1st,” so we have to dally an extra day or two for that. Otherwise we might have crossed a little earlier.

The road out from Lumangwe is rough dirt road all the way to Mporokoso. Normally a rough red-dirt road through the lush green countryside is kind of fun, but when it’s so rough that I can’t sip my morning coffee, I start to resent it a bit. 

We pass through village after village, sparsely populated. It seems most are working on planting fields, and we see fresh rows of earth and some fields with tiny green shoots coming up. 

There is no traffic at all, just bicycles and pedestrians. We note a difference here up north to down south. In the south when you drive along a narrow dirt road, the bicyclists frequently just run off the road and stop or purposefully crash their bikes to get out of your way. Most of the bikes are a Chinese copy of an old British design and have terrible brakes. I know because I have one at home. Combined with heavy loads they are hard to control. I always feel bad about this, but even when we drive on the verge to leave them room, they don’t risk it, no doubt having been run off the road many times before. However up north the cyclists will edge over to the side and keep going, no crashing. 

From Mporokoso we make it to the relief of an excellent tar road. It’s wonderful to be able to finish my coffee and drive along so easily. I’m always torn. I feel they are paving Africa at a tremendous pace, and soon we can do this tour in a sedan, and I’ll be missing out on all the romance of red dirt tracks deep in the bush. Conversely, here I am thankful that we finally made it onto a smooth road. Tourists (or maybe just me) are difficult to please.

Here we get cell reception for the first time in a few days and with it an avalanche of covid Omicron news. Concerned emails from friends and family and forwarded news articles. What should we think about all this? I checked the Overland Africa WhatsApp group, about 90 travelers that are on the road all over southern and eastern Africa, and it is blowing up. Many in this group are from the UK, and their travel insurance will be invalid if they enter a red listed country. The texts came fast and furious through the rest of the day as everyone tries to figure out what to make of the news.

It seems most in the WhatsApp group are not concerned about the actual epidemiological risk. Though I place Jenny and I somewhere along the the “covid cautious” side of the risk spectrum, once you make the leap to travel here, you are accepting some level of increased risk. A little bit of fatalistic African culture I suppose. 

I can’t tell if many in the Overland Group don’t care at all, or if they are just getting down to brass tacks, as essentially this is a logistical problem. Will there be border restrictions? Will there be lockdowns? Do we need to get somewhere that we can hole up to wait out impending closures, if any? Many waited out the last round of lockdowns in Namibia. It’s inexpensive and has generally very good infrastructure. We know of at least a few that are beelining it that way to sit tight and see what happens. 

We are headed the opposite way, towards Tanzania. I think that for the most part, all but the most extreme countries like Israel, Australia and New Zealand are done with complete lockdowns. Africa certainly has to soldier on. No matter what they will just find a way to keep things working. Still, we spend much of the rest of the day on the road pondering this new threat. I’m deeply saddened that this seems to be the world that we now live in. An endless watch of the news for the new variant, what are the new restrictions, every day a risk evaluation.

This all swirling in our heads we turn off our beautiful tar road onto an unnamed dirt track that is a shortcut to the M1 or the Old Great North Road. This chops off an hour or so of travel time and is in reasonable condition. We stopped for lunch here, and a local wanders over to see what we’re up to. He doesn’t speak any English and we no Bemba. It’s not much of a conversation, and he just watches us eat. This is no doubt a preview of what is to come, where further up into more densely populated East Africa, it is hard to make a roadside stop without company. I remember last time stopping and immediately running to the bushes to pee before the inevitable crowd of children showed up to watch what the mzungus (white people, or I think technically “Europeans” in Swahili) were up to.

Mpulungu isn’t on the tourist track, but it still has a nice location on one of the great rift valley lakes. We drop down the escarpment from the plateau, and it gets warmer, more humid, and thankfully less rainy. We’re staying at the Lake Tanganyika Lodge, a couple kilometers west of town. It’s sits on the rocky beach shore and has a really nice covered deck with a view of the lake, restaurant and bar and some modest chalets. 

The camp site is in fact just a flat place to park near the restaurant, just 5 meters from the lake. We have a spectacular view but zero privacy. There is something about a designated campsite that normally gives you a little place to call your own, but here it doesn’t really feel like that. 

None the less the manager is extremely friendly and easy to talk to, and we chatted a bit. About Zambia, covid, border closures and the rest, and we feel comfortable and welcome here.

Now we need to figure out our strategy going forward. A well connected Zambian friend has sent me the new Zambia covid rules, including that you may not come into Zambia or leave unless you are double vaccinated. This turns out to not be true, but is a good example of the difficulty of information dissemination. Kenya has also announced that staff and tourists must be vaccinated to enter National Parks and some other government facilities, So it seems Africa is getting serious about vaccination at some level.  

We hope to cross into Tanzania at the sleepy Zombe/Kasesya border crossing, just north of Mbala, and head to the Lakeshore Lodge for some relaxing on the beach and recuperating from our damp adventures in Zambia. Lakeshore Lodge is well known among overlanders, a really nice lodge on the beach with excellent facilities and also a campsite. The very good restaurant, lounge area and other activities are available to campers, and it’s a welcome respite from the more rugged stops before and after. Not much else in the whole of southwest Tanzania can offer similar accommodation.

Word is the Kasesya border post is officially closed for covid, but a few reports of successful crossings by tourists have trickled in. Tanzania’s website is not up to date for this sort of thing, so we’ll just have to go, take a look and see what happens. If we can’t cross here, it’s a day minimum diversion to drive to the next border, Tunduma, which is busy and hectic.

We spent two days here drying out a bit, watching the fishermen not far off shore and waiting for December 1st to roll around for our visas to be valid. We got the car washed in town and picked up a few provisions, though Mpulungu has no “supermarket” in the sense we are used to. Road-side stalls and numerous little shops stock various odds and ends. 

We also needed a covid test before going to Tanzania. The manager said you can get a PCR test in Mbala, about an hour away up the escarpment. After some calling around, we learned that their PCR machine is broken, and we’d have to drive all the way back to Kasama. Other news was that Tanzania, for better or worse, might be accepting rapid antigen tests for crossing. 

With that news we figured we’d get a rapid antigen test, available at the clinic here in Mpulungu, bring the results to the border and see if it worked. These sort of uncertainties are just part of traveling now. We’re fortunate that we have the time to backtrack, if needed, for our PCR.

So far on our trip we’ve felt pretty covid safe, excepting the crowds of locals when we got stuck getting out of Bangweulu. We’ve met up and chatted with lots of people, but always outside and not in big groups. When we go into stores or buildings, we wear masks, though increasingly we’re finding ourselves alone in this effort. Pleasantly the manager of the Lake Tanganyika Lodge had her staff wearing masks upon the announcement of Zambia’s increased covid mitigation efforts on Nov 28th. 

Now we drove up to the clinic in Mpulungu, and immediately it seemed the most likely place we would get covid was here. It was fairly crowded, and I only saw two people wearing masks other than ourselves the whole time we were here. This clinic did not compare well at all to the professional and organized hospital we’d visited for PCR testing in Namibia.

We asked around, were guided through a door marked “no unauthorized entry” into the laboratory. After more waiting we got our antigen tests. Results negative. Then we asked for the paperwork to show at the border. They looked at us, “Certificate? There is no certificate.” Hmm. We said we understood that this wasn’t a PCR test, but could they just give us something, anything, that said we got antigen tested and were negative. 

They discussed it and said we could get something. We’d have to wait. There was no charge for the tests, to encourage people to get tested they said, but the certificate was 100 ZMK, about $6 USD, each. Something about the whole thing started to not smell quite right. A while later we paid, and they handed us two pieces of paper stating that our PCR tests were negative. With no receipt.

We had inadvertently bribed the lab staff for our test results, or paperwork anyway. We processed this while we were shown out. One of the clinical officers wanted to exchange WhatsApp numbers and email addresses and show us around town, but we demurred, trying to shake off the attention and think about what just happened. In hindsight it was obvious, but at the time it wasn’t as clear, and Africa had just taught us a little lesson.

What now? We had the “right” paperwork. Through our many travels in Africa, we’ve had no trouble traveling without having to resort to any shady business. I don’t like supporting the habit of some officials who try to make extra money on the side; it just makes it harder for future travelers. When officials think they can “come to an arrangement” that benefits them, it supports future corruption, one of Africa’s biggest blights. 

I share this vignette with you not because I am proud of it, but because that is what happened and I thought you might find it interesting how these things transpire. We sat uncomfortably with these thoughts and wondered what to do from here. We could drive to Kasama, get tested again and come back the next day. Perhaps that is what we should have done.

Instead we decided to proceed to the border and just hope that they didn’t ask for the certificates. I’d read that Tanzania was doing rapid tests at the border for entry, so perhaps they weren’t expecting these anyway? 

With another day to wait for our visas the next morning, we left Mpulungu and made our way to Kalambo Falls. Kalambo Falls is the second highest free drop waterfall in Africa, at about 200m. It’s also right on the border, with one side of the river being Tanzania and the other Zambia. 

It took us about two hours, an hour to Mbala where we fueled up, and another hour to the falls. Out of Mbala the road turns to a graded gravel road, and not far north we turned off at the signposted road to Kalambo. Down, down, down it goes, and at the very end is a steep and rocky decent, definitely 4×4 required.

Like many of the waterfalls it is well signposted. There is a parking area and an open air hall with a desk for ticketing. We took the steps that led down a hill towards the falls. At the bottom of the steps we found ourselves perched at the head of a large gorge, with the river and waterfall to our right, and the deep amphitheater of the gorge stretching off to our left. We could see the water spilling over the edge, but you can’t really see where it goes.

We walked right down to the waters edge, and there is a rock that sticks out over the precipice.  Those not worried about heights can creep their way out to the edge and look down. Jenny and I took a peek, and though I am not normally worried about heights, I was a bit concerned about the geologic integrity of the rock, so I made a hasty retreat. 

The path winds its way along the southern rim of the gorge, well maintained cement steps that follow the edge, up and down as needed with a nice steel hand railing all the way. Along the way are six viewpoints to get various looks at the falls. It is probably a kilometer or so to the last viewpoint, which we thought was the best.

The river wasn’t high, and still the falls were impressive. At the last viewpoint you can see the full drop. Also along the cliff face we looked down on huge numbers of swallows darting around, and we spent quite a while watching their acrobatics from our unique angle.

The campsite at Kalambo Falls is modest. Jenny looked at the ablutions and reported that she felt she would probably have been the first customer in quite a long time. The campsite itself is set on a sort of steep slope, and large cement pads have been poured to pitch your tent on. For vehicles with a roof top tent there isn’t much available, and I suspect they’d have let us camp in the parking area.

Instead we elected to go to the Great Kalambo Falls Lodge, 500m or so down the road. They have some small chalets, a simple restaurant and a camping area. There is pretty much only one spot, or maybe two if you were traveling together, for vehicles with roof top tents. They also had a few flat cement pads cut into the slope. Around the camp are a couple thatched shelters. From the camp it is only a couple minute walk to the rim of the gorge to look at the falls, a sign reminds that payment is still required even if only viewing from here.

It rained on us again, and we retreated to a thatched shelter. We were starting to have the first signs of travel fatigue. The days of rain combined with moving too often were wearing on us. We used to have a “two-night minimum” rule, to avoid the fatigue that comes with moving too often, but we were in a rush to get north out of Zambia’s rain, and also so we didn’t have to rush through Tanzania. We were still in good spirits, but the luxuries of Lakeshore Lodge in Tanzania beckoned, and we were really looking forward to a rest there.

Border Crossing Day, Dec 1st 2021

(apologies if this digresses into the technical, but detailed border reports are precious to others traveling)

Today was border crossing day. It would be interesting, with our dodgy paperwork and conflicting reports on whether this border was even open. Worst case we’d retreat to Kasama, get tested, and make our way to Tunduma. From Tunduma it’s long haul to Lakeshore Lodge, so then the question would be was it worth it to go all that way from Tunduma, and then back track all the way back east after our stay there. Since we didn’t know of any equal accommodation in southern Tanzania, Lakeshore was starting to seem a bit like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Tunduma is reportedly a hectic crossing, being the main transit point for all cargo from Tanzania’s ports to land locked Zambia, so motivation to avoid this border was high. There are many reports of people taking the whole day to cross here.

Our little border post is called Zombe/Kasesya, or confusingly sometimes after the nearest larger town, Mbala. We used this border in 2018, and then the road from Mbala to the border was atrocious, but we discover that it has been redone, now a swift, graded dirt road. 

Officially this border post is open from 0600. We arrived after an easy hour or so drive at 0730, and only the cleaner was there, no officials. This small office held two rooms and toilets, and though they weren’t open, they were spotlessly clean.

After a while, the immigration officials showed up and directed us to the health tent. Two days earlier Zambia had implemented a new round of Omicron-related covid rules, and this included covid screening on exit from the country. We handed over our certificates from the Mpulungu clinic, and with hardly a glance, they said we were approved and sent us on our way. Our integrity now officially compromised, we went to immigration. 

Part way through processing us, the senior official said that we should check with customs first. He said that he had no issue with stamping us out, and that the Tanzanian side was open. But he said that sometimes customs doesn’t want to let vehicles through, that the border is for crossing on foot only.

The customs official wasn’t here yet, so we waited. He showed up in not too long, talked to a business man entering from Tanzania, and then sat down with us. We asked if he would stamp our vehicle carnet for exiting. He thought about this for a while and said that he couldn’t do that, that this border was officially closed for vehicles. 

Jenny and I resorted a little bit to “good cop/bad cop,” though our version of “bad cop” is pretty benign. More like “keep waiting around to see if you get lucky cop.” She empathized and appreciated that he was following proper procedure while I continued to ask if there was any way to gain an exemption to the closure. 

I had read several reports online, iOverlander and Facebook, of travelers crossing here without issue, no bribes or exceptions necessary, thus my persistence. This official expressed his distaste for Tunduma, acknowledging that it is a long diversion and a border post worth avoiding. He also said he wished this post was open, but it wasn’t. Eventually he said he would call his boss and make our case and that if the boss approved, he would stamp us out. 

We listenedto him chat away with his supervisor in Tunduma. His supervisor agreed to let us pass if we had an agent process some additional paperwork that he termed a “re-route”. We had no idea how to actually do this and were starting to wonder if this was an elaborate attempt to levy a bribe. He said he would call an agent at Tunduma who could process the re-route for us, and once it showed up in the system on his computer, he would stamp us out. No mention of money so far, and we kept our mouths shut.

More waiting. Eventually he waved us back in and said that the system was down, but he would stamp us out now and could process us in the computer system when it was back online. Excellent! Part way through his signing of the carnet he said that there is a fee for the re-route, $50 USD. “To the shipping agent?” I asked. 

“Yes. He will send you an invoice and receipt to your WhatsApp number,” he said. 

If this came with an official invoice I felt it was legitimate, particularly since he didn’t request we pay him directly. He got my number, stamped us out and that was it. Immigration processed us quickly and we were off to the Tanzania side.

On the Tanzania side they first sent us to health screening. Again, with some shame, we handed over our certificates. She said if we didn’t have these she would give us a rapid antigen test at no cost and, if negative, let us through. So at this particular border post on this particular day, no PCR test required for entry. They also checked our yellow fever vaccination certificates.

At immigration we handed over our e-visa approval letters. She had never seen one of them before but knew about them, and after making some notes, stamped us in. Our visas were one-year multiple-entry visas, so we would not need new ones when we made our way south in a few months. 

The customs officer brought us into his office. He asked if we had a carnet, and I said yes, but isn’t it true that in Tanzania you need a TIP (Temporary Import Permit) for the vehicle regardless of whether you have a carnet? I had learned this on Facebook of all places. He responded that I was correct. In this case, in Tanzania, the carnet doesn’t get you anything, unlike most countries where it circumvents the need for a TIP and typically is valid for the duration of the carnet, up to one year. 

Part way through him processing our TIP he asked for our vehicle’s police clearance. Police clearance? I had never heard of anyone needing a police clearance for Tanzania. I asked if we needed one. “Yes, it is a requirement.” Hmm. I handed him our police clearance, now two years old. He didn’t look at it, made a copy and handed it back. I asked what if we didn’t have one and he responded that it would be okay, not a problem.

This is usually when people say “TIA”. This is Africa. No more explanation given or needed, just that sometimes things don’t make sense, but still work anyway. I pressed him further and he explained that it is actually a requirement if you don’t own the vehicle, presumably to differentiate stolen vehicles from those with hired drivers, like trucks. I suspect a letter of authorization from the owner, as most rental companies will provide, would also suffice.

The TIP can be issued for 30, 60 or 90 days, at a cost of $25, $45 or $60 USD. $5 of that is a road tax, the rest is the TIP fee. Payment is made via mobile money, no credit card or cash accepted. This is an effort to reduce corruption at borders, with the slight flaw that many foreigners entering don’t have a mobile money account. 

The work around for this is – the customs agent calls a guy who comes on a motorcycle. You pay him cash; he pays your TIP on his phone, coded to a number in the system, and then the system spits out your TIP once it has confirmed payment. 

In this case the customs agent was in a hurry to be somewhere and paid our TIP fee out of his personal Mpesa (mobile money) account, and we paid him. We were $2000 TZ shilling short, a little less than $1 USD. We offered to change more money, but the customs agent just wanted to be rid of us and didn’t care about the difference. 

There we go, 3 hours at the border, mostly just waiting, and we were in Tanzania. Lakeshore Lodge here we come. 

Nitty Gritty

Nov 26th – Samfya to Lumangwe – 399km, 10h 17m with lots of stopping.

Nov 28th – Lumangwe to Mpulungu 355km, 8h 16m

Mumbuluma Falls

The campsite here is basic but fine, set off to the side of the kiosk, but not much in the way of facilities or privacy. It would be fine for an overnight stop over, but I wouldn’t recommend it as a destination unto it’s own. As I think I mentioned before, there is a little lack of clarity on whether the $15 entry includes camping, or it’s another $15 to camp. The Lumangwe pricing is $15 once, very clearly, and I think this is supposed to be standardized across all the falls. I think I would stand my ground if asked to pay for camping and entry separately.

Lumangwe Falls

A really great destination, highly recommended and worth the effort to get here. It’s quite a haul if coming on the route we took, via the DRC. Coming from Kapishya/Kasama side it would be faster.  

It would be slightly disappointing to arrive and not get the campsite right at the waterfalls. The ones at the back are fine enough with good shade, but the uniqueness of camping right at the falls is spectacular. I think if you arrive during the week the risk of not getting your choice of sites is small.

One factor that might bother some is if you are at the sight adjacent to the falls day visitors have to walk through your site to visit the top of the falls. This did happen to us, a group of medical students from Kasama, but they were very nice and we chatted for a bit, we didn’t find it obtrusive. 

Firewood provided on request, we tipped the staff member who brought it.

There is a large Chinese run market on the opposite side of the road from the LBM fuel station marked on T4A. Stock was eclectic, but it did have staples, wine and liquor and snacks.

Lake Tangyanyika Lodge 

I confess I forgot to note the cost here, but I think it was 100 ZMK/$6.00 USD pppn. They had a small restaurant and we had a nice dinner here, though service was very slow, as we found to be common in Zambia. Power is unreliable, but they have their own generator, until it ran out of fuel.

Ablutions were shared with the restaurant, a simple cold shower and two toilets. Clean, basic, but fully functional, 2.5/5.

The camp site itself is just a rocky place to park for one vehicle. Not suitable for a trailer.

Kalambo Falls

The official campsite was unappealing to us, though if you’re on a budget camping is part of your entry fee it’d certainly get the job done. Entry is the same as at the other falls, $15 USD pp + $5 vehicle fee, includes camping, or just viewing the falls, all in the same price.

The Great Kalambo Falls Lodge

Camping was 150 ZMK pppn, ~$8.50 USD. While I wouldn’t say that this makes a destination in and of itself it is certainly an upgrade from the Kalambo Falls campsite. They also have a restaurant. We were the only people here and the manager said we were the first people to stay in a long time. Ablutions, 2/5, though when there was trouble with the water they gave us the key to a chalet to shower there, which was much nicer. 

There should have been running water, but we found it to be intermittent and the camp staff had to keep fiddling with a pump and some valves. 

Photography

For the “smooth” waterfall photos I used a tripod, a .5 to 2.5 second exposure, a narrow f-stop of f/16-f/18 and in bright conditions I also needed an ND filter, otherwise the photo was over exposed. I have a variable ND filter, which did produce more vignetting than I would prefer. To take photos like that without all that stuff just wait until later in the day, no ND filter needed, and  prop your camera on a rock, tree stump or whatever, and use a .5 sec exposure.

I’m using a Sony A9 and A7III, both of which are weather resistant, and two of my three lenses are also weather resistant, so I didn’t worry too much about the spray from the waterfall.

November 24th – 25th, 2021

In the morning we arose to the aftermath of our insect attack. Dead termites were everywhere, their wings and bodies stuck to the side of the cruiser, the tent, even the teapot. After a simple breakfast our guide showed up on his bicycle, ready to take us to the shoebill. First we had to drive the seven kilometers to headquarters at Chikuni to pay for our permits. The guide jumped in the back seat, and off we went.

Leaving the tree line and out onto the wetlands proper, it was just a wide open flat expanse of short grass, nothing else. Since the wetlands are not currently wet right here, this is a huge grassy plain. Big sky country as they say. The guide told us that deep into the wet season this is all under water, that you could fish for bream and tigerfish from our campsite, a small island of trees which would only be inches above the water level. The Bradt guidebook says that the water level only comes up one meter, but the water moves an astounding 45 miles inland at the height of the rains. 

The plains are impressive on their own, but further along we began to see antelope dotting the horizon. A little further along and it became a lot of dots. Driving closer still we were overwhelmed at the magnitude of the herd in front of us. Here were thousands and thousands of black lechwe, found only here. We’d seen red lechwe in Busanga, even a lot of them, but nothing like these numbers.

After watching them for a bit, we moved on towards Chikuni. Headquarters is a loose collection of some small buildings, mostly housing for staff, all set in amongst some scattered trees. There is also an airstrip, and I got the sense that this must become an island later in the season.  

Arriving, the road goes through a gap in a short farm-style fence, but a bakkie (pickup truck) was blocking the way. Some staff were milling around, and clearly they were in the middle of something, so we waited. Looking into to the bed of the bakkie it looked like there was a lechwe in there, maybe even dead? At the least very unwell.

They pulled ahead a little, and watching a little longer we saw them pull out what was clearly a dead lechwe from the back. It slid off onto the ground with a thump and was dragged off by another vehicle.

What was going on? We couldn’t figure it out. They drove up and waved us forward, and we were directed to park off to one side. One of the staff told us to get out and motioned us over to where the managers were and one of the dead lechwe. They were up against a chain link fence topped in barbed wire, and much to our surprise, inside were three live cheetah, very intent on the lechwe. 

What the heck was going on? Cheetah, in Bangweulu? This is a place known for lechwe, birding and the shoebill stork. Are there cheetah here? One of the staff came over and explained, albeit very briefly, that they were releasing these three cheetah into the wild. Today. Right now. And we were going to get to watch!

What extraordinary luck. The staff were all busy, but we were told we could watch and take photos.  

There were five cheetah inside an enclosure, measuring maybe 30m x 30m; we later learned there were two females and five males. Today they were releasing the three males, with the females planned for release in a couple of weeks.

One of the lechwe was drug over to the opposite side of the enclosure, to draw off the females. The other was presented in front of the males (how the males and females were separated initially I don’t know), who were snarling occasionally and fixated on the lechwe from behind a gate in the enclosure.

The staff hitched the legs of the carcass to a long rope, the other end hitched to a land cruiser. Some shouts back and forth between the staff to make sure the females were suitably distracted, and one of the staff just opened the gate while the other began to slowly drive away, dragging the lechwe behind. 

It all was happening very fast. We could hardly take in what was happening before the gate was open, and less than 50 meters away from us were three agitated and hungry cheetah, nothing between us. 

I should note that cheetah are the least aggressive of the big cats and the least likely to attack a human. But at the same time, we’re not accustomed to being on the ground level with three big predators; the whole thing was exhilarating. 

The staff member, who opened the gate made a hasty retreat, and slowly the bakkie began dragging off the carcass, towards the plains. The cheetah could tell something was going on and seemed agitated, but they were also clearly hungry, intent on the lechwe. One of the staff told us that in preparation for this they hadn’t fed them for three days.

The cheetah were snarling, biting onto the lechwe, occasionally hanging back to check the surroundings and moving along as the land cruiser drove ever so slowly forward. He drew the carcass, and cheetah with it, out onto the plains. A hundred yards or so from the nearest building he stopped, got out and slipped the line off the lechwe. 

That was it. Cheetah reintroduced to Bangweulu Wetlands. Job done. Well, not quite. We all stood there, about 50 meters away, even the veterans spell bound at being right here with the animals while they had their first meal in a while. It was fantastic. What incredibly good luck on our part and really interesting to see.

We ended up standing there chatting, taking photos and watching the cheetah for a while. The staff told us this was a joint effort between African Parks and the Aisha Foundation, which specializes in cheetah wildlife management. One pertinent issue with cheetah is their low genetic diversity and resulting weak immune system. To support gene pool diversity Aisha helps relocate cheetah from areas that have relatively high density to places that do not. Bangweulu was a native cheetah habitat, with the last one seen here, I believe, in the 1950s, so it was a good match.  

They released five other cheetah in 2020, but three of them died. Two from drowning and one from getting gored by a lechwe. Now there are two remaining. These five are meant to bolster the population. The strategy is to stagger the release of the males and females by a few weeks. The females are in estrous. The males know this, and this should, hopefully, “anchor” the males to the area. 

Bangweulu is not a fenced area, so cheetah could, in theory, leave. However, all are fitted with satellite tracking collars, and if a cheetah strays out of the wetlands and into the surrounding community, they’ll be darted and returned to the wetlands. Since the lechwe stay in the wetlands, the hope is that the cheetah will stay where the food is. 

Incidentally, the African Parks manager gestured at the lechwe on the horizon when he told us that we were looking at about a third of the 47,000 lechwe in Bangweulu. Over 15,000 lechwe, just right there. Unbelievable.  

The cheetah were making the most of their meal, and eventually one of them started standing watch while the others ate. Cheetah are used to having meals taken from them by hyena or lions; they’re not strong enough to fight them off. Because of this they usually eat very fast. These three seemed pretty relaxed now though.

We had just a spectacular time witnessing this release and also talking to the African Parks manager, the Aisha cheetah specialist and a few of the other staff. I didn’t ask them personally about being in the blog, so I’ve left their names out. But if you guys read this, it was a real privilege. Thank you.

What a morning, and we hadn’t even started the original task, shoebill stork tracking. We were pretty pumped up, but they thought it was time to leave them alone and see what they would do. We went off to a tiny park office to pay our park fees, camping fees and shoebill tracking fee. This is all cash only, which we found to be an almost universal norm in Zambia.

Shoebill Tracking

Payment done, our guide had us drive about 500m to a very tiny channel, the edge of the swamp. Here we met our two boatmen, grandfather and grandson, that would take us into the swamps. The vessel was a large fiberglass canoe that held the five of us easily. Off we went. The boatmen poled us, and I could see the bottom of the channel, less than a foot deep some of the time.

The boatmen didn’t speak, they just wordlessly poled us along. At first we are looking over a small berm into flatlands, just a little dyke making this small canal. But soon we entered the tall stands of papyrus and hippo grass, and we pressed deeper into the swamp.

The channel was often incredibly narrow, sometimes the reeds drug down the sides of our craft, hissing along the hull, grass slashing at our faces. Other times the channel spilled out, wide and shallow with clumps here and there, birds perched on odd reads and rustic thatch fishing huts on small islands.

Birdlife was excellent, coming so fast I had a hard time identifying them. We saw a lot of red bishops, weavers of various kinds, ibis and a huge flock of open billed storks. Also yellow billed ducks (I think?). But the best of all were the kingfishers. Sure, pied kingfishers. But also my malachites abounded. I lost count at 12, and we saw much more than that. They were beautiful little birds, and fairly tolerant of us.

At one point we drifted along a small dyke, and a group of children ran alongside us. The guide said that they wanted me to take their photograph. Normally I don’t take photos of people without asking, but these kids were clearly camera comfortable. Even though they didn’t get to see their photo, they smiled big smiles. 

The boatmen poled on, and we wound our way towards shoebill camp, an exclusive fly-in camp. Our guide told us this was near where we could begin looking for the shoebill, on foot. More poling, gliding along glassy, shallow water surrounded by blooming lilies, papyrus and hippo grass. The channel opened up, and we skimmed our way past fishermen setting nets, some just standing waist deep in the water.

Eventually we arrived at a collection of fishing huts with quite a few villagers. We caused a bit of commotion arriving, getting the impression that there isn’t much entertainment out here, and today we were it. Now a hike would begin, for how long it wasn’t clear.

We gained an entourage. Officially our party was our guide, the two boatmen, another guide from the fishing huts and us. It seemed they knew we were coming and had been out tracking the bird before our arrival.

Unofficially our entourage was much larger with many kids in tow and a few young women, all curious to watch these wazungu come and look for the “shoebillbird,” as they called it. The ground was grassy mud. Wet but firm enough that it didn’t stick to our shoes, it made for pleasant walking. 

We walked. Somewhere along the way we passed a small herd of lechwe that didn’t give us much notice. Sometimes we hopped from grass tuft island to grass tuft island through shallow water. The locals of course just marched on through, barefoot. Our boatman wore rubber boots.

Coming to another one of the berms that were man made, perhaps to forestall the floods a little bit, we were told to wait. The guides would fan out and find the bird, then summon us. We waited. After a while our guide was looking unhappy.

Yesterday and this morning he was very confident of finding the Shoebill, “Very easy,” he said.  This contrasted somewhat with what I had heard, that it was not a sure thing. But now it seemed it was not so easy. “Very unlucky. Very unlucky,” was his new mantra. We waited quite a while, and he didn’t think the scouts would find the bird. It was hard to say, as there was a definite language barrier, but it seemed like they’d found it earlier in the morning, but it had moved.

The shoebill is noted for its extreme patience in hunting. It will stand motionless for hours in a likely fishing spot, waiting for its prey. So it’s not unreasonable to think a bird found earlier would still be here, but today it was not. 

We had brought our GPS with us because we thought it would be interesting to see where we went in the swamp, and for a while Jenny spent some time with our child entourage showing them the countries in Africa we had been to. Communication was difficult, but they were fascinated anyway, repeating each country name in unison after Jenny said one. “Botswana.” Jenny said. “Botswana,” came the chorus of children. “Namibia.” “Namibia.” And so on. It was fun.

After a long time, some of which Jenny spent mumbling that this seemed like a whole lot of trouble to see a bird, we were beckoned. It seems they had found the bird. There was much shouting by the scouts over long distances, and we moved up. We hiked for quite a bit more, maybe another half hour. Our guide told us to take off our shoes and roll up our pants; we would have to wade a bit through the swamp.

All the time I was thinking that this was not at all what I expected. This seemed like real tracking, that might not actually work, through real Africa. These children were not so bored with the tourists that they left us alone; we were still an interesting attraction. Also, I was thinking that this tour would not work for a lot of people. A boat journey of unknown duration. A hike of unknown distance. Waiting. Many stares from the villagers. And now some muddy wading barefoot through the swamp. 

Mud was imprinted everywhere in a collage of lechwe tracks mixed with their droppings. We marched on, the warm mud and everything else squishing not unpleasantly through our toes. We were thoughtfully directed around sharp grasses to a final berm at the edge of more swamp. 

There. There it was, the elusive shoebill. A large full-bodied stork with blue-grey plumage and an enormous bill, with a sort of permanent smile on its face under intense eyes. This particular shoebill was still fairly far away and a little bit obscured by some reeds. Jenny, while appreciating the overall experience, was underwhelmed. It did seem like a whole lot of fuss to see a bird a 100 yards away. 

I had been snapping photos all the while with my telephoto lens, but our guide was not satisfied with the view I was getting. He wanted to get me closer. There was a shallow bank, about 50 meters across some swamp, that would provide a better view, but also not so close as to impose upon the shoebill.

He flagged down a local fisherman. They exchanged a few words, and, I was ordered into his canoe. 

The craft was not impressive. A long and narrow dugout that had done a lot of service. The boatman stands balancing in this improbably narrow boat and poles along. Perhaps it might accommodate another person, but we had seen many similar canoes this morning, none of which had two people in it.

The dugout was pushed onto the bank, and I climbed in. Well, when I say “in,” I actually mean “on” because this canoe was so narrow that my hips were wedged in between the gunnels. This was not totally impractical because had I been able to sit in the bottom of the canoe, I would have been sitting in the few inches of water that seemed to permanently reside in the bilge.

Water was clearly entering regularly, mostly through the substantial hole in the bow. The whole thing didn’t seem very seaworthy, but we didn’t have far to go.

We pushed off, and for a moment I was concerned. The boatman swayed and jerked, trying to counter the properties of his unfamiliar cargo, me. I also wobbled back and forth, but eventually we found some cooperative equilibrium, and with a scant two inches of freeboard, we began to creep across the channel.

For those few moments I thought to myself, “Hey, maybe this will work.” Then, maybe not. A series of dynamic oscillations began, each of us trying to counter the other with the gunnels getting perilously close to the water. We shipped a scoop of water and lost freeboard. At this point it became irrecoverable. I had a leg half out and my hand on my camera and lens, ready to abandon ship. 

Wobble, roll, dip. Big scoops of water came in, and the craft sank to the bottom. The language barrier between our entourage and Jenny was instantly bridged, with interested and skeptical stares turning to gasps. I stood up, camera held high, laughing. The boatman didn’t seem to have an opinion one way or the other; he just got to work salvaging the situation. We were waist deep, and he reached down and pulled up his boat; I helped with my free arm. 

With the boat awash, he began a practiced maneuver, shoving the dugout fore and aft rapidly, the developing wave slopping out the ends of the canoe, its freeboard getting a bit higher with each slosh. At the end, he bailed a bit with an old water bottle, and in those few moments it was time to try again.

I was not confident. Getting in this small canoe while beached was not easy. While standing in the water, it seemed even harder. He held the canoe steady, and I got in, and teetering wildly, he poled us closer to the shoebill.

We sank again. This time we were close to shore, and I slogged my way to calf-deep water, allowing the boatman to recover without me getting in the way. He kept looking at the guide, willing him to get me to be smaller or better at canoeing, but it didn’t work.

I took my photos and was ready for retreat. This time the boatman put me in the canoe and just pushed me across, wading behind. Even this ignominious arrangement was not stable, but we got the job done. I waded the final meters to shore, wet and muddy but otherwise no worse for wear. Since I had the camera, regretfully, there are no photos of this episode.

The original plan was to pole Jenny closer too, one of us at a time, but after watching my experience, she declined.

I should mention that I am a career mariner, and no doubt my friends back home will be amused by this episode. I would say that I am adept at most forms of watercraft, though I admit, canoes are not high on my list of preferred vessels, and now even less so.

Additionally, I am not the first in my family with this problem; my sister-in-law and mother-in-law pioneered the canoe-sinking-in Africa club. On a tour in Lake Manyara, to the horror of their guide, they managed to sink their canoe in the crocodile-infested waters of that lake. Not a good habit we are forming!

After that debacle concluded, we made our way back. Barefoot, we walked back through the muddy fields and grass to our original, larger and more stable canoe. Our entourage remained behind, and we shoved off and began gliding back, the boatmen polling in wordless unison.

Back at the land cruiser our guide asked us if we’d like to go on a game drive, but we declined and headed back to camp. We could have gone out later in the day for a game drive, to see again the large herds of black lechwe, but it had been such a full day so far we decided to quit while we were ahead.

After showering off the mud of the swamps and passing a slow afternoon in camp, we settled on an early dinner so that it would be concluded by sunset, before the insect swarms set upon us. Even the African Parks manager had noted that the termites were particularly thick last night, so that made us feel a little less wimpy.

Our plan to be done by sunset was good in more ways than one because rain clouds loomed. I hoped the rain wouldn’t be too heavy. I was worried about the roads getting out of here.

Escape from Bangweulu (sound familiar?)

Not long after we tucked into the tent, equipped for the early night with our indispensable e-readers, the pitter patter of rain on the tent started.

And it didn’t stop. Mostly gentle rain, along with distant thunder and lighting, came down all night long. We got up fairly early, rain still falling. The awning was handy; we set it up in a jiffy, and this gave us a place out of the rain to make coffee and tea and contemplate our plans. 

Originally we had planned a short game drive to see lechwe again, but knowing the roads would likely be a challenge, it seemed best to just get on with it. At first the tracks were no problem. Out of Nsobe is two-spoor track, thin grass over packed mud, and driving was easy. We heaved our way up onto the causeway road, and that too was pretty good. 

However, not long in, we came to the section we were worried about, where we had slid a little on the way in. It turned out that this portion of the road was still under construction, and there were a couple score of villagers with their mattocks and hoes working on the road.

They saw us coming and stopped, moving aside, knowing that we were likely to have a hard go of it. I felt their eyes on me; it seemed like they knew what was going to happen.

Dropping into low range, we started off, the road here a soft, sandy clay. We’d seen the park bakkie drive out at the end of the day yesterday, but today there was no sign of their tracks, either covered by the rain or by new soil as the road was built up by the road crew. 

Since it was essentially a brand new road, the soil was not compressed at all. There was no hard-packed track for our wheels to follow in. So we cut new track in this soft mud, and at first the going was okay. Not too fast, not too slow, but in short order the rear tires sank, and a huge commotion came from the road crew.

We got out to survey the scene, and in moments, we were surrounded by villagers, all talking at us in Bemba and at each other. Some shouting, some laughing, some with intense urgency. Obviously we were a big topic of discussion, a distraction from the morning’s toil in the rain.

We hadn’t sunk in too bad, and Max-Trax where clearly the answer to this problem. A winch would not have worked in this situation. Any trees, as meager as they were, would have pulled us further off the narrow causeway toward the ditch, not forward. I started to get them down, and already some of the locals were getting what they use in lieu of Max-Trax, branches cut from trees. Even with the language barrier, we got them to stop, and we showed them the Max-Trax. Immediately they understood and took them from our hands and started digging.

The whole thing was really hectic, locals shouting at each other and us, and we did our best to control the situation. I hopped back in the driver seat, and Jenny got the crowd to stand back for a minute so I could back out of the hole a little, giving room for the Max-Trax. 

This worked really well, and with only a few shovel fulls of mud removed on each side and the Max-Trax placed, I drove right out, no problem. Except for the scene that was developing. Both Jenny and I were being hounded, in any given moment being asked if we would give them our hats, our jackets, some money. But also we were being asked where we were from, did we like Zambia, anything.

We got stuck again. We repeated the same procedure, and the locals were getting good at this. Roll back. A few scoops with the shovel. Place the Max-Trax, stand back and I drive out. We popped out again, and this time Jenny and I agreed that I should just drive on, maintaining momentum in the thick mud, until I got stuck again. She would walk behind. 

This getting separated was uncomfortable. There was a sort of mob mentality building around the scene that we had created. I got stuck again, and one group had run ahead with me. We had to wait for the second group, with Jenny, to walk up to us with the Max-Trax. During the time it took for this to happen we were each independently hounded, give me this, give me that. Lots of questions in Bemba that we could not understand. 

Finally someone with good english, along with one of the campsite staff, showed up. He was clear. “How much will you give these people for their help?” I had been waiting for this and was grateful to have someone to talk to that we could communicate with easily. We suggested 200 ZMK ($11 USD), and they discussed and replied that it was not enough. “Five hundred.” I responded that we would pay 400 ZMK, no more. He told the crowd, and a cheer went up. 400 ZMK was a good price. I was relieved that part was over, and it seemed they were happy. We weren’t out of the woods yet by any stretch.

This was frustrating because although there was no question that they were helping and saving us time, we could have easily done this ourselves, but the help was, in this situation, not optional. This was a much easier recovery than the one we’d found ourselves in Lower Zambezi National Park. We were not sinking as deeply, and the Max-Trax were working just as they should, with minimal effort. The price wasn’t the issue, but being hounded by the crowd and the near mob-like scene was making us uncomfortable.

We got stuck a third time, got unstuck a third time by the same procedure, and I ended up driving quite a ways on firmer soil. Jenny caught up, but she had additional trials. She had to argue and yell at some locals who were arguing over the Max-Trax, wanting to help and also ensure their share of the tip, and with others who had jumped onto the rear bumper to ride on the car, exactly where we did not need additional weight.

We came upon a new road crew and a new and particularly soft section of road. An argument began among the locals, yelling at each other, pointing at us, and we could tell that they were arguing over who should help us through this next stretch and how any additional payment should be handled. Our campsite staff member was still in the crowd, and he argued valiantly on our behalf that we had already agreed to a price and that should get us to the end, but it was impossible. Not unreasonably, this new party wanted their own compensation. 

Some of the first group were getting particularly angry now. I brokered that. I would pay our campsite staff member, who would in turn share this out to the first group. And then we would make a new deal with the new group, but the first group must leave. They were satisfied with this; we paid, and thankfully they began to trickle away. 

The situation is difficult to describe, and I want to emphasize that at no time did this feel unsafe (with the possible covid angle as an exception, though in this isolated population I’m sure we posed more risk to them than the converse). That they would, as a community, help was assumed by all. The tip was just that, a tip, not a stand off or an ultimatum, “If you don’t give us X, we won’t help you.” The issue we were having was the chaotic fervor of how it was all transpiring. It takes some getting used to.

Negotiations began anew with group number two. Again, this did not seem voluntary to us, like we could decline help and just manage on our own. We were surrounded by a throng of people, but thankfully three elders made their way to us. They clearly had the respect of the crowd and our appreciation for getting a handle on things.

We haggled, starting again at 200 ZMK. A younger member suggested 600 to an elder, which even he balked at, thinking it was too much. We could only get the gist of it, as this was in a mix of Bemba and English, but finally he agreed to start there, and turning to us, made his opening gambit of 600 ZMK. Foolishly we countered with 400 ZMK, this meaning he only had to make a single concession to settle in the middle at 500 ZMK.

They seemed very happy and agreed to help us to the end. Nobody could agree on whether this new section of road was 500m or one kilometer, but they would get us there either way.

On we went, getting stuck two more times. Finally we were onto solid road. We paid the elders, and the crowd dispersed. Right at the end of this whole circus, a women standing in the back of the crowd looked right at me and gave me a rueful look that to me said, “Yeah, this is an absurd scene, and you caused it.” No translation necessary.

We were both spent, not a sip of coffee had been drunk yet and it was still early. The plan was to make our way through northwest Zambia, seeing a few of their famous, or not so famous, waterfalls en route. Today we weren’t sure how far we’d get, so we plugged Mumbuluma Falls into the GPS and figured we’d see how it went. 

It was still raining, and if it persisted, we weren’t in a hurry to get to camp anyway. This route would take us out the alternative approach road, the D48, to Bangweulu, so we would now know for sure which is the easier road. Spoiler alert, it is the D733 that we’d taken in, not this route out to the south.

On we drove through all the puddles from before, now larger, waving all the while at all the packs of children that came charging out, impervious to rain, to see the wazungu drive by. After checking out at the gate and passing the small village there, we took the new-to-us right fork and pressed on.

The road deteriorates, gets smaller and narrower, a bumpy red-dirt track through attractive forest land. People thin out, and the forest thickens. If it wasn’t for the state of the road, it would be a really attractive drive.

We turned right onto the D47, stopping for a snack and coffee top-up at the now derelict Lake Waka Waka campsite. You could easily still camp here if you were self sufficient, but in the dripping, grey atmosphere of today it did not look attractive. Onward.

Finally we were back onto tar. It was clear that Mumbuluma Falls was too far, so we lowered our sights a bit to Samfya, a small Zambian resort town on the western shores of Lake Bangweulu. This road brought us within spitting distance of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which always looms mysterious and dangerous in my mind, having read about so many of the troubles there.

We were firmly off the tourist trail now, in real Africa. Not that where we’ve been to date isn’t, but this is uncolored by any attempt whatsoever to satisfy the likes of us, just Africans going about life. Mini busses, trucks, road-side fruit stalls, Chinese made bicycles heavily laden with charcoal or mangoes or wood.  

After what seemed a really long day we arrived at “Samfya Beach Marine,” a little seaside resort, though I use the term loosely. Samfya appeared an odd surprise to us; out of nowhere popped this tidy lakeside town with white sandy beaches and a few bars, restaurants and lodges set up for locals to come and party on the weekends. Thankfully it was not the weekend. Samfya Beach Marine officially claims to have a campsite, but it is a modest corner on a sloping hill to pitch a tent, not suitable for a vehicle with a roof top tent. Instead they gave us a spot to park the car on the grass, and we were satisfied.

It is Thanksgiving day, the big American holiday based on feasting. Instead we made phone calls to family back home, ate leftovers, made a big batch of popcorn and drank several cold beers while staring into the lake.

The Nitty Gritty

I hope to add a short video to this post soon.

I posted the official rate sheet for park fees, camping Bangweulu activities in my last post. As I said before, Nsobe is a first class wilderness campsite, but do come expecting fine amenities, you should be self sufficient. In our minds the showers and ablutions were an unexpected bonus. 

In spite of our adventures I do recommend the Shoebill tracking, and I’d be curious to know if others felt their experience was as unvarnished as our own. Of course it all depends on where the birds are, you might go and pole your way right to them in the canoe, or there could be considerably more hiking needed. Our guide estimated that we hiked five kilometers round trip. 

Samfya Beach Marine I can’t really recommend as more than a stopover. It was 150 ZMK pp, fine enough but a little overpriced for the afterthought that we were. That said, everyone was perfectly friendly. Ablutions here were 2/5, with the ladies side being maybe 3/5. The mens’ side is always worse. 

Roads – Of the two roads to enter Bangweulu, the northern road, the D733, was in much better condition when we traveled. It was a wide graded road with some bad sections. The southern road, on paper the more logical approach if coming from Kasanka, for example, was certainly drivable but is slow going. 

Once out of Bangweulu and the GMAs and back on the tar, the D235 to Samfya is in variable condition. Much of it is fine enough, but it is punctuated with enough bad sections and pot holes that it does become tiring. I would say it actually improves a bit the further along you go. Roadside vendors are present in almost every village, with tomatoes, mangoes, onions and dried fish being the staples. 

Note: a huge thanks to my editors! Jenny proof reads most posts for accuracy and grammar, and if I post something totally improbable or with lots of errors, it’s probably because I was too impatient to publish and she didn’t get a chance to read it. My mother is also providing great feedback and editing. Thank you!

November 19th – 23rd, 2021

Fringilla’s Pies

After four nights in Lusaka taking care of various chores and making new friends, we were tired of the city. It was time to leave. Our first target was Kundalila Falls, reportedly one of Zambia’s most attractive waterfalls and, as I believe all waterfalls in Zambia are designated, a national monument.

It’s quite a ways from Pioneer Camp to Kundalila, 496 kms of not particularly attractive, traffic-ridden, Great North Road.  To break the trip up we decided to stop off at Fringilla Farm on the way. After an easy morning of packing, blog posting and correspondence at Pioneer, we set off at 1300, hoping to maybe miss some of Lusaka’s traffic on the way out of town.

We started with a failed attempt to renew our tourist visas at the airport immigration office (you must go downtown). We’ll try again next week in Mpika. I’ve read many reports of immigration officers refusing to extend tourist visas if the request was made too early, so waiting until Mpika seemed best anyway.

Then the rain started. Driving through Lusaka in heavy rain you start to see why those deep gutters on the side of the road are there. The roads became awash in short order, but drivers seemed to adjust accordingly, and everyone walking around just got on with it. 

We are coming to terms with the fact that the rainy season has in fact arrived. Typically it sets in somewhere between mid November and December, and this year is no exception. Camping in the rain for a day or two is no problem, but for longer it’s not really our cup of tea. Our camp setup just doesn’t handle rain well, something we will work on. If the rains get serious quickly, then we will have to adjust our plans and scoot up to Tanzania sooner I suppose. We’ll see how it goes.

Rain Camping Tangent

…you may skip ahead: A few interesting issues have revealed themselves in our setup. Since our land cruiser is configured very similar to a lot of others, maybe these details will help someone else:

The Tent: The Gen3 Alu-Cab tent is pretty good. However, as with most roof top tents, the tent is all mattress, there is no other space, so any water you bring in with you is now on your bed. The Alu-Cab tent has the tent door inside the mosquito mesh, and this allows you to lay the door out over your bedding to give you a little bit of space to try to get dry before fully climbing in. 

It does not however solve the shoe problem. Where do you put your wet shoes? This is another roof top tent flaw, though truth be told our less expensive, folding, easy-awn tent had a little strip at the bottom where you could put shoes. Still though, if they were wet/sandy/muddy, this would get all over your bed when you stowed the tent. Alu-Cab and other companies have started making a ‘shoe bag’ that hangs outside the tent, to put your muddy shoes in so they don’t fill with rain, but also keep them outside the bed. I wonder if this actually works more than one night, because I’d guess your hands and shoes would get dirty going in and out of there after a day or two. Then you’re in your tent with dirty hands. We use wet wipes, but then you have to do something with those… the cycle continues. Our solution is to change into flip flops right before bed, and tuck them outside the tent by the gas strut before climbing in. Not a perfect solution, but simple at least. We still have a lot of room for improvement on that front.

The Awning: We have a 270 awning, the Alu-Cab one. It is for the most part great, barring its two major flaws, weight up high (22kgs, I think) and price. But it sets up very fast and easy, and importantly stows easily as well. Our old awning was an Eezi-Awn 2000, and I wouldn’t wish one on my worst enemy. Its flaws are numerous, but chiefly it is a total pain to put up, to stow, is rattly as can be on the road due to its aluminum case and fails at its primary aim, to provide shade or protection from the rain. This is because it isn’t very big, so unless the sun is at it’s zenith or the rain falling perfectly straight with no wind, then there is only protection for one person, and even that is a stretch sometimes. 

Back to the 270. If it rains heavily, water will pool and spill off the sides periodically, typically onto a person or your cooking table or something equally inconvenient. I emailed Alu-Cab and asked about this, and they said, “Yeah, if it rains hard that happens. Do you want to buy the storm tie down kit?” The storm kit comes with, among other things, a little gutter to keep water from dripping into the canopy at the back, in the slot between the awning and the back door of the canopy. The ridiculousness of this I can’t quite comprehend, as water comes in on the sides much more, and having a gutter in the one spot where water hardly comes in at all doesn’t really solve my problem. 

Quibbles on the awning aside, we have sheltered from the rain a lot in that thing recently, and it is a lifesaver. Note that Alu-Cab sells sides for the awning, making it a little walled shelter. This appeals to me, except that the sidewalls weight 15kgs and are a significant sized duffle when stowed that would use up a lot of space, and they are also expensive. 

The Canopy: This is the chief problem. The side wings of the canopy open, providing a modest shelter for a person to at least maybe make a sandwich or a coffee on the side of the road. Nice. However, the rain falls on the canopy wing that is open and funnels that water inward and down into the canopy contents. Not a great feature. I tried to make a gutter out of an old bicycle tube, but encountered technical difficulties. If we could overcome this issue, we’d be much more rain resilient, but not being able to open the canopy door for long, even on the awning side, is a pretty big flaw. No doubt after Alu-Cab reads this, with my double digit fan base, they will jump right on this problem. 

The Cab: The feet of the Frontrunner roof rack clamp onto the gutter rail on the top of the cab, which works very well and to date has been very robust. However, the feet block the gutter from its primary purpose, draining water, and this means that when you open the passenger back door, where I happen to keep my clothes and camera gear, water drips directly onto the back seat at a rapid pace. Another problem to figure out. 

We also have this very nice dash cover with little pockets in it. It protects the dash from the beating down African sun and provides a handy place to store small things, cables, a flash light, a pocket knife, covid masks, etc. However, it also, for the most part, totally blocks the defrost vents. So on the occasion it rains and you flip the defrost on, it is blocked by the dash cover. This is our own fault, but it shows you that most of these fancy overland goods are geared toward good weather travel.  

We will hone our setup a bit, and in the mean time I suppose there is something to be said for a camper instead of a canopy/roof top tent. Hmm.

Tangent over. One more stop before leaving Lusaka was to get coffee filters, which we’d forgotten on the last grocery run. We made an effort to go to Melisa’s, a sort of fancy grocer, but the one off the Great East Road was not quite on par with the one in Kabulonga, with no coffee filters. However Jenny did get a huge and very welcome bunch of basil which was a nice treat. 

After all that the hour was getting late, and our plan to miss traffic was only moderately successful. We made slow progress and arrived at our first stop, Fringilla Farm. We’d had a great visit last time, and we wanted to stock up on essentials (like biltong chili bites and rusks) that would be harder to find further north. 

We chatted with Andrew, the boss we’d met when we’d stayed here last time. He joined us for dinner at the restaurant (cooking in the threatening rain didn’t seem appealing) and generously bought us a couple rounds of beer while telling us of one of his trips flying his small Cessna airplane down to the Lower Zambezi. We also got to meet his teenage niece, who grew up in the bush in the Lower Zambezi and had some good stories of her own. Dinner was one of Fringilla’s famous meat pies, chips and salad for $6 USD, a great deal.

The small cafe opens at 0600, and we went fairly early to get a coffee to go. Andrew and his family were also having coffee, and a huge fry up of onions and wors and more was underway; we were informed this was a Saturday tradition. They asked us to stay for a few more nights, to go to the club for the rugby match that night and try another local tradition, tequila shooters with a soy chaser. As Andrew’s son told his father, “If you want them to leave, then no wonder you offered the tequila and soya.” It sounds awful, but it was a really nice offer. However, we were concerned about the rains and knew that even a few days might make the difference of our getting somewhere, or not getting out of somewhere, so we made our good byes and departed.

On the way north we stopped at the very convenient and well stocked Shoprite in Kabwe, just north of the city center. Coffee filters finally obtained, we also stocked up on protein. Frozen chicken, bacon, even a huge beef fillet (beef tenderloin in the US) for only $7, which would probably cost a fortune back home. What we think of as normal ‘grocery stores’ become few and far between north of Kapiri Mposhi, with the one more that we know of in Kasama, which we may not get to. Food is about to get a lot more local for us. 

It’s a long drive of uninspiring motorway up to Kundalila. Due to heavy truck traffic, the road is particularly bad between Kabwe and the transport hub of Kapiri Mposhi. Officially the speed limit is 100 kph, but I doubt many ever achieve this. Much more normal is to be stuck behind a truck that is doing 60 kph, if you’re lucky. It’s a narrow road, one lane in either direction. If you get a window to overtake and think, “Finally, I made it past that truck!” your victory will be short lived because just ahead is another truck, and the cycle repeats. 

This tedious driving is compounded by the roads. Whether by inferior construction or overloaded trucks or both, the tarmac frequently has ruts in it, compressed by trucks and heavy breaking on the asphalt that is so hot in the dry season that it becomes pliable. This is all punctuated by pot holes here and there. The rutted tarmac is very dangerous because the spacing is caused by the wheels of a heavy truck, not a small vehicle, and if you attempt to overtake, you could easily catch a wheel on the edge, lose control and roll the car. Sometimes trucks and busses will undertake dangerous maneuvers into your lane to avoid a pothole, careening towards you flashing their lights, meaning “coming through!” We move to the shoulder, if there is one, to avoid disaster.

The roadside is dotted with overturned trucks, smashed cabs and shattered containers, all this having gone wrong many times before. With the rain pounding down intermittently, it made for grim travel.

Heavy rain came on and off, and we wondered more about our plans. Eventually we made the turn to Kundalila, and after bumping down a sort of good but rocky dirt road, we arrived at a parking lot/camp site. This would be the beginning of what we imagine is quite a bit more modest camping. Totally fine mind you, but we’ve been spoiled with the refined campsites further south, and this will, I think, foreshadow more of what is to come. 

Serviceable and minimally cleaned toilets, and camping is just a place to park and make a fire on the ground if you want to. The price on the sign is $15 pp to visit the falls, but it is unclear how much camping is. Our guide book says it’s another $15 pppn for camping, making it $60 total for us to visit and camp at the falls. This feels pretty steep, we think, but then we have read many reports online of all kinds of different prices, so who knows how it’ll work out. 

We are the only ones here. It’s slightly warm and pleasant, the rain holding off, so we went to check out the falls. A couple minutes walk from camp to the viewpoint at the top of the falls that is nice enough, but it doesn’t let you get the full scope of the falls. Even though it has only rained a little after months of dry season, we’re happy to find that there is water flowing, unlike Chongwe Falls in the Lower Zambezi, which was totally dry a couple weeks ago. 

The elevation is high here, roughly 1,600 m, and this river and many others drain the highlands of NW Zambia and the Congo, so water is plentiful. We’re hoping to find the other waterfalls also running, if not in their full wet season glory.

It’s about a 15 or 20 minute hike to the bottom on a small unmarked path (take the right fork), steep and narrow in places. It’s the first hiking we’ve done in weeks, having been mostly confined to the vehicle in the National Parks due to animal risk. It feels great to get the pulse elevated a bit. At the bottom we’re presented with a full view of the falls and two pools that make for good swimming holes. It takes a little rock scrambling to get to the upper pool. Swimming in the cool waters of the pool, tall waterfall overhead in our own little private gorge is wonderful; it felt very Robinson Crusoe or something, the rest of the world fading away. 

Freshwater swimming holes are plentiful in much of Africa, but once you ensure the water is crocodile and hippo free and also bilharzia free, then the list gets shorter. A local in Lusaka warned us of bilharzia risk here, but another source said it’s safe so we’ve decided to go for it. Worst case, bilharzia is easily treatable, but it takes weeks for symptoms to appear, so we won’t really know for a while. 

*Apologies to our ever suffering parents, describing all these hazards of Africa. I assure you I describe them only to show that we understand and mitigate the dangers.

Feeling refreshed and invigorated by our swim and short hike, we embrace camping out all alone for the first time in a while. The air is cool in the evening, so we have a fire, and at this elevation we are blessedly mosquito free and generally light on insects. Dinner is chicken coconut curry with tomato and basil salad, delicious. 

Right at dusk a bus of locals showed up. They were from Lusaka, driving up today to partake in a long distance running race the following day, and they wanted to see the falls. We showed them the way to the falls, and in the fading light they got a glimpse from the top. Before they left, we had a nice chat with them.

At night we hear the tip tapping of rain on the tent, but we are dry and warm inside and sleeping well to the chorus of the forest around us. 

Mutinondo Wilderness

In the morning we expected someone to come by and collect our entrance fee, but nobody ever showed up. This was a little odd, since reportedly Kundalilia is one of the more visited falls, being popular with locals from Lusaka, Kipiri and Kabwe. And we could tell that someone had been around, with the grounds recently swept. 

Nobody came though, and our possibly expensive campsite became a free site. In the past we’ve tacked some money to the door of other unattended campsites. In this case I wasn’t confident that, without a receipt, the money wouldn’t just get pocketed, so we accepted our luck and got underway. 

Ablution Report: 2/5. There were toilets here, with seats even. The rooms themselves weren’t filthy, but certainly only minimally cleaned. In what was to be a trend, the toilets didn’t flush, and we had to fetch water from the river to flush them manually. There was a tank to provide running water to the camp and toilets, but it was empty. There was some irony that at every Zambian waterfall we were to visit there was plentiful water, a water tank, but no running water. No showers, but bathing in the falls was wonderful. 

The drive to Mutinondo is an easy 146 km. This part of the Great North Road is not particularly good, but truck traffic was modest, and we made the drive in good time.

Some 20 km down a dirt road we found ourselves arriving at Mutinondo Wilderness. Mutinondo is a private wilderness reserve perched on the rim of the Muchinga escarpment, with the Luangwa Valley below. They have camping and chalets, a restaurant and honesty bar. The attractions here are just being out in unspoiled miombo woodland, hiking, swimming in the river and birding for dedicated birders.

There are, I think, seven campsites in dappled shade on a gentle slope. Some are flatter than others, so not all are appropriate for roof top tents, and even ground tents would be on a pretty sloped pitch at one of the sites. There is one campsite that costs $5 more, the Nsaka, which has a huge shelter, washing up area, even a refrigerator, fire ring, braai stand and picnic table along with a view. This campsite is a no-brainer for anyone traveling in a group, but for us it just seemed a little bit of overkill.

The rest of the sites still have a shelter for each site, braai stand, picnic table and fire wood provided. Ablutions are clean, odorless, long-drop toilets (some look down on the long drop, but hey, they always flush correctly) and really nice showers. Hot water is solar at one shower block and from a donkey at the other. There is a nice dishwashing station and separate sink with mirrors for hand washing and tooth brushing or whatever. All very nice, set in the trees and spaced apart.

The campsite is 500m from reception, the bar and restaurant. As is common, pre-booked meals only. We didn’t eat at the restaurant, but we heard it is very good. 

Eager to stretch our legs a bit, we decided to do an afternoon hike. Even though it was the heat of the day, at this altitude it was not too hot. Under pleasantly cloudy skies and a gentle breeze we set out. At the reccomendation of Kennedy, one of the staff, we decided to tackle Mayense, one of the impressive inselbergs that dot the escarpment and Mutinondo in particular.

Mutinondo provides a photocopied map for hikers, including details of the “Ten Peak Challenge,” an ambitious route to the peak of the ten largest inselbergs that surround the camp, some 40 km (?) or so of hiking. 

We set our sights somewhat lower for today, just a single peak, albeit the highest. It’s a pleasant and mostly flat walk through the forest to get to Mayense. Upon beginning the ascent it becomes very steep. Being granite monoliths, reminding us of the domed walls of the Sierra Mountains back home, they provide excellent traction. This made the trail builders sparing in the use of switchbacks, and huffing and puffing, we made our way to the summit.

Side note – props to Mutinondo for the best signage we have seen in Africa . Typically signage is in very short supply, even major national parks frequently having no signs at all, or perhaps a sign so UV faded that it is illegible. Here in Mutinondo the signage for trails and campsites was excellent, which is great as it would be very easy to get lost in the maze of trails. 

The trails up the granite insgelsbergs were marked with dots of red paint, and we were guided to the summit. The view down the valley was spectacular, if a little bit hazy. Resting at the top, we pondered the map and decided to take the remainder of the ten peak challenge trail back, just a little bit longer than returning the way we came.

This peak we had started with was the highest, so we theorized the hardest work was done already. What were a few more peaks on the way back to camp? 

Well, pretty hard it turns out. We strained our way over three more peaks. Calves burning on the way up, thighs on the way down, toes pinched in our shoes and ankles working hard from climbing the steep angles of the paths up and down. But the views were stunning, and it felt so good to get some proper exercise. Four peaks climbed. In three and a bit hours, we made it back to camp totally tired out and happy.

After a sundowner at the honesty bar, we showered and cooked over the fire in camp. Note about the braai stands here. They are under the thatched shelter. After one builds up a fire big enough to get some proper coals, the whole of the pitched roof area fills with smoke, which then spills out under the eves. I did not find it very pleasant cooking or eating like this, though Jenny was mostly unaffected. It did keep the bugs down to a minimum. 

We woke the next morning feeling pleasantly sore. In camp we met a German couple traveling in their 80 series cruiser, which has the same 1HZ engine. We chatted about all kinds of travel details, where we’d been and swapped notes on trips for future destinations. Omar turned out to be fairly mechanical, and we had a good chat about engines as well, eventually discovering that, improbably, Omar worked the seasonal Bristol Bay salmon fishery in Alaska and had been to my home town, among other things a fishing town, numerous times. I have friends that have also worked this fishery, and we marveled at how small this world is and had a nice time chatting about boats in addition to African travel. 

Later that day we decided to tackle another hike, but this time would stick to one peak only. At the recommendation of other travelers we went for “the Caterpillar,” a distant peak that would be more kilometers but hopefully mostly flatish woodland trails. 

The Caterpillar turned out to be really scenic and well named for it’s long undulating ridge that you hike along. We had stunning vistas pretty much the whole time on the peak trail, gazing down on the red and green Miombo forest. 

We took the long way back, via the paradise pools swimming hole and had a refreshing swim in the pools. It was really nice. After over 10 miles of hiking, we were again pretty tuckered out and took the rest of the day off to relax about camp.  

To Bangwelu Wetlands

Before heading to Bangwelu we have chores to take care of in the regional center of Mpika. We need fuel and also to renew our visas. It’s hard to believe, but in a few days we will have been here for a month. We have 90 day visas, but oddly, when entering the country, they will only give you 30 days, saying you can easily extend two more times, though other travelers debate the ‘easily’ statement. We shall see. 

With sore legs from hiking and feeling good, having been able to be out of the car for a bit, we departed Mutinondo, arriving at Mpika after a couple hours. Coming into town we cleared a police checkpoint with little more than a wave through, but a few kilometers later there is a military checkpoint, presumably guarding the nearby airport. The guy on duty asks where we are from, where we are going and then, “What have you brought for me from US?” asking for a small gift. This has happened to us before, and interestingly, last time it was also the military, not the police. We politely decline, and he accepts defeat, waving us through.

Mpika has long been the regional administrative hub of the region. Read Mark and Delia Owens’ accounts of working in North Luangwa National Park, The Eye of the Elephant and the Secrets of the Savannah. They make frequent references to trips to Mpika. I found the Secrets of the Savannah to be better, Delia’s writing being particularly good. No wonder she is now a best-selling novelist, author of the hit Where the Crawdads Sing. I wonder how many of her fans know of her work in Africa?

Town seems a bit subdued, but also there are many district offices for various government departments, all in one part of town. We had to ask around a bit, but after making our way to one such government building, we are directed to an unmarked door. Inside, a tiny office holds three desks and an immigration officer. 

We ask to renew our visas, and he is unfazed, thumbing through a stack of ledgers to find the right one. After he enters our details in the logbook, he stamps our passports for another 30 days. In 10 minutes we’ve renewed our visas and are good to go.

Partway through this one of the other civil servants asks Jenny, “How many stars are on your American Flag?” Jenny responds that there are 50 and begins to explain why. We hear his phone give a little victorious jingle. He smiles and shows us the screen. He is playing trivia, and needed the answer (not the explanation) to bolster his score.

Other tasks were – get a little bit more cash (a few ATMs are hidden around town), refuel and buy beer. We are regretfully no longer in the land of canned beer, which is easier to store. We have to buy bottles, pay the deposit on the bottles (2 kw/ea) and buy one of the plastic cases to hold them, 35kw. 

Onto Bangweulu. Bangweulu Wetlands is a national park under the administration of African Parks, the previously mentioned NGO. A different strategy has been adopted at this park. The locals that have always lived off of fishing in these wetlands are not relocated. This is a more progressive approach to conservation, as opposed to drawing a line in the proverbial sand and pretending to call that unspoiled wilderness, as if Africans had not always lived together with wild animals.

This is a particularly complex subject and touches a nerve with many, but here context and details really matter. Consider reading White Man’s Game or The Myth of Wild Africa if you’d like to learn more. The latter book relies heavily on hindsight, which I found occasionally off putting, but the concepts are fascinating. This approach here means that somewhere around 90,000 people live within Bangweulu, living primarily off of regulated fishing and some small plot farming.

The primary attractions at Bangweulu are enormous herds of black lechwe, found only here, and the shoebill stork, a rare and charismatic bird. There is also ample bird life, some other wildlife and, I think, fishing if that is your thing.

Driving into Bangweulu we had some uncertainty, having one 5 year old map saying the southern approach road, the D41, is faster, whereas our newer map says the D733 is better. Coming from Mpika we’re closer to the D733, so we hope that the new map is correct. The old one says this road alone will take eight hours, which if true means we’ll be wild camping somewhere. 

The D733 turns out to be graded and in decent condition, though deteriorated in a few spots. We can see evidence of rain and old mud bogs in the road, filled with sticks to presumably rescue stranded trucks. A sign of what is to come deeper in the rainy season, hopefully not to us. 

This road passes through Lavushi Manda National Park, a less visited park, but those in transit are not charged park fees. Further along, well into the park, we arrive at the Bangweulu gate. The guard asks us where we’re going, and says that he is out of receipt books and that we should pay our entrance and camping fees at Chikuni, the headquarters by the airstrip deep in the park. 

On we went, and from here began more or less endless village life along the road. These all-season settlements are dotted with small-plot farms, mud huts with thatched roofs and wonderful trees. Really it’s the most attractive village life we’ve seen in our Zambian travels. Everything is very tidy, and I am repeatedly impressed by the numerous trees, mostly huge mango trees full of fruit, providing luxurious shade for the residents. Apologies for not having photos of this, but I’ve found that, for the most part, locals do not like photos taken unless you have time to stop and really chat for a bit first.

Everyone is incredibly friendly, and we are mostly met with smiles, packs of children running out from the shade of trees to wave vigorously and stare and practice their favorite english phrase, “howareyou, howareyou!?” Not wanting to be aloof, we wave back. After what seemed like hours of waving, I’m totally over it, feeling some empathy for the queen, who has spent a lifetime waving at people she doesn’t know. 

There is clear evidence of rain here, with large puddles in the road, every 50m in some places. Villagers wisely never stand adjacent to these puddles, knowing that a vehicle driving through them will splash them. We drive slowly to minimize spraying water everywhere, but with the puddles and the waving and the slow progress, we were anxious to get to camp.

In the kilometers before camp, we see the wetlands closing in closer to the road, and village life diminishes. There is simply no room for huts in this area that appears to flood in the rainy season. The road becomes a sort of built up causeway with deep ditches on either side. This part of the road was worked on recently, so the road bed isn’t well compacted. Even though the sky is clear, the road is soft from the recent rain, and a few times we felt the back end of the cruiser start to slide a little. 

We were in 4×4, and she pulled ahead easily, but it was a little alarming to think of driving this narrow causeway after more rain. If we were starting to slide now, what about after more rain? The road is very narrow here, not wide enough for two vehicles to pass, and if the vehicle started to slide, it wouldn’t take much before you found yourself catastrophically slipping into the deep drainage ditches beside the causeway. 

This made me a little uncomfortable, but we were committed now and would just take it one day at a time. If we had to wait a day or two for the roads to dry out after rain, we had the time to do so.

Finally we see a small sign for Nsobe Camp, the community campsite about seven kilometers shy of Chikuni and the airstrip. There are a few huts where the camp staff and community guides live. We’re the only ones here and are directed to the best campsite. 

Nsobe Camp is on the edge of the wetlands, each site at a small tree island. To get to camp you burst out of the tree line onto our first views of dramatic wide open vistas. It’s really something. Jenny was somewhat skeptical, coming all this way to a park to see a particular bird, but the camp site setting is stunning, just a spot to camp in the bush and a fire ring in the shade of the trees, nothing else. 

There is a simple reed-enclosed, shared shower and toilet, centrally located. I say “enclosed” generously because the side facing the road is in fact totally open, but since there is no one here right now, it doesn’t matter. Still though, perhaps a minor flaw in the ablutions department. There is also a long drop (well, in this case maybe a short drop, as it is not deep enough) next to each campsite, though totally exposed, just a toilet set over a hole in the ground. 

In halting English two camp attendants check in with us, discussing when they can provide hot water showers for us. We never really expect this, but we’ve found that the South Africans, that make up many of the visitors, do. Thus many camps are ready to provide this. Also we make plans to go shoebill-stork tracking the following day. It’s not always a sure thing to find the shoebill, but the guides are confident. They assure us it’s okay to pay for the camping, park fee and bird tracking the next day at headquarters. 

That night they lit a fire for us, and also reminded us that at the end of our stay we could tip them, in addition to paying the camping fee. This followed a bit of what we’d read on iOverlander, that staff here were assertive about requesting a tip. This is unusual in Africa, but we had no issue. 

In fact we are more generous tipping than most I think. Part of this is because Americans are used to tipping more; that is the standard at home. Also we have been really feeling for everyone we meet in the tourism industry. Covid has hit all these camps and guides and staff very hard, with a lot of camps closing down and people losing their jobs. At Nsobe we are the 49th vehicle to visit for the entire year, for example. At another camp where we stayed, the only alternative to layoffs management had was to take the drastic measure of cutting everyone’s wages to 500 kw/month, roughly $30 USD, plus room and board.

This means that the tips that staff receive are critical. So while some on iOverlander and elsewhere may complain about prices and haggle with camps, we are incredibly grateful that they have weathered the Covid storm so far and are here at all, and we pay willingly. 

The late afternoon and sunset are beautiful, and far out in this wilderness camp it was really nice. We watched huge numbers of swallows darting back and forth high in the sky. I tried to photograph them, but their aerial acrobatics made it impossible.

We made pasta as night fell, and started to notice that insect life was substantial, probably why the swallows were so prolific. 

We put out our little electric lantern away from camp as a decoy light, to attract insects, and were rapidly alarmed at how effective it was. It was being fully swarmed, primarily by thick clouds of termites, and we started to wonder who the heck was going to turn it off at night? Someone would have to brave the hordes (Jenny).

The termites and moths were coming fast now. Pete had left me with this sun protection shirt, a loose-fitting, long-sleeved shirt with a hood, made from the same material as a surfer’s rash guard. This garment keeps you out of the sun and still breathes, and if wetted down provides wonderful “air conditioning.” I donned it now, and hood up, was mostly protected from the termite onslaught. Thank you, Pete! This thing was a lifesaver.

Wondering how we were going to eat dinner with all our insect friends, we thought we’d sit by the fire, that the smoke might keep them away. But the fire had attracted a large number of what we refer to as “spider crickets” a wiry sort of cricket thing.

Instead we sat in the dark, using the red light on our headlamps, and ate our pasta while termites ricocheted off our bodies. I’m confident I ate a few termites that night, but they blended with the pasta well and were unnoticeable at least.

Frustration reached its zenith, and we headed for the tent as fast as we could pack up. I was excited about heading into the Bangweulu swamps tomorrow. It was going to be a fun day. 

Bangweulu turned out to have quite a few surprises in store for us over the next two days. This included an unexpected wildlife sighting, my maritime prowess conspicuously failing me while canoeing and another opportunity to use our Max-Trax. 

The Nitty Gritty

Nov 19th – Pioneer Camp to Fringilla Farm, 88 km. We made several stops in town, so our travel time of 3h 10m could easily be bested. I’ve already written about Fringilla before, so suffice to say it is well worth a stop to buy some goods or have a meal, if not a place to stay.

Nov 20th – Fringilla Farm to Kundalila Falls, 428 km, 8h 16m travel time with stops. Kundalila Falls is a nice waterfall with good swimming, if you can manage modest rock scramble at the base of the falls. The campsite is modest, but mid week you’re likely to have it to yourself. I believe the actual price is $15 USD pp for foreigners, whether you camp or not, plus a $5 vehicle fee. It is not supposed to be $15 for access and another $15 to camp. This was confirmed later at Lumangwe Falls. 

Nov 21st – Kundalila to Mutinondo Wilderness, 143 km, 3h 13m. Mutinondo really needs a minimum of two nights, so that you have a full day to hike. Dedicated hikers I’m sure could spend more time, but two was good for us. Campsite is $20 pppn, firewood provided. There was a dramatic painting in reception done by Quentin Allen, waterfall book co-author, who is a frequent Mutinondo visitor. It was nice to see this painting and have met the artist. He also has a gallery in Lusaka. 

Nov 23rd – Mutinondo – Mpika, 99km, 2h. The immigration office is shown on iOverlander, but the route to get there is circuitous. Position is S11° 50.575′ E31° 27.392’, see attached screen shot. Mpika has the basics, but no fancy supermarket. Be prepared to shop around a bit if you need provisions. We did obtain some fresh vegetables, eggs, mobile airtime, beer, fuel and cash here. 

Mpika to Nsobe Camp, Bangweulu, 176 km, 7h 9m, being particular slow going for the last stretch from the gate to camp. Numerous people complain on iOverlander about Nsobe camp, particularly the pricing and camp staff not knowing the prices for things. That is because that isn’t their responsibility. You can get pricing either at the gate or the Chikuni office, and also I have posted them here. My personal opinion is that officially posted prices should not be negotiated for, if you try to bargain down the posted price you are abusing your position and putting the poor camp staff in a tight spot.  

To McBride’s

Heading down the D181 out of Mumbwa, towards the McBride’s, we stopped for lunch in an old quarry, which make for great impromptu campsites and lunch breaks. From there we drove the rest of the way on a dirt road of variable and somewhat diminishing quality, through nice countryside, with the ever present charcoal industry still at work. There is no park gate at this northwest entry of the park, instead the lodges within this area are responsible for adding the park fees to your bill. 

Somewhere along the way there is a small sign for McBride’s, indicating a way contrary to T4A’s advice, but we figured the sign was there for a reason and took its advice. A small graded track wound its way through miombo woodland, and in the last few kilometers before camp we started to see wildlife, including a healthy herd of tsessebe, a type of hartebeest.

Arriving at McBride’s we were greeted by none other than Chris McBride, and shortly after, his wife Charlotte. Immediately we were ushered into the lounge area and encouraged to have a tea or coffee. 

The lodge dining area is under a thatched roof with mostly open sides. Slightly tattered sofas and lounge chairs make up one area, with piles of weathered and well thumbed books all about. Bird guides, guide to Southern African Mammals, treatise on wildlife capture techniques, photo books of Zimbabwe and Zambia and Botswana and more, a massive leather bound university print edition of mammals, with beautiful plate drawings, all stacked about. It was impressive. Many safari camps are too “Africa chic,” for lack of a better term, and here we were in what just looked like how Chris and Charlotte might live if we weren’t here at all.

The immediate impression upon arrival at McBride’s Camp is that this unpretentious safari camp is for people, guests and owners alike, that are truly here to be in the bush. Our tea hardly in hand, Chris immediately started pointing out interesting things. Naming off birds, he pointed out the flock of Egyptian geese on the riverbank.

From the dining area a few steps down is an open compacted dirt floor, swept meticulously clean, leading to a fire pit surrounded by chairs with a view of the Kafue river. 

Conspicuously present in this clean floor was a large heap of elephant dung. I’m not an expert, but I’d say it was a few days old, still with a nice brown color but lacking the earthy odor of brand new droppings. Just as I was taking this in, wondering why this pile of dung might be here in everyone’s way, Chris started pointing out the features of this particular deposit. It was broken apart somewhat, and you could see these round balls in there, about the size of a racket ball.

“Palm nut. Do you see? Palm nut!” Chris said. He went on, “Jasper loves palm nuts. You see when an elephant eats the palm nut, they only digest the outer coating, leaving the nut behind. But when it passes through the elephants digestive system, it can germinate in a year, instead of the normal five years. Do you see?” 

We saw. This pile of dung was left as an example of the ecosystem at work, and Chris and Charlotte find this interesting enough to make sure the staff do not clean it up, preserving it, at least for a while, for our education. I think this was just great. I am going to really like this place. 

Chris’s weathered face went on to explain that the aforementioned Jasper was an elephant that frequented camp, though he wasn’t about just now. “A veeerry friendly elephant. Just a fantastic elephant Jasper is. We see him all the time, wonderful fellow.” Charlotte went on to explain that this process of palm nut eating and dropping had given them Jethro, the name of the palm tree dangling its fronds towards the fire ring. They knew this as they saw it deposited not long after they started the camp, over 20 years ago, and have watched Jethro mature over the years. What a great introduction to McBride’s, both camp and the people. 

We went off to make camp. Camp is a couple hundred meters away from the lodge, tucked into trees and well shaded. From the campsite you can walk across the dirt road and over to a shelter with a view of the river.

The campsite itself has a large common area with tap, dishwashing station, thatched enclosure with a table and a few plastic chairs in various states of repair. There is a fire pit, and reed and thatch open air toilet and showers. There is a donkey boiler for hot water that the staff light each day and a fire and firewood are provided. We are the only campers and were encouraged to set up right in the common area. 

Chris told us that they have very clean water because, “We get American guests. You see, they are very hygienic and thus have no defenses against anything whatsoever, so we have a very effective four stage filter.” It is unclear if this clean water was piped out to the campsite, but I was amused at the explanation none the less.

Originally we had budgeted just two nights here, but we all discussed and agreed we’d like to extend another day if we could. Pete and Melissa had wisely padded their schedule at the end a bit, not knowing what the covid testing requirements for travel would be, as they change so frequently, or what the PCR testing turnaround times would be in Lusaka.

We consulted with Charlotte, who knew about these things, and learned it would be no issue to stay another day and still have ample time for PCR testing in Lusaka. This took a bit of pressure out our schedule here. That done we talked to Charlotte and organized a boat trip the following evening, and a walking safari the next day. 

After our dashing around Zambia and long days in the car, the last few days being particularly full, nobody was sad to have a day to more or less decompress, followed by an easy afternoon boat cruise. We took advantage and had a lazy morning with a proper breakfast and spent the rest of the day birding in camp (black colored barbets, various sunbirds and a stunning duet by some tropical bou bous (they sounded like they were playing the banjo), doing a little laundry and generally taking it easy.

Even in camp we were able to spot the rare blue duiker, two bushbucks that seemed to hang around the periphery of camp, as well as vervet monkeys and puku, not to mention the large pod of hippos that had installed itself in front of the lodge, along with a lot of water birds. At one point all the pukus behind camp were alert about something though we couldn’t figure out what. Later Charlotte told us she had watched the same thing, and the next day the other guests and guide spotted some lions on their morning game drive.

Boat Cruise on the River

For the cruise, the boat is a nice two decked aluminum catamaran. We putted gently down the river, around hippos that did not seem to like the boat. The guide pointed out that we had to drive fairly close to them as the hippos were also occupying the deep water, and it was too shallow to pass further abreast. 

Downstream of the hippos we saw many crocodile, some puku and lots and lots of birds. Mostly the usual waterbirds, pied kingfisher and Egyptian geese, open billed storks and yellow egrets (some kind of egret?). Notably though we did see the relatively uncommon African Finfoot, and really special, Pete spotted my white whale, a malachite kingfisher. It was a remarkable spot. Those little guys are small but so colorful. I just like the big headed poise of a kingfisher. The guide did a skillful job of using the current to very slowly and silently get us pretty close before he finally took his leave.

All very civilized, boat cruising and kingfisher spotting with tea in hand. Chris’s lean frame stood on the shoreline as we came in, and as soon as we tied up he interrogated both us and the guide, keen to hear what we’d seen. He was delighted that we’d seen the finfoot and the malachite but disappointed to hear that we had not seen lion, which they’d seen the day before on the boat cruise. There must have been a thousand boat cruises taken from McBride’s, and it was remarkable to see that here Chris was, still keen to get the details of this particular one. 

Charlotte was off with the other guests at their bush camp across the river, Chris left behind to keep an eye on us I suppose. Chris suggested we take a short walking safari the next morning, but we’d have to not stray too far as they had seen a female elephant with a brand new baby on the game drive the day before. 

“She’s a wonderful elephant, very nice indeed. But with her young one about, she’ll definitely kill you, there is no question of that! A really nice elephant though.” With this caution in mind we agreed that keeping it short was a good idea.

That night in camp we had sautéed greens with rice and beans, using some sort of red bean we’d bought in the local market. The food in the street side stands is incredibly cheap, and we were getting better at stocking from it. In particular butternut squash, ubiquitous this time of year in Zambia, were a tiny fraction of the price in a supermarket.

It seemed we could get tomatoes, onions, cabbage, butternut and beans in nearly any village. On top of this we often saw dried fish (which we did not partake of), carrots, some sort of hardy leafy green similar to chard, delicious green beans, oranges and an unlimited supply of loquats, which we tried but did not find very enticing. The prices for these goods is fixed, and bargaining is not necessary. It’s all very inexpensive. I also don’t think that we were getting a mzungu price, as occasionally people would have a small sign for pricing, or if they didn’t have change, they would make up the difference with additional produce for us.

Pete was in charge of beans, seasoned with taco mix we’d brought from home and chilies from the market. Along with a couple frosty beers, the whole meal was delicious. 

We met Chris the next morning for our walk and started out with what we learned was always the very first step at McBride’s, “Help yourselves to a cup of tea.” I’m normally a coffee man, but tea seemed more proper in this setting, so tea it was. Tea in hand Chris started off right there, just a few meters from the drinks station. “See there? That is the Lone Ranger’s bedroom,” going on to explain that the Lone Ranger was one of three hippos that over the years has slept by the lodge, having been outcast from the local pod. They used the lodge to hide from aggressive dominant males. He has moved on for now, to where they do not know.

Moving just a few more meters along, tea still in hand, Chris went on about plants, pointing out strangler figs and wild spider orchids and which bean pods that elephants find tasty. He showed us the trees that are knocked down by elephant, but don’t die due to the heavy rainfall in the area. They just start growing anew in their new orientation. 

His love for all the things big and small came through so strongly it was really hard not to be impressed by this old salt of the bush. It took us over a half hour just to make the 30 meters from the tea station to the parking area, where Chris again reminded us of the danger of the mother elephant. 

With his old .416 Rigby rifle present, which he noted not only can kill but has the stopping power to arrest a charging animal, we proceeded. He pointed out the tree line, how it shows you how the drainage works in the area. Then he showed us two sausage trees that were planted by hippos, as they love to eat the sausage fruits, resulting in them depositing the seeds in their dung.

Crossing a path we arrived at the McBride’s Camp sign, nailed to an old dead tree, and were instructed to hang the mugs from our completed tea on the tree for later retrieval. 

Moving along he showed us the candelabra euphorbia, how it only grows on old termite mounds. This is because long grasses can’t grow in the termite mound’s soil, and thus when brush fires burn through, the euphorbia is safe from fire. There isn’t enough fuel around to let the fire get to it. All the other trees, he said, are fire resistant, brush fires being very common here. Sometimes they’re started by lightning, sometimes by poachers, sometimes by those wanting to stimulate new grass growth for grazing. It has been like this for generations. He reiterated that fire isn’t seen as the destructive force it’s seen as in Europe or America, that the bush can handle fire, and it can be a good thing.

Not far from here we noted the fresh tracks of elephant and identified a pair of very small elephant tracks beside it. With that Chris had us beat a retreat, mindful of the danger of a mother protecting her new born calf. Instead we finished the ‘walk’ in one of their old land rovers, with a coffee can of burning elephant dung hanging from the back for tsetses. We managed to see some antelope, hippo, birds, but particularly good was bush pig, which we had not seen before.

Back at camp one of the staff brought out a cardboard box to show Chris. “Look, we found them by the kitchens.” Peering inside we saw two tiny spotted gennets. Gennets look something like the cross between a cat and a mongoose, spotted gray and black, sleek, with long striped tales.

These little guys were very young and did not look particularly well. Chris suggested that we try to look after them until Charlotte got back from the bush camp, because, “She will know what to do.“

Theoretically Charlotte would be back in an hour or so, and for that time, which stretched to over two hours, we cared for two very young gennets. Our visit to McBride’s was certainly turning into an unconventional safari visit, but one we were really appreciating. 

One was looking particularly fragile, being unresponsive and having a slow and irregular respiration rate. We slowly tried to give them drops of milk, just a little bit at a time. The other one perked up in a half hour or so and started crying, presumably for mother, but she never came.

Baby gennets should not come down out of trees on their own, as these did, and mom should not be gone that long, so the staff and Chris theorized that she was gone, having come to some unfortunate fate. 

As we, mostly Jenny, nursed these little guys Chris sat on the old sofa and told us stories of the bush. Eventually he had to leave to take care of something, instructing us that we must stay here and care for the gennets until Charlotte’s return. Jenny and Melissa nursed gennets, and Pete and I started reading Lion Tide, Chris’s book about his research of lions behavior at night in Savuti, Botswana.

The book told that Chris used to be a university professor in Zimbabwe teaching Shakespeare and literature. Sometime along he became fascinated with what at that time was not possible to study in South Africa, ecology. Chris’s interest was wildlife and lions in particular. A particular American professor, Archie Mossman, had a unique perspective that Chris felt he must study under, and so off he went to Humboldt State University in California. He was delighted to learn that we knew about Humboldt State and had even worked with some scientists from there. 

The book goes on to detail his research in Savuti, and the part we managed to read that morning had a bit of the taste of Cry of the Kalahari to it, when science was more of an extreme sport than it is today. I plan to order a copy to finish when we are home.

Our reading was interrupted by the other McBride, Charlotte, returning from the bush camp. Chris was right, she immediately knew what to do with the gennets, prescribing a mixture with more nutrition than just milk. She was right, and after a while they perked up a bit, even the one that earlier had seemed close to death. 

What will happen with these gennets I do not know. We are very aware that helping wild animals in a national park has an ethical aspect to consider. When two small animals make their way to just outside the kitchen at the lodge, what can you do, just walk over them? Chris and Charlotte will no doubt know the correct thing to do from here. It had turned into such an unusual day.

We had dinner in the lodge that night. Before dinner we had drinks around the fire with Charlotte, Chris and the other guests. Chris and Charlotte’s rapport with each other is also hilarious, partially no doubt well rehearsed but also genuine at the same time. She calls him “Chrissy,” and he turns and whispers to you, “She never gets my name right, it’s Lord Christopher don’t you know.” Mind you, he jumps to when Charlotte commands. I have commented a lot on Chris because that is who we spent time with, but Charlotte is a power in her own right, having grown up in the bush and been right with Chris on all of his research, driving the jeep, slaughtering impala, keeping the kids, and Chris alive in the bush all at the same time. 

Chris frequently noted Charlotte’s strength was only equaled by that of Queen Elizabeth and Margaret Thatcher. We heard stories of being charged by buffalo, of living in the bush and other adventures. But what Chris mostly wanted to talk about was right here, the animals and environment around McBride’s camp. Their love for and understanding of the animals and environment right here was clear and came through at almost every moment. 

Next time I would like to spend more time with Charlotte, perhaps on our next visit. We watched her sling her own rifle, heading off to the bush camp with the other guests, and thought she must have some wonderful stories to tell.

We departed the next morning, really feeling that though there is certainly untamed wilderness and wildlife here, the McBride’s themselves are the attraction, and how lucky we were to have been able to spend some time with them.

To Lusaka

The drive to Lusaka is unremarkable. Back out the same bumpy dirt road, through Mumbwa and then onto the M9. This thoroughfare is in relatively good condition, but traffic thickens as you close in on Lusaka. I’d been warning Pete and Melissa about Lusaka traffic, and sure enough west Lusaka was a scene. 

We didn’t get stuck in gridlock, but west Lusaka is quite a bit less organized than the further spaced out eastern suburbs of town that we’d been to before. Weaving in and out of narrow gaps between other vehicles, around pedestrians hoping I didn’t kill anyone, we made it to the center roundabout of the city, and after that it was pretty smooth sailing.

Victoria Hospital, just north of the East Park Mall, has PCR testing with no appointment necessary. Cost was 1200 kw, $70 USD, results available the next day. Someone at the hospital advised Pete and Melissa not to get tested today, to wait until the next morning, as one of his friends had been turned away because his test was too old. He assured them that results were next day and they’d get their results the morning of their flight. 

Tests delayed, we made our way to Pioneer Camp just outside the eastern edge of Lusaka. There have been important road improvements since we were last here in 2018. The Great East Road, that leads to Pioneer, now has several overpasses over large roundabouts. What took us hours last time only took about 25 minutes this time around, a huge thank you to whatever civil planner made that project go through.

Pioneer camp isn’t the most conveniently located camp, there are others in town that we have not been to. But it is right near the airport, good for Pete and Melissa, and it ticks all the checkmarks for a good place for us to stay and prepare for the next leg of our journey. 

It has all the requirements, a large campsite with power and potable water available, a pool to cool off after midday chores, a restaurant for when we don’t feel like cooking, and clean ablutions. (4/5, totally functional and clean, just not inspiring). 

Arriving at Pioneer, how far we’d come! And we kept our “clients,” our friends, in one piece the whole time. We were sad to finish this leg of our trip. This trip had been planned pre-covid and delayed, so it was really great to realize it. And great that it all seemed to work and nobody wanted to kill each other by the end. 

I had some idea of what to expect on this portion of the trip, and I felt that the new and unique experiences came very fast and often, I am still processing them. Each stop fulfilled a different type of bush experience, and importantly, the journey was a critical part of the experience as well. I have always struggled to explain this aspect of traveling like this, and now Pete and Melissa truly understand. The drive and the logistics and other challenges are as important as the animals we saw. 

The next few days we had a list of chores to accomplish before Jenny and I would be ready to continue our trip north. We made our way across Lusaka several times to accomplish the following:

Went to Mudpackers, to my knowledge the only 4×4 store in Lusaka. Here we were able to refill our cooking gas bottles. Lusaka and surrounds is the last easy place to do this before going north, where a different thread is the standard. A 3kg bottle lasts us about four weeks, giving us an eight week allowance, enough to get us to Arusha where we know for certain we can refill.

Also at Mudpackers we bought a high-lift jack baseplate, as our crappy piece of wood had broken in the Lower Zambezi. This would help with keeping the foot of the jack from wanting to slip out when it was loaded. This was not the red plastic one I’d hoped for, but a metal one that a local shop fabricates for Mudpackers. 1100 kw.

Mudpackers is right next to a cafe, the Zambean Coffee Company. There were some well to do locals here, and it had the feel of an expat ladies lunch spot, which we witnessed quite a bit of. Also they have excellent salads. A fresh green salad is hard to come by, and we were very satisfied by ours. We found this after Pete and Melissa had departed. Sorry! (We took them to a much less inspiring place).

We got the tires rotated and alignment done. Technically our tires, Cooper Discoverer ST Maxx, were still under warranty, but to maintain the warranty you have to balance, rotate and align every 8,000 km at a Cooper authorized tire center. Whether one of these existed in Lusaka is up for debate, and after reading the very long list of exclusions on the warranty, I wasn’t even clear what was covered even if we did complete our end of the bargain. On top of this, there are no Cooper authorized tire centers further north, so we would definitely not be able to keep the warranty. That figured out we got the rotation and alignment done at the first tire shop we found. It was cheap (190 kw), but after a few days we found that the alignment was still off.

Note that we did not rotate our tires on our last E. Africa trip, and basically we ruined a set of tires. We developed a slight wobble at certain speeds, and I thought for sure it was balancing. The shop we went to at the time pointed out that it wasn’t, that our tires were “hobbled,” with ramps warn into the corner tread blocks. “Have you been driving on gravel roads a lot while loaded?” Uh, yes. “Did you rotate your tires?” Uh, no. This results in that hobbling, thus the interest in doing it this time, warranty or no.

At the recommendation of Charlotte McBride we provisioned at Melisa Supermarket in Kabulonga. This is a little bit higher end supermarket than Shoprite with more specialty goods. On the way out of town we went to their other location, north of the Great East Road, and it was not as well stocked, though we did get a massive bunch of basil. What a treat.

There were a few odds and ends for us to do to the cruiser in camp. Team Pete and Melissa don’t do well just lounging around the pool, and though I tried to release them from duties, they were super helpful in working on the car. We repaired a gas strut mount whose pop rivets had failed, cleaned the telescoping ladder, graphite lubed dusty locks and generally cleaned and tidied the whole vehicle and got a car wash (only 50 kw!), along with other odds and ends.

When planning this trip a couple years ago, I wanted to get a copy of the “Guide to Little Known Waterfalls of Zambia;” there are two volumes. These two books are not easy to find, and eventually I was put in contact with the author, to order them directly. Ilse Mwanza and I struck up an interesting correspondence, discussing politics and Zambia travel and waterfalls. 

I had meant to email Ilse and let her know that we were finally here and I was putting her advice to use, but in the hectic run up to our departure, and the ensuing whirlwind tour of Zambia with Pete and Melissa, I had forgotten. I emailed her last minute, and she insisted we visit her for tea. 

Thus we found ourselves on Jacob and Illse Mwanza’s patio and had a really wonderful afternoon. Waterfall book co-author Quentin Allen also stopped by, and over a humongous spread of black forest chocolate cake, muffins, cinnamon rolls and lemon cake accompanied by tea and coffee we enjoyed chatting for a couple hours. 

Jacob was quiet and reserved, but he is an accomplished economist and had some insightful thoughts on the Zambian economy and the newly elected president. Quentin and Ilse advised us on our next leg, rattling off waterfall names as fast as Jenny could jot them down, and at the mention of each waterfall, Quentin’s face would light up, “A delightful little waterfall, just wonderful.” The next name would come across, “Ah, a beautiful fall, just wonderful!”, his eyes sparkling with excitement. Ilse and Quentin’s enthusiasm for waterfalls is infectious, and without their intrepid wanderings across Zambia over the years, many would be unknown to all but a few locals. Pete and Melissa were starting to think they were heading home too soon.

Ilse was a font of knowledge and grilled us over our plans, offering alternatives and details that we had not heard of. Also she wanted to hear every detail of our Zambian travels to date; her ardor for good travel stories was clear.  We all had such a great time talking with Ilse, Jacob and Quentin. I’m so thankful she invited us over.

With regret we had to leave. it was time to get going and try to get back to Pioneer before dark, and also it was Pete and Melissa’s last night before their flight. Google maps sent us astray, into the backwaters of the eastern suburbs. No, you cannot take the back roads to Pioneer, even though it looks like you should be able to.

Pete and Melissa flew out the next day, and Jenny and I were left to our own devices. Now that we were alone, even on the first day we had a little bit of empty nest syndrome. We had such a good time with our friends here. Pete, Melissa, thank you for coming!

Last on the list was to go to a mechanic. The cruiser had developed a peculiarity since we began this trip, a hesitation in the throttle when driving between 2000 and about 2200 RPM. If you stomp on the accelerator, then the hesitation goes away and it’s fine, but if you are cruising at that speed, she stumbles a bit. This was accompanied, related or not we were unsure, with the glow plug light coming on periodically and staying on for long periods while driving, then inexplicably going off.

[this will devolve into a technical interlude…]

Some internet research turned up that the glow plug light is sort of like a dumb check-engine light on the 1HZ engine. But looking for engine repair advice online is much like looking for medical advice, the smallest symptom is almost always terminal. 

I was worried it was bad fuel. We had run injector cleaner through, which did clean up the exhaust a bit but otherwise didn’t help our hesitation. Toyota was booked, but Mudpackers directed us to their mechanic of choice.

Not listed on iOverlander or Google, he agreed to take a look at the cruiser the next morning. His shop is in the southern outskirts of Lusaka. Behind an unmarked gate we found a little outdoor workshop and mechanic Lewis Bingham and his team. 

Lewis’s actual business is as a mobile truck mechanic, but to keep himself and his staff busy when they are not out on call, he has a small workshop. We arrived and saw a rank of 4x4s in various states of disassembly, and people working on each one. There was no room for us, but Lewis wanted to take her for a drive and feel it himself anyway. 

At first of course the cruiser was on its best behavior and refused to hesitate, but finally she did. “Ah, you’ve got a flat spot. That’s what that’s called.” Lewis was convinced it was our EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) system. 

The EGR was only added to 1HZ engines to satisfy some attempt at emissions regulation in some countries, so the older engines do not have an EGR, but ours does. Lewis disassembled it, cycling the plunger on the valve, and it appeared fine. Reassembled. He checked the air filter, pronounced ours junk and threw it away promptly. He installed a GUD brand filter, which he said is the best South African aftermarket parts manufacturer. We checked the fuel filter, which wasn’t perfect but wasn’t terrible. I had a spare, so we replaced it out of prudence. 

Finally, when checking all the vacuum lines that are part of the EGR system, he noted that one was capped, that should have a breather on it. He wandered around the piles of engines lying on the shop floor and yanked one off another engine. “There you go!” and shoved it onto our vacuum line. 

All the while he was telling us about Africa. About Zambia, about the Seychelles, where he has family. He had been unable to leave the Seychelles (the horror) during a covid lockdown for four months but his team carried on repairing trucks without him, and business boomed because the mechanics that come from across the border couldn’t cross. He was really complimentary of his team and how good they were, working efficiently while he was unable to return to Zambia.

Eventually he said that he wasn’t satisfied he had fixed our vehicle, but that the next step was very invasive, the injector pump. I asked about the timing, which has not been checked since we’ve owned it. He discounted it immediately, telling us that the 1HZ is very picky about timing, that if it advanced at all you’ll have black smoke, and if it’s retarded at all you’ll have white smoke that’ll bring tears to your eyes. We had neither.

He advised that we’d better drive it for a while, and that the problem wouldn’t cause any damage. Since he wasn’t confident of his repairs, he refused to take payment for his time. We only could pay him for the filter. 

We drove around the rest of the day, and the car didn’t hesitate a bit. Fingers crossed he’d fixed it, but we were waiting until a long day on the road before we felt too confident. 

That worry more or less sorted, provisioning done, it was time to head north.

The Nitty Gritty

Nov 12, 2021 – Ntemwa to McBrides via Hook Bridge and Mwumbwa – 341km taking 10hrs, though in some trying driving conditions. The northern route is shorter by quite a bit, but involves two pontoon crossings, who knows how long those might take.

Camping at McBrides is $15 pppn, though we were only charged $10 because I guess Charlotte and Chris liked us? It was unclear, and we tried to pay $15 but Charlotte wouldn’t have it. Well worth $15 a night! Dinner was $20pp, with drinks extra. The boat cruise was very inexpensive, but I don’t recall the price. $15pp? All highly recommended.

Nov 15th, 2021 – McBride’s to Pioneer Camp – 280 km, drive time was something like 6 hrs, but we spent much more time than that going to the hospital, getting lunch and all the rest.

Pioneer camp is $10 pppn and well worth it. They also have a good website, wifi, shuttle service to the airport, laundry service (a godsend), potable water and numerous other conveniences.

Mudpackers is on iOverlander and Google Maps, far out Leopard’s Hill Road.

The Melisa Supermarket is on Google Maps in the Kabulonga neighborhood.

I’m starting to write in a bit of a rush, so if I’ve left out any nitty gritty details that you’d like email me and let me know.

November 9th – 12th, 2021

As you may recall, from Fringilla we set out for our next destination, Kafue National Park, via the M20 and Landless Corner, instead of the theoretically faster route via Lusaka and the M9. We needed to back track 18km or so to make the turn, and in short order it turned to dirt. At first it’s in pretty good shape, but in not too long it dropped a notch or two in quality, lots of pot holes on a formerly nice dirt road.

There are heaps of gravel dumped on one side of the road, signs they intend to spruce up this road to a first quality dirt road, but they have been there long enough that now plants are growing out of them. I guess this particular road improvement project has been put on hold.

Just around the time that I was getting pretty tired of all the pot holes switched back to tarmac and progress was good. The west of the country seemed to flatten out a bit, with a lot of land cleared for small plot farming and villages here and there, but relatively sparsely populated.

Still no sign of rain, so perhaps we would manage our visit to Busanga on the cusp of the rains after all. Andrew from Fringilla said the forecast was for rain on the weekend, and we planned to be out of there on Thursday, in the nick of time. 

The M20 eventually brought us to Mumbwa, a town with a few filling stations and road side produce. There is also a sign for a Shopright, but having stocked up in Kabwe we were good to go. We topped up the diesel, including jerry cans, and rendezvoused with the M9 and continued heading west to the middle of Kafue.

Kafue National Park is the largest of Zambia’s National Parks, but most of its impressive size is inaccessible and has sparse game. This is reported due to heavy poaching pressure in the past, and even now the number of game scouts allocated to this humongous park, roughly the size of Wales or Massachusetts, is laughable. Currently Kafue is under a provisional one year contract being managed by African Parks. This successful NGO is based in South Africa and strikes MOUs with countries that have limited resources to manage all their parks. Their agreements have African Parks manage the park, but ownership and revenue is still maintained by the country. They have some 20 or so parks under management all over Africa and do some fascinating work. If this one year contract goes well they will likely sign a long term agreement, but this sort of thing is fraught with politics and one never knows until the deal is done.

Many of the safari camps, and the wildlife, are focused along the Kafue River, passing mostly along the Eastern flank of the park, though many seasonal rivers spiderweb across the land. Importantly the northwest of the park also harbors a massive flood plain, Busanga Plains. This drains during the dry season leaving huge tracts of sweet grass for grazers to feed on, and large herds of the wetland loving antelopes such as red lechwe and puku, reside here. There are also herds of roan, sable, and impala, large pods of hippos, and the other usual suspects like warthog, zebras, buffalo, some elephants and then the predators. Namely lion, leopard, hyena, and one of the only places in Zambia you can see cheetah, if you’re lucky. 

Busanaga Plains is completely different to the tsetse fly filled dry miombo scrub that covers much of the park and is the star attraction of Kafue. Unfortunately there are no campsites in or near Busanga, the closest being at least an hour or two hour drive away. Instead there are exclusive high end lodges, mostly for fly in safari clients. This means that for self drivers like us the only practical way to visit the plains is a marathon all day game drive from further away, putting you in the plains midday, missing out on those key early morning hours that animals are the most active. 

However we did find a way to stay here. Ntemwa Camp, a bush camp* at the south end of the plains, shuts down for its high end clients around the end of October. Then they do allow bookings for self drive campers in the month of November, at a rate more premium than normal camping, and without all the amenities that are afforded the high end guests. That said access to this part of the park was worth it to us and we were really excited to visit here. Anyone who has been to Kafue or Busanga before will always advise you, “Do whatever you can to visit Busanga”, or, “Splurge and stay at a lodge so you can visit Busanga.” We figured it must be pretty special. 

*Bush camps are usually seasonal camps set up by safari tour operators. They are often in prime locations, but all or many of their structures are non-permanent and can be dismantled each year and have a bit more of a rustic feel, even though these companies still typically offer premiums service and experience. This is contrasted with a lodge, that is typically a permanent installation and might have more facilities, like a pool or something like that.

From Mumbwa we drove on good tar all the way to Hook Bridge gate. Here we paid for our three nights at Busanaga as well as two additional nights we planned to spend at McBride’s Camp in a different part of the park. The ranger at the gate asked us where we were staying, and when we answered, “Ntemwa Camp.” She responded that she thought that camp was closed? We confidently assured here it was not, as I showed her my booking confirmation. 

This however did sow a small seed of doubt. Tyrone McKeith, who owns the camp and was our point of contact in booking had previously said, “We need to be vigilant on weather conditions between now and your travel dates. If the rains are very heavy beforehand then it might be a very tough drive, but we will stay in touch in the lead up to your departure. What vehicle will you be driving? Do you have a winch?” 

These are ominous words, as when someone from Africa says, “It’ll be a very tough drive…”, they really mean it. Typically when the road is crap and it’s going to be a very tough drive you be told, “No problem in a land cruiser.”, so for someone to actually say it’ll be tough is grim news indeed. 

A few days before we had emailed Tyrone to check in and get a road condition update and surprisingly received no response. To date Tyrone had been extremely easy to communicate with. I maintained that he is a working safari guide and was probably off in the bush somewhere, but it was hard not to have a tiny part of my brain say “Hmm, ranger says the camp is shut down, formerly responsive contact no longer answers email…is something going on here?”

Regardless, park permit in hand we got going on the Spinal Road, that traverses the park on a north south axis, heading up towards Busanaga. On the way members of the safari party noted many signs for various lodges and bush camps within the park, but not a single sign for Ntemwa. A sign of its exclusivity? Or another little tick mark in the red flag column? 

Moving along, as promised, game in the park was sparse but we did see some, including three huge bull elephants with enviable tusks. It was hot and the tsetse flies thick, so Melissa and I were rationed in our photography, each photo stop followed by ten minutes of everyone cursing and swatting flies or trying to coax them out the windows without letting more in than you are able to get rid of. 

These suckers bite, and unlike most flies they fly silently so you can’t detect them until you feel the sharp pinch of their bite, even though clothes. On top of this they laugh off any attempt at insect repellant, being totally unaffected by DEET or similar repellants. The only reported effective repellant is “Avon Skin so Soft”, which isn’t even a repellant but is some sort of skin lotion. Theories on this are that the oiliness of the skin so soft keeps them off, but it requires frequent application. 

The other anti-tsetse method is to attach a large coffee can or similar onto the outside of your vehicle and burn elephant dung in it. Elephants do not have efficient digestive systems, so elephant dung is mostly just sticks and leaves and stuff, and the smoldering smoke is not unpleasant to smell, but keeps the flies away. Members of my party were now much more open to this than when I had mentioned this technique pre-fly attack, but we never tried it.

With quite a distance to make today so we pressed on, making it to the turn off to Busanaga south of the Moshi Airstrip at little before 4 PM. More signage for various lodges down this road, none of which for Ntemwa. At this point some were openly questioning whether this was some sort of scam and what we were going to do when we arrived at the waypoint in question and there was no camp.

Even finding this place is not easy. Not bolstering my insistence that the camp was real  (privately I was a tiny bit worried as well) was that Ntemwa is not sown on Maps.me, Tracks4Africa or iOverlander. I was only able to get the GPS coordinates off their website, and even that took some sleuthing. Note their website says that Ntemwa is too far to drive from Lusaka in one day, the same distance we were attempting.

We got closer to our theoretical camp and you’ll note from the attached screenshot from our mapping software that even the approach road mapped was not how we arrived, because the road as mapped did not exist. Finally however as we came,  abreast of the GPS location and I was getting pretty worried a tiny black sign greeted us, “Ntemwa” pointing down a little two spoor track. Hurrah! [note: Tyrone and his staff were fantastic, this is no way meant to be a criticism of his operation, he did follow up with us shortly afterwards.]

In shorter order we found ourselves at Ntemwa Bushcamp just after 5 PM. It was clear camp was being packed up for the season and at first I felt a little bit like an afterthought. We were told we could drive right down the footpath to camp in front of chalet No 1. Stupidly I forgot to take camp photos, apologies.

Camp staff member Glad introduced himself, as did the more shy Alex. We were shown the facilities. The reed and thatch hut that made up the chalet was empty, but we could stores things in there if we liked, and use it’s lovely outdoor ablutions. 

The shower was a bucket shower, that is a canvas bucket hung from a tree, that can be lowered via a rope and pulley. Glad kindly advised that if we told him when we’d like our showers he’d fill it for us, with hot water if we liked. It was pretty hot, so cold water was fine for us. The shower head twists to turn the flow on and off, and out of a full bucket we could eek out four showers, though a refill would be no problem.

A little oddly there was no sink in the ablutions, but a tap was outside the reed enclosure for water as needed. The toilet was in there, and you could look up at the trees or the stars at night, all very pleasant. Ablution score…3.5/5? 4/5? Hard to say, as it was great, until the last morning that is, but more on that later.

We pitched camp right in front of the chalet, and Pete and Melissa put their ground tent under the shade of a nearby tree. This later proved to be a tactical error, as it was an acacia tree and the thorns punctured their mattress, which went flat midway through the night. Amateur move, pitching the tent under an acacia tree. 

Never fear though, between game drives the next day Pete patched the mattress with some contact cement and pieces of an old bicycle tube that we had kept for just such an occasion. 

There was a large raised wooden deck with a view out onto the southern edge of the plains. Normally I suppose this was the bar and dining deck, but now all the furniture had been pushed together and a tarp put over it for the season. In front of this on the ground was a nice clearing for a fire, and with Glad’s blessing we shifted camp to this clearing. It allowed a bit of a breeze and a thorn free location for the ground tent. 

Enough about camp, what about the great Busanga Plains? Wanting to make the most of our time here we set off at a very early hour for our first game drive. Ntemwa being at the southern edge of the plains, we had not really seen them properly, though from the turnoff near the Moshi Airstrip game numbers had increased noticeably already. 

There are two roads north into the plains, one that goes along the tree line and one deeper into the heart of the flood zone. At Glad’s advice we took the one into the flood plains. Not too long from camp we busted out of the trees into a huge open flat expanse of grassy plains.

A few small tree islands dot onto the plains, but in most areas it is just flat and wide open. We passed our first herds of puku, spread out a bit to the east where there is a winding channel of water, the last remaining water of the dry season. 

Further along we stop and spot a lion. Already Busanga was delivering. We watched him in the binoculars and oddly he seemed to be limping. He crossed the road in front of us and we were able to confirm our suspicions, that he was missing a foot, almost certainly lost to a poacher’s snare. Snaring is silent and inexpensive way of poaching bush meat, but is also indiscriminate and many ends of elephant trunks and feet of animals are lost in snares.

It was super sad to see, and we wondered how long he could survive missing a foot. It didn’t appear to be a fresh wound, but I couldn’t imagine he’d make it long. Far off to the east, near the channel, we also saw four people on foot, one with a bicycle. How curious. Poachers? Would they be out in the open like this? We marked the spot on the GPS and later reported them to Glad. He said they were probably fishermen. 

It turns out that when the park was established the government relocated the villages that were in the new park’s boundaries. As these villages had been dependent on fishing for generations they brokered a deal where they would move out, but maintain seasonal fishing rights within the park. Glad said that fishing season was about to start and they were probably preparing their fish traps. He did report the sighting to the game scouts in case they wanted to check it out, just in case. 

We named our unfortunate lion Tripod, who settled down in the shade of a clump of bushes, and we moved on. Later on we talked to a guide and asked about this three legged lion and he knew him, and said that he has a second male that he hangs out with and he’d survived for a while like that.

Game became denser and we started to see our first groups of lechwe, an attractive reddish brown antelope with nice horns, who graze invariably fairly near water. 

We bumped into a lodge vehicle and the guide was kind enough to tell us about some lions, and even radio into his base to confirm the location of the sighting. It’s great that the professional guides are so friendly to self drivers, I could easily see them resenting those who don’t use their services, but there is no hint of that. 

Picking up the pace a bit to hope to see those lions we moved northward, and wrapping around a bend on a track that was unmarked on T4A we came into view of six lions lying in the shade, five young males and one female. 

The female, a huge and beautifully powerful looking animal, and one male were a mating pair, partaking in the typical lion mating program. This is mating for very brief sessions every 20 minutes or so, usually for a couple days straight. Each session is ended when the female growls fiercely, announcing the end for the time being.

Leaving them in peace, we moved on. It was getting warm and they were unlikely to do much for the rest of the day. Busanga continued to deliver wonderful game. Large herds of lechwe, buffalo, puku and hippo all grazed peacefully together, interspersed with warthogs here and there that seem to prance around on their tip toes, and lots of bird life. All the grazing is within about a 100 meters of the snaking water ways, with green grass still on offer.

Further up past another lodge we found a second mating pair, this a mature male a guide told us was named Scarface. The guide said was the father of the younger lions we’d seen earlier. This couple was up to the same drill, mating every 20 minutes or so until the female decided it was time for a break. They happened to be adjacent to a particularly nice scene of hippos and other antelopes on the opposite side. On safari there is really nothing more you could ask for, so we spent quite a bit of time here watching everything.

The evening’s game drive we found our six lions from before, still not doing anything, having just moved over to the shady side of the same bushes. We did not find Scarface and his companion again.

Nine lions in one day, thousands of antelope, wide open grassy plains, Busanga was really proving something special. I will now echo all the advice given, if you are a wildlife lover and on safari in Zambia, get yourself to Busanga Plains one way or another, it’s like no place else we’ve visited. Though you wouldn’t go wrong, I suppose I would not recommend it to a first time safari goer over Moremi or South Luangwa, for example, but for anyone who has been around the bush a bit.

Getting back to camp Glad has kindly laid on a fire for us. He also came out to ask what we’d seen and was delighted when we told him about our lion sightings. He said that we were very lucky, that many only see antelope and birds, so consider this against my above advice I suppose.

We braaid Fringilla wors over the fire and made french fries along with grilled holumi cheese not the most healthy meal we’ve ever made, but we had a wonderful evening in camp. That night it rained a little bit and we thought of the roads, but Glad assured us that it would have to rain several times like that to affect them. The next morning’s game drive proved him correct, even though we’d driven over many kilometers of black cotton soil it was all in perfectly firm. 

Taking the same route on the morning’s drive, partway along more or less where we’d seen Tripod, Pete called for a stop. This is a critical part of game viewing, that everyone is looking out and scanning their sector of view. When you see a suspicious or likely shape you call for a stop to inspect with binoculars. Typically this turns out to be a stump or tree branch or something, many a log being hopefully mistaken for a lion. But stop and look you must, because otherwise you’ll miss things. Like this morning, the shape Pete wanted to inspect turned out to be a cheetah. It was an amazing spot on Pete’s part.

We all had look and decided that he was closer to the treeline road. Even though it would be a few kilometers we decided to back track and switch to the other road. We noted his approximate position on the GPS and I drove as quickly as I reasonably could. On the other road, as we closed on his position we saw that a herd of wildebeest was running all over the place, circling randomly and generally acting oddly. Stopping we could see that sure enough, the cheetah had made an attempt at the wildebeest and was amongst them, swiping and dodging and seeing if he could scatter the herd and single out a target. 

It was amazing to see, dust kicking up in the dawn light and animals running all over the place. The cheetah had lost surprise early on, and eventually the wildebeest realized there were a lot more of them than there were cheetah. They organized half a dozen or so larger wildebeest began to chase down the cheetah. I’m no expert on cheetah or wildebeest behavior, but we have been on a safari or two and never seen or herd of such a thing. But there it was, a line of wildebeest running down a cheetah. He made haste, and though he easily outstripped the wildebeests’ pace he’d certainly failed on this hunt. 

In short order he made it to a stand of trees and disappeared. Five or six wildebeest stood guard at the tree line while the rest of the herd settled down. We watched for a while and eventually the guards stood down, slowly regrouping. It was totally exciting to watch the whole thing, what incredible luck! Cheetah are very rare here, and to get to see that whole interaction was great.

After a similar route we continued to see the large herds of grazers, and also happened upon more lions, five females and one young male. They were hanging out in the shade of a sausage tree in high grass grass. In the heat they were not up to much and we agreed to check on them later.

On the evening drive we had no particularly special sightings, though we did get a nice display of hippo yawns, as well as what we had found to be ‘normal’ for Busanga, a crap ton of antelope peacefully grazing on shoots of green grass, so many they stretched off to dots on the horizon. 

On our way back to camp we allowed time to check in on our lionesses. They were sprawled out in the grass, still trying to cool off. Sometimes you get lucky and the young ones will perk up early, but other than a short moment of alertness at a distant antelope, it was lounge time for these cats.

The lodge vehicles and guests are allowed to stay out for a night drive and might luck out and see the lions hunt, but we had to be back in camp by 1830, one downside of self driving. Finally we conceded that there would be no lion activity and headed back to camp, passing a herd of roan and spotting a side striped jackal perfectly camouflaged in the grass. 

Glad had another fire laid on for us and we invited him to join us for a beer. He was amazed we’d seen the cheetah, he seemed very excited about our sightings. He declined the beer, opting for tea instead, but he sat down and had us all fascinated within moments. He told us of the village he is from north of Kafue, most of whom are the traditional fishermen that were expelled from the park years ago. He relayed the fascinating customs of the local festivals of various tribes, told us about the languages that everyone speaks to each other. Zambia has 73 languages, but about six are primary, and almost everyone knows a few to be able to communicate well with people from different regions. 

After all this he told us of his ambitions, to maybe open a lodge someday just outside the park. He has a place all picked out, he said with a nice view of the Lunga river in the game management area (GMA). He even showed us on the map where it was, and encouraged us to bush camp there and tell others about his dreams in case we happened on someone who might be interested in investing.

We also were curious to know what will happened after we leave. How long will he be here. Glad confessed that he had only worked at this camp for five days prior to our arrival. His previous assignment having been at the exclusive Wilderness Shumba Camp, but that was seasonal. He liked the owner of Ntemwa very much and agreed to be one of only two caretakers to spend the rainy season here and look after things.

When the rains come these camps are all completely inaccessible for almost six months, with supplies brought in by helicopter. He said that Ntemwa and the other camps all become islands, and the caretakers can only move about via canoe. Sometimes he said they get together and socialize, even though it’s many kilometers of canoeing to rendezvous with another camp. 

With the rains also comes the wildlife, those thousands of antelope, and ensuing predators, are pushed by rising water levels to the edges of the plains. That means towards and into the camps. 

I was totally captivated, and imagined what an interesting untold experience these caretakers were having. For a few moments I fantasized about joining them, learning the local language and canoeing around the wilderness with lions and leopards about. 

Glad also asked us about our homes, about California and America. He seemed to really enjoy talking to us, and later confessed that he was so happy we’d come to stay, that after this it was only one other person to talk to and it became so boring. 

Eventually Glad took his leave and we ate our late dinner.  Dark clouds were looming in the east and it looked like we were in for another round of rain. 

Pete commented on the tiny pond, barely more than a puddle, that sat in front of the chalet. It had so little water in it that the fish in there were almost dry, gasping at the air after depleting the oxygen in the little water that remained. He said that it had better rain soon or those fish wouldn’t make it. I pointed to the horizon, “Looks like they are going to get it.” But Pete remarked that another rain like last night wasn’t going to cut it. “For those fish to be okay it’d have to rain so much that we’re not going to make it out of here tomorrow.” And he was nearly right.

A Narrow Escape from the Plains

The rest of us had cycled through the shower as we made dinner, but Jenny had deferred to be the last. Rain seemed more imminent and we rushed to finish dinner, put things away and brush our teeth before it was time to hunker down for the night. Jenny dashed off to squeeze in a shower. 

I should mention that we are learning that rain in Zambia, at least in this season, also means thunder and lighting. The lightning was getting closer, and the rain came. And properly. We made for the tents. Except Jenny of course, who was still in the shower. The storm arrived with untamed vengeance, crack of lighting close by and tremendous rolling thunder.

I lay there in the tent, the rain coming very heavy and wind buffeting the tent as we had parked broadside to the wind. All well and good when seeking a trace of a breeze to temper the sweltering heat, but now it was a mistake.

The tent shook and lighting was now closer still. I was having a spousal quandary. Do I head into the maelstrom and fetch Jenny? Or was it stupid to put another person out there? And what exactly was I going to do that Jenny could not do herself? I balanced my perceived husbandly duties with the fact that a giant lighting storm raged overhead scared the shit out of me, all while feeling cowardly lying in the relatively dry tent while she was out there in the darkness of the storm, rain lashing and lightning cracking nearby. Eventually I decided that Jenny is a capable woman and would think I was an idiot for getting wet and bringing more dampness to the tent.

After what seemed a very long time I saw a flash of her headlamp in the darkness and she finally made her way back. It turned out that she had been sheltering in the chalet, waiting for the rain to ease, but it never did, so she went for it.

The storm was on top of us now, and moving slowly. **CRRAAACKKK!!!!** Lightning slammed down very close and I felt it in my chest. There was no time at all between the flash of light and the massive noise. I jumped and we both were squeezing to be in the middle of the tent.

A ground tent was starting to seem like not such a bad idea. We were seeing enough lighting tonight to comprise the entirety of all lightning I’d ever seen my entire youth combined. Jenny on the other hand likes a good lightning storm, it reminds her of the monsoon season in Arizona of her youth, but I do not share that nostalgia.

I know two people that have been struck by lightning, one twice, and I’d rather not add myself to the list. All the time people say, “your more likely to be hit by lightning than…” Well, the CDC says, “Lightning is one of the leading causes of weather-related fatalities. But the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are only around 1 in 500,000. However, some factors can put you at greater risk for being struck.” Oh, good. Except I’m betting that one of those factors is being right in the middle of a giant fucking lightning storm while sleeping on top of your car.

I was not stoked. Isn’t there something about not being the tallest object around being a good thing? We were parked near a stand of trees, and that viewing platform thing, so that was something. But wasn’t there also something about how you’re not supposed to be next to a tree? And then we were in an aluminum roof top tent, how does that figure? At least the tires should theoretically insulate us.

All this was running through my head as the lightning cracked all around us, claps of thunder roaring. Driving rain smashed into the tent like hail. The bolts of lighting were so close together was impossible to count the seconds between strike and thunder, and the thunder was a constant rolling tympani of sound. Not that I needed to count the seconds to tell the distance, because it was obvious that the storm was right here.

Frankly I found the whole thing terrifying. And this is not to mention the tiny detail of what this was going to do to the roads for our drive out. Eventually the rain eased the smallest amount and mercifully the lightning and thunder moved on.

Finally we managed sleep. With fitful sleep we noted that the rain came all night. After a brief pause I managed a nighttime pee, just as the rain began to come again, and the storm redoubled its efforts. More lighting and thunder, again too close for comfort.

The following day we had a big driving day to make it from here to McBrides Camp. Though it’s only 54km as the crow flies there is no road through, so it’s an all day affair of leaving the park and reentering from the east.

We rose at the agreed upon hour of 0530 to the dim gray light of overcast skies and steady rain. Everyone checked in on how the night went and we were all in one piece, though Pete and Melissa’s tent was half immersed in a small newly formed puddle. One ray of good news, the fish in the pond that Pete was so concerned about were definitely going to be fine. 

Final ablution note – Open air facilities are great, I am mostly a big fan. Except maybe the actual toilet should have some shelter over it, as using the actual toilet in the pouring rain is not all that practical, not to mention that there was significant toilet paper casualty. 

Packed up and away with everything, wet though it was, we knew that we were in for a big day. Never being one to pass up an opportunity to take a pontoon (hand operated ferry), the original plan was to head back to the Moshi airstrip junction and turn left, taking the spinal road to the north out of the park, arcing our way east to the Lunga pontoon and then south to the Lubungu pontoon and eventually to McBride’s camp. This route is also shorter, and more interesting. Word to the wise, “more interesting” usually spells trouble. However Charlotte McBride had confirmed this route was viable.

Now Tyrone McKeith’s words were echoing in my mind, “…it might be a very tough drive..” Indeed it might. We consulted with Glad, who thought that the road to the north would still be drivable, as it is a bit higher in elevation than the road to the south. Pressing further he confessed that he had never in all these years working in the park taken the road to the south, as his village is to the north. He consulted with some park staff that happened to camp with him the last night and they suggested the opposite, that we’d be much better off taking the spinal road south. 

This jived a bit more with my previous research, that the road north was “interesting” in the best of times. But we were getting ahead of ourselves. We had to get to the spinal road first before worrying about that. 

Saddled up and 4×4 engaged we left, driving out of camp the road quickly became a small river of water, but the traction was good. We’d encountered this before in the Central Kalahari. Where though the road was flooded and the adjacent ground close by appeared dryish, in fact the adjacent turf was soft mud saturated with water, and if the compacted road surface would hold water it was also hard enough to provide traction. 

So we stuck to our small river of water and kept on. Up and down at times, mostly only six or eight inches deep, with the occasionally hidden hole that we plunged across, water spraying over the hood and wipers swiping furiously to clear the windshield. 

I was nervous driving. The going so far had been good, mostly hard packed sand. But as the plains necked down the road started to traverse long sections of mud where we dare not stop. Keep up momentum and hope for the best was the plan. Sometimes I could feel the heavy back end of the cruiser slide a bit, but before it got too out of shape we’d reach firmer substrate, the tires would grab and we’d lurch ahead. 

In some stretches the tires spun furiously, shedding mud out of their chunky treads and barely getting enough grip on the next revolution to propel us forward. I was getting my education in mud driving this morning.

We were making kilometers though and I was starting to gain confidence in the mud and as usual the cruiser was hugely impressive, soldiering on, an ox without comment. 

Finally we came to an innocuous looking cambered inside corner, a small right then left. I turned the wheel and nothing happened, the cruiser just went straight and heading for a small ditch. I lifted my foot off the accelerator we came to a stop in the mud before we were past the precipice. There was no use trying more, I’d just send us into the ditch faster. Everyone had raised eyebrows and was worried. I engaged the rear diff lock, put it in reverse and hoped for the best. She moved slowly, wheels whirling around and just barely grabbing traction dig a hole.

Now we could try again, but in this turn we couldn’t see how we wouldn’t just slide right back into the same spot. After a little discussion Jenny got out to scout. It’d stopped raining by now, but the tsetse flies were thick and we had a little comic relief in the cab watching Jenny’s arms windmill about to discourage the flies while she looked for a path forward. 

Hopping back in the cab she gave us the briefing. To the left, disaster. To the right was a wide flat surface, clear of grass and shrubs, but totally underivable soft mud. In the middle, our road funneling us to the ditch in the apex of the corner. However, the road had been graded and there was a heap of dirt on the right side, between the road and the muddy field. She suggested we dry to drive up a tire over this heap, into the muddy field, and keep the other tires on the road. We’d be ‘hooked’ by the small berm. With diff locks on it should’t matter if we lost traction on one tire, and we would be guided around the corner.

Not quite your normal off road driving technique, but everything else seemed certain to end in failure. The cruiser heaved over the berm, and immediately the rear end began to slide off to the left towards the ditch. But the front right tire was over the berm, and it worked. Tires spinning, mud flying everywhere and engine revving with a lot more fuss than our speed suggested, we slithered our way around the corner. It looks way less scary in the video, but check it out.

Everyone was pretty pumped, and we discussed the “would you rather”: a) be stuck in black cotton soil in 40°C heat (which we’d already done), or b) be stuck in the cool weather of Kafue while you are murdered by tsetse flies? We all agreed we’d take the 40° heat. 

We didn’t know it at the time, but that was our last serious obstacle. A few more times we wormed our way through mud, tires throwing up chunks that stuck to the rear view mirrors and windows and onto the fenders, but no more times did we cringe in fear.

Finally we made it to the spinal road. We pondered our route. To the north, an interesting road, pontoons, and a much shorter route. To the south, certainty of a good road, safety, and a guaranteed long day on the road. The sky was very dark and brooding to the north, still raining. To the south, a few blue skies and mostly cumulus. 

I’m told discretion is the better part of valor. We’d all had enough adventure for the day and we turned right. 

Part way back we even got a treat of seeing three lions right off the road. Eighteen lions in three days at Kafue, we were lucky. At the park gate the ranger said they hadn’t had any rain at all. From there we had to drive all the way back to Mumbwa to make the turn for McBride’s camp.

Next time…McBride’s Camp and Lusaka.

The Nitty Gritty

Route – I’d recommend the M20 route via Landless Corner to Mumbwa to those coming from the North and heading to Kafue. From Fringilla Farm to Mumbwa was 2h 45m

Nov 9th, 2021 – 

Fringilla Farm to Ntwemwa Camp – 374km, 10h 8m including various stops. I’d say that you could drive from Lusaka in a day provided you make an early start. 

Mwumba has fuel (probably) and anything else you need heading into the park.

Hook Bridge Gate to Ntemwa was 109km, 5h 3m including a lunch stop.

Ntemwa Camp – Located at S14° 20.265′ E25° 58.928′. We booked this pre covid at the old rate of $150/camp site. There is a new higher price for self drivers quoted per person instead of per campsite. Generously Tyrone charged us the old price and not the new price. 

I have read reports of people camping here and the camp being a little more put together than when we were here. But please do not be put off by any details in my report, we had an excellent stay here and Pete declared it the best camp of the trip. 

See the attached brochure for Ntemwa camp Self Drive Special.

The 05 Road (and that other thing)

There is a problem of geography in Zambia for those on a tour like ours. The capital Lusaka lies sort of in the center of the southern lobe of this kidney shaped country. Two roads branch out from here. Stretching east to Malawi is the Great East Road, with the Lower Zambezi lying to the south of it and South Luangwa National Park further east and above the road. Heading off to the North from Lusaka is the Great North Road, going all the way to Tanzania. Kasanka National Park, the northern waterfalls, Bangwelu Wetlands and more lie off this road. Transiting between these arteries is difficult, and it makes stitching together an itinerary limited in options. There are a few roads allowing passage, none of them in the fast approaching wet season. 

Many that are trying to see the sights either break their ambitions into two trips, or drive to South Luangwa, and after visiting drive a whole day back to Lusaka, then a second whole day to Kasanka. This is boring tarmac driving with monotonous hours stuck behind large slow trucks, punctuated by overtaking events that require more bravery than anyone should have on such narrow roads. 

On the map the attractive alternative is the 05. The 05 road heads nearly arrow straight, neatly north from the Mfuwe gate of South Luangwa National Park, heading deep inland to only occasionally visited portions of the park. Occasionally visited because there isn’t much there, at least when the road is drivable and water for game is limited. After crossing the park one is presented with a river crossing where park staff sand bag in a ford each year. This is washed away in the rains and redone each year. Following the river you drive winding switchbacks up the Muchinga escarpment on a steep and rocky climb that threatens the undercarriage of your vehicle, and so narrow that in many places you could never pass should you meet a vehicle headed in the other direction.

The road does allow two way traffic, so the only guarantee that you will not find yourself in this predicament is that this road is not well trafficked and it will “probably” not happen. Jenny and Melissa chatted with Herman, the owner of Wildlife Camp, before we made the drive, and he offered some advice. “If you meet another vehicle on the escarpment climb, just get out and distract them, while the rest of your party pushes the their vehicle off the edge.” Half joking, or not? He offered some other excellent advice, and even provided a short page of notes on the drive (transcribed in the Nitty Gritty section).

So that was the plan, drive the 05 road and head to Kasanka National Park, saving a two day drive. I double checked the route on Basecamp (Garmin’s free mapping software) and Tracks4Africa and it said it was 11.5 hours. 11.5 hours?! Somehow I made the mistake of thinking this was a not totally ridiculous one day drive. I swear I read this somewhere. We rarely make the time T4A estimates, eating up extra time with photos, lunch and pee stops. I broke the news to my friends and Pete was concerned, having observed the unerring accuracy of T4A. Herman on the other hand said 8 to 8.5 hours, which seemed much more palatable. We hoped for this.

That in mind we got up very early, intent at being at the gate at opening time, 0600. First though the morning started with an amusing episode. Being a man of habit, and having been warned at the fierceness of the tsetse flies on this route by Herman, Pete made sure he got up early enough to have his morning constitutional, aka ‘morning time’, in the ablutions. After returning he recounted his tale.  When we went into the toilet stall he looked in the bowl and found something in there from the last user. This is not surprising, as properly flushing toilets in African camp sites are not particularly common. Not being one to fuss over such details he started his business of the morning.

When complete he started to rise and was assaulted from below. The object left from before was not a present from the last user, but in fact a frog. Seeing light and a chance at freedom the frog made multiple attempts to escape, each time caroming off Pete’s backside. Pete moved quickly, and in short order the frog attained liberty. Somewhat flustered by the event Pete came out and shared his experience and we all had a good laugh over it. Sometimes the adventures in Africa are small ones. Note that the healthy frog population in the ablutions at Wildlife Camp does seem to keep the rest of the insects more or less at bay.

That episode done we were off, Pete driving the initial stretch. We arrived at the gate at 0555 and showed our already paid park fee and were waived through. The road starts as wide graded gravel, but not far north of the big baobab tree we were traversing a two spoor track in good condition through mostly empty mopani scrub forest. Later this transitions to miombo woodland, and we were making good time all the while.

I’d been warned that this part was very monotonous and there was no game, but we found neither to be true. The forest didn’t change tremendously it’s true, but it did at times and each time a little different. Sometimes tall cathedral mopani trees flush with new leaves, sometimes scrub forest that had clearly had a number done on it by elephants, sometimes a tight tunnel of green trees.

For wildlife we saw ground hornbill (flying), elephant, warthog, impala, Lichtenstein’s hartebeest, Zebra, duiker, roan, a black bellied bustard, tortoise and a nice herd of Cookson’s wildebeest, which we had not seen earlier in the park. 

Part way through this long straight section we came to the four kilometers of black cotton soil that Herman had warned us about. Even with the thunderstorms we’d seen in the previous days it was dried as hard as concrete, so no problem for us. He had said that this is the portion of the road to worry about in the rains more than any other. If this is impassable then you don’t have to worry yourself over the river crossing or escarpment climb, you won’t get there.

There was also a very wide dry river bed crossing of deep sand, but the land cruiser loves the sand and sailed right across. On the far bank is where we saw a fair amount of game and birdlife.

In three hours we came to the Mupamadzi river crossing. The ford was sandbagged, though they didn’t look in the best of shape, having done service for the whole season. Not much water was running across them, maybe six inches deep or so. We switched drivers at this point, figuring that if anything goes sideways on the river crossing or on the escarpment climb it should be Jenny or I responsible. I dropped into low range 2nd gear and we bumped across, easily climbing out of a hole left by a washed away sand bag and over the ford. 

The exit is a steep climb up a sandy bank that has been reinforced with small logs laid across it, but several were missing. The cruiser’s back wheels dropped into the hole left by absent logs and wouldn’t budge from there. I backed out and gave it a try with the differentials locked but it made no difference.

I backed down into the river and the road crew (Jenny, Pete and Melissa) got to work. It is counterintuitive to park in the river, water rushing under the vehicle, but we were one solid footing and the road crew was motivated to work fast due to the swarming tsetses. 

A few moments later new logs had been laid and I was waived up, the cruiser marching up the river bank without complaint. We’d heard of another vehicle heading this way a week or so before and when they arrived at this river the water level was too high. They camped nearby and by the next morning the river had dropped and they passed without issue. 

About 10 minutes beyond the river crossing is the Chifungwe gate, where we checked out of the park. A shade under four hours and we were at the Mutinondo River Bridge. There is a defunct campsite here which I suppose you could bush camp at, but the flies would be a challenge. 

This bridge marks the beginning of the escarpment climb, 12 kilometers of rocky steep switchbacks. We were feeling pretty good having overcome the earlier hurdles of black cotton and the river crossing, but still we knew to proceed with caution. A few years ago I had chatted with a guy from Lusaka who swore that the 05 was no big thing, as long as you obeyed the critical rule of keeping it slow. He said first gear low range and you can tackle anything, just don’t rush. 

That in mind at the first sign of the rocky climb I dropped into low range first gear, and at the impossibly slow speed of first gear low range the cruiser climbed like a goat, without hesitation. Between pitches it would flatten out and I’d pick it up to second or third gear low range (on the 79 cruiser third gear low range is roughly equivalent to first gear high range), and then drop back down to first when the next steep pitch hove into view. 

In a few places here or there you could see where someone had chosen the wrong line and scraped their undercarriage on the rocks. These white scrapes on the rocks gave me early warning to chose another line. 

Some spots had previous evidence of road building having been done by others, piles of rocks dropped into holes. In other places there was evidence of wheel spin on rocky steps, but the rear diff lock took care of that and up we went without a hint of wheel spin. 

For me as the driver, in what seemed a very long time and also no time at all, we were at the Tunta Gate. To my surprise the GPS log says the escarpment climb was only an hour and five minutes. Tunta gate is a scout camp that also logs people in and out of the road. 

After that it is good dirt road all the way to the Great North Road, we had managed the 05 with no trouble at all. Part of me thinks, “What is all the fuss about?”, but I know better. This is what everyone says when all goes according the plan. I’ve read many a report of crossing Van Zyl’s Pass that ended, “Bah, no challenge at all, hardly more than a rough dirt road.” Even though there is the carcass of more than one vehicle, battered and stripped, at the base of the steepest part. 

Technically there are harder routes than the 05, longer and with steeper climbs with rockier pitches. What makes this road worth respecting is that it is not some 4×4 club’s technical route, but a working two way road narrow enough that in sections you cannot pass another vehicle. On top of this, that you are far from help should you have a problem with your vehicle, and that a mechanic would have to come from very far away. No flat bed to recover your vehicle can make it to you should you have mechanical failure.

The Bradt Guide to Zambia has an excellent tale of someone traveling the 05 in a modern vehicle, who’s onboard computer faulted and would not let them proceed. Instead of hiking back up to the scout camp the tourists hiked down into the park, cutting across the bush to save distance. They became disoriented, suffered dehydration and eventually succumb to heat exhaustion. They were rescued on the brink of death, having become separated. Obviously they made multiple mistakes, but I prefer to learn from others’ mistakes instead of my own when possible.

We stopped for lunch, and in six hours driving time we made the Great North Road. Feeling pretty great, not only getting to experience this remote route, and having rolled the dice on transiting on the brink of the rains and escaping unscathed, but also because it was only a bit after noon and we were going to get to Kasanka at a reasonable hour.

This was a huge relief to me. Having concocted this itinerary and committing the team to this ambitious route across Zambia’s highlights there were key points that we would have to do to make it all work, and these points were not a given. Crossing the Lower Zambezi was one, the Petauke road another self inflicted one, and now the 05. Check, check and check. The next hurdle coming up was Busanga Plains, which typically closes down in November when the roads become inaccessible. Hopefully this last portion of the route would work out and pay dividends, getting to camp at Busanga would be a rare treat that not many have been able to do.

Back to the task at hand, onto Kasanka. The Great North Road is not all that great actually. A narrow paved road, one lane in each direction, that is the main artery between Tanzania and land locked Zambia. Large amounts of cargo, particularly petroleum products, are trucked on this road, making it not the most relaxing to drive on. This particular section deteriorates into rocky dirt sections full of potholes “so big you could hide a giraffe in them.”, as one South African once said. 

These sections are only one or two hundred meters long, but all descends into chaos at each of these patches, with smaller cars weaving between the trucks, trying to overtake while they have a chance. But the trucks are also weaving around the worst of the road, and pretty soon everyone is driving on the wrong side of the road directly at each other. This is all at a very slow speed, but still it’s not relaxing.

The highlands are cooler than the valleys, even midday we are excited it is not so hot. On the side of the road villagers hold up their wares to sell to travelers, mostly truckers. Wild loquats, potatoes, and giant mushrooms that are currently in season. Due to the language barrier we bought five gigantic mushrooms for about .75 US cents each, instead of the three we planned on. Regardless, they looked fantastic and hopefully wouldn’t be poisonous. 

Two hours and forty five minutes of Great North Road, having been tackled by Jenny, and we arrived at the D235, the turn off for Kasanka. This became a fantastic tarmac road with almost no traffic or potholes, what luxury.

By 1600 we’d arrived at the Kasanka gate. A long day on the road, but we were feeling good considering what we’d attempted. Earlier on the Great North Road we’d passed the Mutinondo Wilderness, which was our fall back plan in we were behind schedule. Jenny and I plan to visit this on our way north in a few weeks, so we were not “missing it”, just delaying a bit.

The attraction at Kasanka National Park is the primarily the annual fruit bat migration, that occurs only for about two months, from roughly mid October to mid December. This is part of the reason why we and many others put up with the sweltering heat of October and November in Zambia, as you can’t see this spectacle of nature anywhere else or at any other time of year.

During these months, peaking sometime in November, up to an estimated eight to ten million (!) straw colored fruit bats decend on the area to feast on wild loquats, which abound in the region this time of year. During the day they roost in a tiny piece of forest, less than one square kilometer, in Kasanka National Park. Each evening they rise and disperse into the forest to eat loquats, and each morning they return to a very small specific piece of the Kasanka forest to roost for the day.

Around this small forest is wetlands and plains, and the Kasanka Trust, who manage the park, have built viewing platforms and hides for viewing the bats as they come and go each morning and evening. 

All bat activities are organized at the Wasa Lodge, located part way into the park on the way to our campsite. We stopped at the lodge at this relatively late hour and were able to organize morning and evening bat viewing, “The bat experience” they call it, the next day. Cost was $35 for each viewing, so $70 dollars total. Not per person, but per vehicle/guide, so we felt this was a real bargain.

We were instructed that for the morning bat viewing session we would be picked up at our campsite in a game viewing vehicle at 0400, meaning we would get up before 0330. It is essential to be in place on the viewing platform in darkness, so as to not disturb the bats. 

We arrived at our campsite, Pontoon No. 2 after 11 hours on the road, exhausted but feeling good. There was some trepidation about the very early start the next morning after such a big day today, with a moment or two spent thinking that if there is evening bat viewing then maybe we didn’t have to do the morning. But having come all this way we wanted to go for it. If we had more time I think we’d certainly have spent an extra day in a more leisurely fashion, but Pete and Melissa had to get back to work eventually, so the safari boot camp schedule would continue! 

Ablution report: Ablutions are shared with Pontoon site No. 3, No. 1 being for larger groups and having it’s own ablutions. There are two showers, two toilets and hot water boiled by the staff, not available on demand. There is also a washing up area for dishes or laundry. I suspect the camp staff would do either for you for a modest tip. Facilities were clean, total score…4/5? There were substantial insects, unavoidable camping here, and no lighting. Minor infractions for sure, but it’s important to not overthink these things.

The campsite was wonderful to arrive to. It is in a thick stand of trees, almost entirely shaded, with a thatched nsaka (round open sided shelter) to hide from the elements, a huge fire ring and ablutions close by. There is also a view of the wetlands framed by trees and reeds, and we could see the very rare and shy sitatunga antelope grazing as we arrived. Many travel far to Kasanka to see this animal, and here we were, able to see ten of them right from our campsite. 

The sitatunga is not dissimilar from a bush buck, a medium sized antelope with a dark brownish coat and light spotting. But the sitatunga is a wetlands specialist, and their feet in particular are very unusual, with a wide V-shaped hoof that allows them to walk more easily in the mud. When threatened they run into the water and hide, just their nostrils above water, so that prey cannot get to them. 

Camp staff provide fire wood, start a fire and ask you when you’d like a shower so that hot water can be available, all for the price of $20 pppn. As dusk fell we grilled chicken and huge mushroom steaks over the fire, with potatoes baked in foil in the coals. The evening was deliciously cool, and we weren’t hot for the first time in what felt like ages. 

As we ate our mushroom steaks, with a very strong earthy flavor, dinner conversation turned to what happens when you eat poisonous mushrooms. Wild mushroom hunting is a thing back in our area of California, and every year people die of poisoning from misidentified mushrooms. It turns out Pete and Melissa are quite knowledgeable on the exact mechanics of how the wrong mushroom will liquify your liver resulting in irreversible poisoning. Delightful.

As night fell the insects came out, but the campsite was carpeted with leaves from the forest and the ground dwelling spiders, the crickets and millipedes that came out didn’t bother me for some reason, even though I could see the reflection of the eyes of the spiders all over the campsite in the light of my headlamp. I’m not normally an insect fan, but here it seems we could coexist peacefully. With the early morning ahead we retired early.

Morning came very early. Getting up we were actually cold. Cold! After so many sweltering days in the valleys it was wonderful to be cold and I actually had to dig around to find my jacket. In the light of headlamps Melissa and I prepped our camera gear and we all made coffee and tea in to-go mugs to take with us to the viewing platforms.

The guide arrived in an open safari vehicle, accompanied by a driver and armed scout. There are no predators here, or very rarely, but we would be walking in the forest at night and there are hippos, if we surprised one he would take care of us.

We drove in darkness down narrow tracks, across wetlands and to the forest the bats live in. They brought us to what I think was the Fibwe hide. To get to this hide requires a 10 or 15 minute trek through wetlands and we were given rubber boots. The walk was really nice, in almost total darkness to be trekking through high grass and squishy mud towards the bats really heightened the senses. We arrived at the hide, a structure built of knotty wooden poles about ten meters high with a gnarled wooden ladder to take us up. I thought it looked great, but for others in our party it didn’t inspire quite as much confidence. 

The guide gave us a short safety briefing, including telling us not to worry about climbing up to the platform, assuring us that if anyone got hurt he had a first aid kit in the vehicle. I doubted that a first aid kit would help much if we fell from the ladder, but nice that they have something I suppose. 

We settled in on the wooden bench and the guide was rattling off details about the bats, but during this I could hear the subtle wing beats of millions of bats and I lost focus on his dialogue. Instead as our eyes became adjusted to the darkness, and the very early light of the darkest of twilight arrived, we could see bats. A lot of bats. 

So many, all around us, over us, beside us. Arriving in a huge cloud of barely audible wingbeats, but layered upon each other it sounds like a wind blowing through the forest but is instead the beats of millions of muffled wings. It was incredible.

The light rises little by little and wave upon wave upon wave of bats is arriving from behind us and over us to swirl in the forest ahead. They don’t just fly in, land and be done with it. There are so many it takes them some time to settle in, to not run into each other, to find a spot, so the whole process takes about an hour. 

The beautiful dawn colors form a back drop to the forest and we can see the sky full of bats, backlit in the dawn’s blue orange and pink light. Periodically there is some disturbance in the forest and some bats that have settled rise up and swirl around before roosting again, drawing out the whole event. The guide told us that sometimes the branches in the forest break under the weight of so many bats roosting upon the boughs at once, causing them to have to fly up and find a new spot. By the time light comes you can see that much of the forest has broken branches.

After an hour or so of the sky full of bats, from darkness to dawn, and the spectacle is over for the morning. A few bats settle here and there, but that is it. We are incredulous, it is such a unique event and totally remarkable. If you are anywhere near Zambia in November make the time to come and see the bats of Kasanka, it’s absolutely amazing.

We were all excited at having witnessed this wonderful and unique event and chatted about it on our short hike back to the vehicle as the sun was rising. They dropped us off back at camp and we continued to discuss over a mushroom and egg scramble, having our leisurely breakfast and more coffee after the early start.

Later on we took a drive around the rest of the park, but it was fairly hot during the day and all was quiet. I think to see the antelope and birds that Kasanka offers you need to stick with the tried and true early morning and late afternoon game viewing times. Still it was nice to drive through the park. We did see what is reportedly the largest tree in Zambia. It is a big tree, but not orders of magnitude bigger than some others.  

We were booked for another round of bats that evening, so after our drive we laid low for a bit and relaxed. Again the driver, scout and same guide came and retrieved us. This time we went to a different platform. This one is new, I did not get the name, and was built specially for a film crew that is on site filming a documentary while we are here.

This platform is near the BBC hide, but around the corner a little. It’s taller than Fibwe, and made of steel, looking fairly new. Arriving the guide noted that there was no bench to sit on up there, the film crew had removed it. This turned into a discussion between the guide and the scout on how to carry it up, but what would the scout do with his rifle if he was carrying a bench? Eventually this was resolved when Pete volunteered, convincing our reluctant guide that he could help, leaving the scout to his normal duties. We climbed up, though it was a little bit of a struggle for Jenny and Melissa, as the ladders steps were not spaced with shorter people in mind.  

The bats were still dormant now, so while we waited we chatted with the guide. He brought up covid, and that he is vaccinated and thinks everyone should be. This seems to be the standard line from guides, as they know the tourism business has been hit so hard. He also said though that after you’ve been certified as a guide the job market is quite good, as long as you are willing to move around. He said his job here will end in December and then it was off to another camp somewhere. 

While this was happening we had the great luck to see a Ross’s Turacau fly into the forest. It was a fair way out, but easily confirmed. I was developing an affinity for the turacaus, with their brilliant plumage. I only managed to get one lousy photo and didn’t get another chance.

Eventually it gets darker and the bats start to rise. We had been looking into the forest trying to find their roosts with binoculars and we couldn’t see them. How is it possible to hide so many bats in such a small forest out of view? I have no idea. Then, when they start to rise and fly in a vortex of wings we saw that we’d been looking at them all along. Just about every piece of dappled shadow was in fact a straw colored fruit bat. 

They don’t just rise and fly off, they sort of lift and and rise and churn to get organized, and eventually start to move off, mostly in a general quadrant. Errant bats sometimes fly the other way, but then return to join the swarm. 

We marveled at their remarkable navigation abilities. Of course they use a form of sonar for collision avoidance, but this is at a whole other level to be able to avoid so many other bats, flying in their seemingly erratic patterns, and yet never did we see any hint of collision. The ship I work on has a sophisticated radar system that can track other vessels, up to 100 at time, all with the closest distance and speed and time to closest point calculated, but it maxes out at 100 targets. In two dimensions! Yet a supposedly simple bat is performing many more calculations right in front of us, without the benefit of good eyesight. It is mind boggling. 

Finally dusk fell into darkness and the show was over again. The bats were all off feasting on loquats and we were left to descend the hide in darkness. The guide told us that sometimes people panic because of the height, having an easier time getting up than down, but other than the big steps we had no trouble. 

Back at camp we were again greeted to multiple sitatunga viewable through the trees as we recapped our experience. We all agreed that if you only could do one to try to do the early morning instead of the evening. The experience of starting in darkness and moving to light was more impressive we thought, even when accounting for the fact that in the evening we had already seen it once and sort of knew what to expect. I also think this would be affected by which platform you are at, in relation to the sun. Ideally I think you want the sun in front of you, to back light the bats for as long as possible. In our case in the evening the sun was off to our side, so the visual effect might have been diminished slightly? We asked about booking specific hides and they said they usually wait until they know how many groups are coming in each day and assign the hides based on size and who hasn’t been to a particular hide before. In our case the film crew was at the vaunted BBC hide, so I assume they got first choice. Regardless we were extremely happy with our experience, totally worth it. 

The next day it was time to push on again. Given more time I think another day here could be spent birding and or game viewing, though the game will not rival the headliner parks. But it is a nice landscape and it is also good to build slow days into the itinerary, we were moving at a bit of a sprint to squeeze it all in, always a bit of a risk should people get tired or some issue arise as frequently seems to happen in Africa.

To Kafue

Kafue National Park is the final stop on our safari with Pete and Melissa, but it is too far to make in one day. We set our sights on Fringilla Farm, a farm, campsite and restaurant about half way to our destination. 

The drive there was unremarkable, just a lot of hours on the Great North Road. We made a stop in Kabwe for fuel and the Shoprite supermarket, finding this one very well stocked, not hectic and remarkably convenient. I’d recommend it for others and we noted it for our way out of Lusaka in a week or two. We also had pretty decent Indian food at the restaurant here, though the service was very slow.

We arrived at Fringilla Farm to find quite an operation. Just off the road there is a carpark with a small shop selling goods from the farm and the restaurant. We checked in at reception and also found they also have a lot of chalets, used for conventions and meetings for groups coming up from Lusaka. 

To get to camp we found our way through the property, passing many little industries. A piggery, chickens, goats, a butcher shop, a coffee shop, souvenirs. The campsite is on a grassy lawn near the annex chalets, simpler than the ones up front. Electrical points are available with both South African and Zambian style plugs (square pin vs round pin), potable water and hot water showers. Camp itself is not the star attraction here, but the operation as a whole is very impressive.

As we settled in an Australian spec land cruiser 79 bakkie pulled up and what seemed to be the boss was checking in on us to see if we needed anything. We were settled, and this turned into a really nice chat with Andrew Woodly, the manager and son of the elderly owners.

He told us to hop in the back of his bakkie, he wanted to take us out to the vulture sanctuary he had started. Yet another project! He had been approached by a vulture conservation group looking to make several vulture sanctuaries for the endangered white backed vultures, a critical part of the ecosystem in wilderness areas. He agreed, and set aside some of his farm for this. We drove out to the site, not far from the camp, and the road was full of that other scavenger bird, the maribou stork. Also known as the undertaker bird, these particularly unsightly and large birds also scavenge and had appeared to dominate the white backed vultures, who were also present in nearby trees, but in less numbers.

Andrew’s team was in the process of building a hide for viewing, and in the mean time had been feeding the chicken offal from the slaughterhouse to the birds. The maribous numbered in the hundreds, but were mostly just wandering around as they would not be fed until tomorrow. It was an impressive scene, and Andrew was very keen on us sticking around for feeding the next morning, but to do so we’d miss our reservation in Kafue’s Busanga Plains, so it wouldn’t work this time around. 

We were having a great time chatting with Andrew and agreed to meet up again later in the restaurant, having decided to take a break from cooking, not least because a lot of the food they serve is sourced from the farm, and also because rain loomed.

Meeting up with Andrew, who ended up joining us for dinner, we had delicious big steaks. Pete went all in with the “grill sampler”, pork chops and wors and steak and more. 

Andrew told us all kinds of fascinating stories. How his family found its way to this farm, about the 20’ python they’d found eating a calf on the farm just last week (including photos), about flying his little Cessna airplane around Southern Africa, both for travel and to assist with game counts and all sorts of other adventures. It was so interesting to hear these stories. He also was keen to hear what we were up to and how we’d found ourselves traveling Zambia, and generously kept buying us rounds of beers.

Some friends of his joined us, one who’s parents were from Eritrea and had scattered south upon some conflict up that way. Again, totally fascinated to hear these stories. 

The next morning we had to make our excuses to make our way to Busanga, though I am keen on coming back. Andrew generously loaded us up with sausages and biltong, and we bought more on top of that, along with rusks, and meat pies from the shop.

We departed, laden down with more meat than we usually have, ready to hit the bush again. It was an unexpected and really enjoyable stop. At the advice of Andrew and his son we made our way to Kafue via Landless Corner and the M20, avoiding Lusaka traffic, even though this road would be slower. It turned out to be not that bad, and a lot better than the road leaving Busanaga, as we would soon learn.

The Nitty Gritty

Nov 6th, 2021 – Wildlife camp to Kasanka Pontoon No. 2 via The 05, 401 km, travel time was 11h 30m, including various stops for road building, photos, mushroom bargaining, pee stops, lunch, the arranging of bat viewing, etc.

I would recommend the 05 to anyone with a sturdy 4×4 and modest off road driving experience, as long as you consult with locals before departing on the condition of the road and more importantly have the wear withal to not go or turn around if road conditions require it, and not just blithely forge ahead. Of course you won’t be turning around on the escarpment, but perhaps at the river if it is too high, the ford in poor condition, or if the black cotton soil too soft. Best to have a plan B ready. Ours was to make the two day drive via Lusaka, and after a day on the GNR Pete and Melissa thanked me for not subjecting them to that.

Later on Melissa remarked that the most dangerous thing we do is drive. The danger of a trip like this is not disease, the wildlife, or risk of banditry (whether real or perceived). Yes, driving is indeed the risk and anyone who undertakes an overland trip should make sure they are very aware of this. We tell people this, but most don’t seem to really take it in. Certainly now our friends have. 

Kasanka Nov 7th, 2021 – Park fees, for non SADC nationals, were $10 pppd, though we were not charged for the departure day, but we were out of the gate very early. Camping was $20pppn, a deal considering what you get. Sitatunga viewing, good ablutions, firewood provided, attentive staff. 

Pontoon is the closest campsite to the bats, but you can camp elsewhere in the park. There was only one other group here when we arrived, so I think you could probably rock up without reservations and the worst you’d have to deal with is an even earlier wake up to see morning bats, as the other campsites are further away. That said we found Pontoon very nice and worth booking ahead. Also we had booked this site for 2020 and had to cancel due to covid. The Kasanka Trust graciously just gave us the same dates for 2021 at no charge, and for that I am grateful.

Photography was a challenge. I used a 16-35 f/2.8, 24-105mm f/4 lens and a 100-400 f/5.6 telephoto. Not surprisingly I had the best luck with the faster lenses, though the wide zoom was too wide for the most part. I shot hand held, since I needed a fast shutter speed to freeze the bats anyway, and at very high ISOs. The best shots turned out to be before sunrise, but shooting towards the rising sun. We were fortunate that our viewing platform allowed this angle otherwise I don’t think there would have been enough light. I did get what I feel are some good shots though.

Nov 8th, Fringilla Farm – 466km from Kasanka to Fringilla, 11h and 8m, though for the life of me I can’t remember why it took this long. Though traffic on the GNR was substantial, lots of waiting behind trucks. And I guess there was that very long lunch as we waited on the food, so drive time is significantly less than quoted. 

Camping was inexpensive, $7 or $8 USD pppn. There are not numbered sites, just find a place on the lawn. Andrew complained at how expensive camping had become and apparently is putting his money where his mouth is. I don’t think reservations are required here, but it would be courteous to maybe call or email a day ahead or the day of arrival. The restaurant is large and has a nice menu at reasonable prices. It was well frequented by locals when we were there. 

Adventure heats up in Zambia

*This is a long one, but lots of new experiences for us. Also though these route has no doubt been done by many, I have not found many reports on it, so I have gone into a lot of detail.

I was a bit nervous, today was the first of several small but real risks that I’d signed us up for to make this itinerary work, and to keep things interesting. The key of course to not be too interesting, we wouldn’t want to get stuck, for example. This time it was crossing Lower Zambezi National Park. Normally you can only drive into the park from the West, or perhaps if you are adventurous and if the road is in good shape, you can take the northern escarpment road. Our guidebook advises against this, threatening real risk of a rollover on the steep roads, but it all depends on the state of the road in any given year, which will vary a lot.

The road east out of the park is not risky from a technical stand point, the climb not nearly as steep as the escarpment road, only that it may not exist. Or that it may be impassable, blocked by washed out ravines, or maybe trees pushed over by elephants might block the way. I don’t mean to be overly dramatic, but having been warned about the Zambian roads in November so many times, and having only heard a few reports of crossing by this route one can’t help but wonder if this is such a great plan. 

We left Mvuu at sunrise. Pete and Melissa were game for our scheme, although I am not sure I really briefed them adequately, but they are hardy travelers and as a team we are very good. Pete started off driving, moving at ‘transit speed’, occasionally a little over 30 kph. 40 kph is the rarely attainable speed limit in the GMA and the park, and one has to be very careful not to accidentally spook an elephant or come up on game around corners. We wanted to bank a little time for later in the day. 

We double checked with the rangers at the gate they assured us the road was passable. At the gate we also had a quick chat with another self drive vehicle, a South African couple that had moved to Zambia 15 years ago and was on holiday. 

In the short time at the gate we somehow managed to go from discussing the huge pack of wild dogs in the park to digress to politics, finding we were far on the opposite sites of the political spectrum. There was awkward talk of America’s last president, the current one, covid and the rest of it. At least we agreed on how great it was to be in the bush and not read the news. After we extracted ourselves from that we were on our way. They also planned to cross the park out the east, so we were likely to see them again and we hoped to avoid politics, though the husband appeared eager to dive right in. Luckily we did see them again, though not to talk politics as it turned out. 

Originally we wanted to take the main road deeper into the park before doing a bit of game driving, but we were worried we were wasting the little early morning time we had when wildlife might be most active, so we ducked down the the myriad of tracks closer to the river. 

A few spots required crossing very modest stretches of water, probably not even up to the rims, but there did seem to be some mud. Pete is a capable 4×4 driver, but as it is our car he deferred to our methods, which were to go into low range second gear for every crossing, no matter how benign it appeared. Every time we marched through without issue, even though it was overkill most of the time.

We marched in and out of the winterthorn trees, their canopy trimmed neatly by elephants, so we could see far into the forest. Impala, warthog, troops of guinea fowl, small groups of elephants all were mingling on the wide flood plains adjacent to the river. It looked just like the photos I’ve seen of the more famous Mana Pools, just across the river on the Zimbabwe side. Lots of birds as well, egrets and storks, ibis, a million doves, the occasional pied kingfisher, more carmine bee eaters all were present. 

We watched an elephant furiously charge a group of warthogs, who obligingly moved off, though they did not appear as alarmed as the elephant intended. We also had an adolescent elephant trumpeting angrily at us, ears wide in alarm, and an older elephant actually walked near to him and put their trunk on top of his, pushing it down, clearly saying, “That is enough of that.” And he stopped. These small interactions are what is so fascinating to see. 

Pete thinks poorly of lions and leopards, they get all the fame but you hardly ever see them do anything. But elephants and warthogs and herds of impala and puku are diurnal, or at least more so, and when we get these small glimpses of their life it is very special.

On another of the many unmarked loops in the park, a bit NE of the hippo pools, we spotted a male lion. He was sitting in the shade near a buffalo kill. After watching him do nothing (Pete started bird watching, uninterested in these boring cats) he was disturbed and had to defend his kill, from a pair of vultures. 

They would creep closer, sometimes side stepping so as to appear that they were just innocently approaching the buffalo, and then the great cat would rush the birds and they would fly off. He moved closer to the kill, and the vultures would move in again, slowly stepping a bit at time, patiently waiting, then stepping closer again. And he would rush them again. 

It was fascinating to watch, but was also eating up our time. We knew that we were going to have to get a move on if we were going to make it out of the park on time. Fairly confident that not much was going to happen with our lion anyway, we moved on.

Another kilometer and a half or so NE and the road cuts north, back towards the main road and Jeki Airstrip, where we would turn away from the river and start our eastward exit road.

We Get Stuck

The park had other plans though. We were presented with a muddy donga, about 1.5 land cruiser lengths long. It was mud, not water, and looked like it could be trouble. On the other hand there were relatively fresh tracks of another vehicle that had apparently passed. Pete looked at me questioningly, should he go for it? With false confidence I said yes, low range second gear and gun it to keep momentum up. Just one more of the many small crossings we’d made that day.

Off we went, engine roaring in low range, plowing across, and without any apparent effort at all the black cotton soil sucked us in and we stopped dead. Nothing. Our off-road tires had been reduced to slicks, fully caked with mud. We tried to back and fro with double diffs locked, but with no traction it didn’t matter. We were sunk pretty much to the rear axel, stuck.

This was a first for us, we’ve driven 50,000 kilometers around Africa in this cruiser and we know we are lucky to have not been stuck yet. Deep sand, no problem. In mud though we are novices, only a few other encounters. And the black cotton soil is famous. It’s wet clay make up is like some sort of non-newtonian fluid that doesn’t behave the laws of physics, both incredibly sticky and also fearsomely slick at the same time. When walking in it your get taller and taller as the mud builds up on the soles of your shoes, or in Jenny’s case, even barefoot she grew stilts.

It was the middle of the day, 40°C, we were deep into a national park with few visitors, almost non of which ever come this far into the park. We have no winch, though even if we did the closest tree was quite far away. Winch advocates will often say, “Well then you just bury your spare tire and use it as an anchor.” Yeah, right. If I’m going to dig a trench deep enough to drop my spare tire into I think I’ll just dig our my car instead, thank you.

We do however have a hi-lift jack, shovel, max trax and a Land Cruiser full of capable folks. I got out first to explore the scene. We were bogged deep. It was very hot. The mud sucked hard at my boots and I lumbered to hard ground. After a brief survey we elected to go for the max trax.

These orange traction boards are well regarded by the off-road and cost a fortune. To date we’ve only ever used them for leveling the car a sloped campsite, so let’s just see if they are worth the money.

We hemmed and hawed about strategy. Putting the max trax under the rear wheels, to lift the heavy back end of the cruiser, seemed like it might be the way to go. On the other hand the front axel and wheels were almost clear. If we could get good traction up front with the differentials locked, perhaps that would do it? It certainly looked like less work. 

Pete and Jenny forsook shoes, knowing it was hopeless. I clung to my boots, even though mud came in over the tops. Melissa was on animal watch, knowing there were elephants about and at least one lion 1.5 kilometers away. Which seems like a long ways, until you’ve got your back turned and are calf deep in the mud. 

We dug and dug, and the mud refused to dislodge from the shovel. Meaning every shovel full got heavier and heavier as we tried to knock the mud off. It was heavy work. We cleared the front tires, shoved a few sticks in front of the rear tires, put in the max trax and gave it our first try. 

The black cotton laughed at us. Nothing, not even a hint of progress. We conceded that we had sort of gone for the quick and dirty approach, hoping for an easy out. This time we got serious. 

We got our hi-lift jack out, and formidable tool that is capable of remarkable assistance in this sort of thing. After all, how are you going to jack up a car with a bottle jack when the mud is up to the axel? But also the hi-lift jack is the cause of many injuries, because if you don’t fully engage each click the long steel lever arm will whip back up and smack the user in the jaw. That was the last thing we needed, and injury deep in the bush with no vehicle, so we proceeded with caution. 

This time we dug more and got the max trax properly in there. We dug out the front axel more. We dug out the rear wheels more, though water seeped in around them making it hard to tell just how big the hole the rear was in. Clearly big.

Second attempt…nada. We got the slightest vibration of the tires riding on the studs of the traction boards, but no bite. We needed to jack the vehicle up higher, get the max trax fully under the front tires if we were going have any hope. I also was thinking maybe we had made a critical error, trying for the front tires. We thought we’d give it one more try before regrouping. 

At this point in time Melissa wisely ordered us to start taking breaks. It was blisteringly hot and we were pouring with sweat, working in the direct sunlight. We actually left the vehicle running and a/c blasting, so we took turns. Two outside slogging away in the mud, two inside drinking water and cooling off a bit. The a/c seems sort of like a wimp move for a real off-road African explorer, but I like to think that back in the day we’d have been almost as happy under the shade of the not so far away tree. And the risk of heat exhaustion was high.

I thought about Paul Stewart’s “Trek”, recounting a young kid digging out a Morris Traveler (!) from the sand of the Sahara, without a shovel, working at night to avoid the heat of the desert. Or Frederik and Josephine’s remarkable account of crossing the Congo (also without a winch) and digging the car out multiple times a day. If they can do it then so can we.

Or maybe we can’t. Getting close to try number three our other self drive friends from the gate pull up behind us. Can you believe it? We were stunned, having only seen one other vehicle so far that day. They walked up and greeted, graciously thanking us for finding the deep mud so they didn’t have to. We chatted a bit about them pulling us out, and we decided it’d be best if they try to find another way around the mud to try and pull us out by the front. 

Their finding a way around gave us time for one last chance to salvage our pride and try to get ourselves out. Initially we were relishing the challenge, but the heat was sapping our enthusiasm, that and we were on borrowed time to get out of the park.

Pete and Jenny work together back home and are a great team. They were out making the last sally against the black cotton. The hi-lift jack was doing it’s thing, though they snapped our wooden board we use as a base plate. They tried lifting each tire up so the max trax could sit under the tires. We had good contact, and I engaged low range first gear and made our last attempt. Nothing. We heard the tires trying to grab the boards, but at this point it became clear that the rear was too heavy and bogged too deep. This probably would have been obvious to more experienced off-roaders. 

It had taken them 30 minutes or so of hunting to find a way around, but their 100 series cruiser pulled up, this time in front of us. I pulled out our kinetic recovery strap, and right away they tried to put the strap on their tow ball, a huge no-no. This is because the tow ball is only supported at one end, and a very common very dangerous accident is for the tow ball bolt to shear and for the tow ball itself to fly through the windshield of the vehicle being recovered, potentially killing the driver. 

Right around when all this was happening a herd of elephant started crossing the mud about 100 yards away. Not what we needed, to be all chased into the cars by elephant. But they are dangerous, and everyone seems to agree that the elephants in the Lower Zambezi are particularly surly, too many years of poaching I suppose. We kept an eye on them, and they on us. I think they didn’t like the look of us either and thankfully they moved off without fuss. 

That over, I politely talked our friend into moving the recovery strap. He had some sort of tow hook under his bumper, and we had the tie down points that are stock on every vehicle. These are not meant for kinetic recovery, where you deliberately leave slack in the tow line and shock load it, counting on the elasticity of the recovery strap to compound the energy and snatch the bogged vehicle out of the mud. This works very well, but is dangerous and must be done correctly at every step. Those points we were using are actually for securing the vehicle when being shipped. Getting proper recovery points has been on my todo list for quite a long time and I never got around to it, which I was regretting now.

Strap rigged we went for a straight tow out, no snatching us out. He pulled ahead in low range first, and when the line came tight Pete did the same, me directing. And…out she came, no drama.

What a relief. We chatted a bit with our saviors, saying our thank yous emphatically and also discussing the route for the rest of the day. It was getting late to make Bridge Camp, but we’d see what we could do. 

It took us a while to recover from our recovery. We were more or less covered in mud, the vehicle was a mess. All our recovery gear was also muddy, and also had been sitting in the intense heat of the Zambian sun, so the jack was so hot we couldn’t even touch it without gloves. We retreated the whole operation to the shade of a tree. We washed the mud off in the hot dirty water of the mud hole we’d just got stuck in, which was no doubt some percentage hippo and elephant urine, but it did the trick. 

I learned a lot of lessons in that short time. Respect black cotton soil. Don’t take risks you don’t have to. That people with irreconcilable political differences are also capable of great kindness, though I can say after our initial conversation I had definitely lost sight of that.

Much of the rest of the afternoon was spent discussing the technical approach we would have taken next. I think jacking up each corner of the vehicle, and putting sticks and rocks under the front, and the max tracks under the back would have been the right approach.  Also just a ton more digging of that infernal mud. It was so sticky the digging experience was very frustrating. 

Alternatively I have heard of jacking up the vehicle high enough to push it sideways off the jack and into new tracks, out of the ruts we had made. Perhaps? Given enough time we’d figure it out I’m sure. 

After all that it was time to get going. Insult to injury, we had also just burned what little game driving time we’d had to try to see a bit of the middle of the park. Feeling buoyed by our rescue and fairly optimistic, why I do not know, we decided to take just the slightest detour from the main road to see at least a little bit of this part of the park that had so far eluded us.

Just before Jeki Airstrip we took the road that passes south of a pan of intermittent water marked on T4A. Right away the landscape South and East of Jeki airstrip was totally different than what we had seen. We could see for what seemed kilometers though the forest, obliging trimmed to the same level by elephants. Under the blue green leaves of the winterthorne trees we could see more elephant, impala, puku, herds of buffalo and waterbuck. It really lended itself to viewing with binoculars because you could see so far, yet still in the forest. The animals were still skittish.

Now it was business time, time to make our break out of the park. It is illegal to bush camp in the park and we intended to avoid it if at all possible. Not least because we didn’t want to incur another day of park fees, not to mention if there was some sort of fine for illegally camping in the park. We hoped to bush camp east of the park boundary, thinking that Bridge Camp was probably too far by now. 

Making the turn north the winterthorn gave way to thick dry miombo and acacia scrub, the road littered with fresh elephant dung. It was two spoor track, but for the most part in pretty good shape, with the odd go-around trees that had been fallen across the road by elephant. We joke that elephants hate trees, but of course they do this to get the sweet leaves that are otherwise out of reach.

The road tees at a junction, with the sign to the left showing “Lusaka”, the beginning of the escarpment road. The road the the right, no sign, is ours. It immediately crosses the deep sand of the dry Mushika River bed. The road is long, slow and just rocky enough that you can’t make any speed of note. We bumped, jostled and vibrated along, the hour getting later and the sun lower. We crossed countless small dry rivers that would certainly be difficult or impossible in the wet. There was also a lot of evidence of a road crew having been through, with branches trimmed with saws that would have other wise been across the road, and earth having been moved aside or pushed into washouts to make it passable. 

I imagine that we transited this road in the best condition it gets, with a full dry season of maintenance by whatever park staff that use it. I’m sure that every wet season it becomes impassable and the road crew must start anew.

We passed one wonderful bush camp site that was still within the park boundaries and we hoped we might see something similar once we exited. Eventually we crossed the green line on the GPS, and we began to accept that there is no eastern gate to the park. The terrain here is thick woodland with hardly space to pull off the road, and also thick with tsetse flies. Not very appetizing bush camping. Not too much longer we started to see the first settlement, and the first person we saw had a rifle slung, though it wasn’t clear for what purpose. He waved and smiled and we kept moving.

Just at dusk we arrived at the D145 tar road, and it was clear that we either would have to camp in the village or make the hour drive to Bridge Camp in the dark. Not having the energy to organize village camping, where we would no doubt be very welcome, but also the focus of a lot of attention and curiosity, we decided to break our “don’t drive at night in Africa” rule. 

This road leads south to the border and I was worried it would be thick with truck traffic, but it was quiet. Jenny drove, she is often what I call “the closer” good at the end of the day, at city driving, and at the dynamic driving through busy villages and roads where things are not predicable. 

People were all over the road. Bicycles, kids, women with loads on their head, people carrying thatch cut for roofing and charcoal for cooking and who knows what else. We think that in these dusky dark hours people are doing the hard manual labor that it is too hot to do in the middle of the sweltering November days. This means the road is for them more than us. Since there were no almost no other cars we drove right down the middle, finally arriving at Bridge Camp about an hour and a half after nightfall. 

Bridge Camp was very welcoming, knowing that our night drive was probably not all that relaxing the greeted us with, “It is all okay now, you have arrived.” We quickly made camp, gratefully took showers to rinse off the days labors, threw together some quick pasta for dinner and collapsed into bed.

The Petauke Road

Morning came at Bridge Camp the moment the upper limb of the sun broke the horizon, the heat was turned on. Hot and no breeze, even at the early hour of five-something o’clock there was no point in trying to stay in bed. We rose and lingered in the shade, sipping coffee and having a slower morning after our big day the day before. 

The fridge was turned down a wee bit too cold and the boiled eggs were frozen and unappetizing, but with the heat I didn’t have much interest anyway. After a slowish time of relaxing a bit Jenny realized before the rest of us that we actually had a pretty big day ahead and we should get a move on. This had the benefit of getting us into the air conditioned cab, so it wasn’t a hard sell for anyone.

The goal today was to drive the Petauke road to the Luangwa Valley. Normally the Great East Road is taken from Lusaka, a mostly excellent paved highway. It is a 10 or 11 hour drive from Lusaka if you are not fussing around, or you can break the day, as many do, at Bridge Camp. The alternative is the rougher and less certain Petauke Road (technically the D139 to D513 to D134) that is more direct, but a slow gravel road. 

Marked as dry season only, I read one report saying it took someone four days to take this route, but Tracks4Africa (T4A) said it was 7.5 hours, so we crossed our fingers for the latter, assuming the four days was an attempt too early in the season. 

Also on the list for the day was a minor provision, top up diesel and buy some more airtime. We thought we’d try the roadside market at the Luangwa bridge, but freshies were lacking, mostly a whole lot of dried fish. We would look further along.

After several days of dirt road traveling it was nice to be back on the tar for a bit and we enjoyed the easy cruising along tarmac. I picked up a speeding ticket for doing 67 in a 60 zone, oops! There was a camera trap, and the truck I was passing at the time also got flagged down.

The truck driver was having a fairly animated argument with the police, and the police were game, sort of, “Alright, you want to argue about it, lets argue about it!” Which I appreciate, that they didn’t take it as disrespecting their authority I guess. Certainly not the same you’d get from the police in America. 

I did not argue, and paid my 300 Kw ($17 USD) fine, complete with an “Admission of Guilt” receipt printed on nice stationary. The police officer did offer to me, “I help you out if you help me out.” Meaning he’d give me a lower fine if I didn’t require him to provide a receipt. I declined his offer of a bribe, and in a few minutes was on my way. All three of the traffic police present were friendly and all smiles, no guilt trip, just them knowing they had caught me and otherwise happy to wish us well on our journey.  

Surprisingly Petauke has no information on iOverlander, the crowd sourced app for overlanding information on fuel, campsites, water, shopping and the like. We found town to have all we needed. Fuel was cash only, because “the network is down”, a common refrain, but there was an ABSA ATM in town, as well as a Choppies grocery store. I bought eggs off some kid on the street, 2 kw/ea. The same price as in Chirundu, perhaps the egg price is fixed?

From here it was onto the unknown and back to rural dirt roads. The beginning, on the D139, is a wonderful graded road through the countryside. We aired down the tires a bit. Locals on bicycles and walking dot the road, the red dirt road stretched before us and the land cruiser ate up the kilometers, gliding over the corrugations as well as one could ask for. 

Large mango trees provide glorious shade in many of the villages we drove by, branches heaped full of almost ripe mangos. Looks like it will be a bumper crop of the fruit this year, I hope we are here still, I’m sure the mangos will be cheap by the looks of the volume available. Mosts of the fields we drove by were unplanted, appearing to be last years crop of cotton, among other things. 

Perhaps they don’t plant until the rainy season comes? But it is coming soon. So soon in fact that I my mind skips ahead to our next uncertainty. Will we manage to drive the infamous 05 Road up the Muchinga Escarpment from South Luangwa to Kasanka? Will we make it to Ntemwa Camp in Busanga Plains, where the camp owner has warned us of the bad roads and asked if we have a winch? Cottony cumulous clouds loom, laden with moisture and I ponder our back up plans.

Once we connect to the D513 the road slows a bit, a normal rural gravel road. Not bad, but not fast. Village after village passes by and we see some real country life. It is interesting to travel with our friends, who have never been to Zambia, who ask great questions on how it all works, most of which we don’t know the answers to. We note that almost everyone’s teeth are so white and beautiful, and I assume they’re not going to the dentist for their six month checkup?

Also deforestation is happening, the charcoal industry biting deep into the country side. I can hardly begrudge the rural community doing what they can to make a living, but it is very hard to see. A swath a half a kilometer wide or more stretches on either side of this rural road of trees cut down and charcoal pits smoldering. It is hard to see.

Another chore on the list is to top up our water tank. We kept driving by village boreholes, but many are placed amongst huts or are thronged with people. Eventually we passed one nearby the road, still with lots of people around it but easy to drive the truck to, so we may as well ask if we can get some water.

There is a bit of a commotion when we stop, and one older lady understands we want some water. It is children and women who pump the water, and without discussion they start to try to pour their water buckets into our tank. Not making us wait in line, not letting us pump our own water. Pouring a bucket into our tank is hard due to where it’s placed, so we start to fill some empty 5 liter jugs we have and pour them in. At first they pumped, but feeling guilty that they are doing the work eventually we were allowed in and Melissa took over the  pumping.

This trip we brought a small photo album from home, of our house, of sights near home in California and of our work. We’re a big curiosity in this group, and I wanted to share a little bit, not just swoop in, take water and leave, so I bust out the album and start showing photos. I crouched down to show some kids, and in seconds I was surrounded by an igloo of people all crowding in to see what I had. This was great fun, and worked to allow Pete, Jenny and Melissa to get the water filled.

We took a few photos and waved goodbye, all in good spirits. No one asked for anything except a few kids at the end asking for sweets or money. This contrasts to earlier on the same road or other places where the begging has been pronounced and uncomfortable. 

When kids get on their hands and knees and hold out their cupped hands as we drive by, I hate it. I think some tourists must throw out sweets or coins? I don’t know, but if you are traveling here please do not promote begging. In my mind giving sweets, coins or even school supplies is to make you feel good about yourself, less for their benefit. Give to reputable charitable organizations, or if you want to be more personal perhaps to the local school master or clinic. But beware of the risk, you are painting tourists as a source of free stuff.

The road turns worse, slower, rocky. In parts there are no villages and trees stand mostly unmolested, but a surprising amount of the road is lined with rural villages. Mostly people wave or are uninterested in us, a few kids running after us with big smiles. 

We wondered if when we got to the Game Management Area (GMA, a large sort of buffer zone around National Parks) if the charcoal harvesting would stop. There is no sign when crossing the line, and no, it does not stop. It thins a bit, but continues. Arriving at the Luangwa River the park is on the opposite bank and the GMA on our side with the road. Eventually the settlements thin out. Since our plans are to bush camp tonight I started to have some reservations, would we be able to find a place to camp out of the way from all the people? The daylight was getting lower and we didn’t have forever to find camp. 

We saw a large herd of elephants, giraffe, impala, and baboons. After some poking around we find a spur off the road that loops out along flats with grass tightly trimmed by hippos. Further along this two spoor track brought us out onto sandy flats, and after a grove of tsetse fly filled trees we found the most amazing clearing. 

A bush camp has a long list of requirements. It must be in a place that it is legal to camp (most, but not all, GMA zones this is allowed, check ahead of time), preferably in a place with some visibility and clear from brush so that you can see animals before their on top of you, out of the sight of the road to stay clear of the unwanted attention, though any local that happens across our camp is almost certainly likely to just be curious about our story. Clear of brush also means less flies, we also look for a flat camp site, a place where a fire can be safely laid, and if we are lucky a nice view. This time we had it all, one of our finest I would say.

That night we grilled chicken and butternut over the fire and listened to the sounds of the bush. Loud roaring and chuffing of lions came after dark, and with our brightest flashlight and the binoculars we could just see the eyes of at least four lions in the distance. Game was abundant in this area and we weren’t worried, they had much more interesting things to go after than us, but it was wonderful to see and know all this wildlife was about. 

Also we noticed the lights of someone else’s camp in the distance. Probably local fishing camps that we had driven by. On top of this we saw a small brush fire, ubiquitous in the rural countryside. Coming from California an unattended brush fire is unheard of and extremely dangerous, but here they are common and seem to fizzle out.

This one certainly fizzled, because it started raining. Dramatic looking thunderstorms began to sweep the Luangwa Valley, and we watched lighting in the distance as we ate dinner under the awning as it rained. The whole thing was sort of magical, what a first bush camp for our friends.

It was sweltering when we arrived, and with the cool breeze and rain dropped the temps quite a bit, thankfully. Lions roared, hippos wheezing and honking and hyenas whooping, we slept hard.

In the night I realized that we had driven over some dry soil that could turn to mud upon our departure from this camp, but we rose in the morning to find it baked dry by the early morning sun. 

Leaving early we enjoyed a game drive in the GMA on our way to Wildlife Camp. We saw Thornicroft’s Giraffe, only found in the Luangwa Valley, and herds of elephant and the other usual suspects. We also were driving an signposted loop towards the river and were stopped by a hunting vehicle. They declared that this was a private road and that we had to turn back as there were “active baits” in the area.

The guide did the talking and was very polite, but the client gave us the evil eye, clearly very annoyed that we had stumbled into his hunt. Hunting is allowed in the GMA, land leased to concession holders by the government who in turn organize hunts. The practice is in theory well regulated, though in practice it varies. 

Turning around we thought about the lions we’d seen last night and hoped that the active baits weren’t intended for them.

After what we felt was quite a journey, we arrived at Wildlife Camp, just outside the small town of Mfuwe and the Zambia’s most famous park, South Luangwa National Park. 

Wildlife camp has four sites set along the river, and several more set back a bit. All have access to the view of the river front, gazing across to the National Park. On arrival a large herd of elephant were at the waterhole near reception and made their way on to the sand bank in front of camp to drink from the river, and later crossed behind camp into the GMA. Wildlife abounds. 

There are also chalets and safari tents away from the camping area. There is a very welcome pool, to cool off from the over 40°C temps, as well as a bar. I saw a restaurant, but we did not eat there. 

Over the next few days we enjoyed South Luangwa National Park and Wildlife camp. Highlights were having a pack of wild dogs run through the back of camp. Later they made a kill out of sight and we saw them go down to the river to drink right in front of camp. We watched wild dogs from the pool! A few lions came near to camp one night, very loud, and staff later told us they killed an impala behind camp that night. That isn’t even in the park!

In the park we did a night drive organized by the camp and saw three leopards in one night, two of which were a mating pair. This on top of a Pel’s fishing owl in daylight, hyenas, bushbabies, and George the miraculous spotter picked up a tiny chameleon in the trees in the dark.

We also did a walking safari in the park and learned quite a bit about important elements of the ecosystem that are left out of our books. How termites are instrumental to the ecosystem, identified different kinds of trees, got a tracking lesson and more. 

On our own drives we did quite well too, though nothing overly dramatic. There are animals everywhere and it was hard to know which way to go. I think I slightly preferred the southern game driving tracks, but Jenny likes the north. All are good.

We also ventured into Mfuwe town to refuel and provision. Last time we really liked the Manyana Market, just out of town. Extremely clean and they have frozen meat and other goods, including probably the best biltong chili bites we’ve ever had. This time around though they were low on stock and we didn’t do as well. So we shopped in the open market, which has the benefit of being very inexpensive.

We spent the last evening getting packed and stowed for an early getaway, to drive the 05. It had rained again in the park at night, but Herman, owner of Wildlife Camp, thought the road would be drivable. He said that if the river was too high to camp there for the night and it would come down to a drivable level. There is a ranger camp across the river at the exit gate, and assuming we could talk to them he thought they would be okay with that. 

A little apprehensive about the big day ahead, we slept.

The Nitty Gritty

Lower Zambezi National Park

Fees are $30 pppd for international visitors. Vehicle is $15. The normal fee for international visitors is $25, but raised to $30 for self drive visitors, I don’t know why. The check in process can be a bit cumbersome, so at the gate if you know your plans you can pay for multiple days in a row, saving you time at the gate for future days. This has saved us a lot of precious early morning game viewing time at Lower Zambezi and South Luangwa.

If visiting this park in the future I think we’re likely to bee-line it for the area South and East of Jeki airstrip, even though it is further into the park. Even though it means getting up very early I think it’s worth being ready to enter at 0600, at least in the hot season, to gain those few precious hours and minutes of cool temperatures that animals will be more active.

To drive either the escarpment road or the road to the east make sure you are confident in your vehicle and preferably have some means of communicating for help. Satphone or inReach or whatever. If a satphone make sure you have a number to call too, it hardly will do you any good other wise. The eastern road would not be passable by a vehicle much bigger than ours, there were many low branches and we earned quite a few “bush stripes”, with brush dragging down the side of the vehicle.

From the turn north at the Mushika river (S15° 36.341′ E29° 45.364’) to the tar road, the D145, took us 3h 40m. I would have preferred to go slower, but we were trying to save ourselves some night driving.

Bridge Camp

200kw pppn ($12 USD). Camp area is uninspiring, with a shared shaded area and dish washing sink. Camp is very close to road, but thankfully traffic is minimal. Ablutions are near by, with hot water provided by a donkey boiler (read: intermittent supply). Hot water was totally unnecessary, in fact the cold water was fairly warm. Ablutions score, maybe a 3/5. Good enough, but a bit funky.

They do have a really nice bar deck, small swimming pool surrounded by bougainvillea, and food available. All with a view of the Luangwa River. This area is really nice and I could see spending an afternoon here. 

Wildlife Camp

$10 pppn. Sites 6-9 are riverfront. All the river front sites are good, with maybe a slight preference to site No. 6 for view and a bit more space. Each has a shaded picnic table, braai area, fire pit and electricity. Shared ablutions are close by and very tidy, with hot water. 

We got laundry done here for a reasonable fee. We also filled water here and suffered no ill effects. They have wi-fi, supposedly available at reception from noon-1400. To Pete’s repeated consternation it was never available from noon-1400, because that is when the boss was on lunch break and he took the wifi router with him. Regardless, if you need wifi it’s probably available sometime. There is cell reception for airtel at camp.

Oct 26th-Oct 29th, 2021

It was border crossing day. There is always a little bit of trepidation when crossing a border in Africa. Nothing to be scared of, but mostly a wonder; will our plans be disrupted, will we be delayed, do I have the right paperwork?

To start we needed our PCR tests. We drove to town and picked up the results from the Namibian Institute of Pathology lab at the Katima Hospital. We arrived at the same time as the five other travelers that we had tested with yesterday, and we all were given a copy of our results (negative) within a few minutes. First hurdle cleared.

One of the other couples was Swiss, traveling in their Namibian registered Land Cruiser. They asked if we had our police clearance, a document required to bring a vehicle into Zambia. We did, but it was 18 months old. They were worried for us, because apparently it must be no more than one month old. They said last time they’d been sent back into Namibia by Zambian authorities to get one, not a good sign for us. 

For South Africans (and South African vehicles) this document, the police clearance, is a notorious pain to get, as the South African police don’t issue a police clearance, meant to establish that they vehicle is verified as not having been stolen, unless the vehicle is being exported permanently. As we hadn’t been to South Africa since March 2020, there was no way to obtain a new one. Fingers crossed we wouldn’t have issues, there are many stories of travelers being held up or asked for bribes to resolve the stalemate.

After getting our test results we headed the couple short kilometers to the border. We were in and out of Namibia Customs and Immigration in record time, six minutes. Can you believe it! I couldn’t, and it turned out to be too good to be true. We wound our way around a long line of trucks to the final police boom that crosses the road before exiting Namibia, marking the no-mans land between border posts. The bom was down and after some waiting and no action Jenny investigated, finding that no one could leave until some dispute involving a lot of police further up the road was resolved.

More waiting. Remember what I said about waiting being a skill we needed to hone? Here we were again, honing. Jenny was serene and happy, I mildly agitated. Lets go, we are so close! I wandered up to the boom and was sent back. More waiting. It was hot. Bonus though, we were parked in the sun and the new solar panels were making over 10 amps. I call this “the electron update”. Jenny doesn’t always appreciate the electron update, particularly in the early morning. She says she checks the battery in the morning not to see how it’s doing, but to see what kind of mood I will be in after I see it is too low.

After an hour, watching more and more police walk back from the dispute, a police woman told us there had been an altercation with the Zambian money changers. They illegally walk across no-mans land and come over to the Namibian side to change money with travelers and truck drivers. When the Namibian police drove them back they resisted and threw rocks at the police, resulting in both Zambia and Namibia authorities closing the border until they could get it all settled down.

Another little while passed and we were let through, after the police woman asked us if we were ready, even if we got rocks thrown at us. We were not the target of the money changers frustrations, but to show respect we treated the threat seriously.

No rocks were thrown, and a few minutes later we were on the Zambian side. The Zambia side has all but one stop in a single building, much more streamlined than the Kazungula border we took in 2018. 

Details of the border crossing in the Nitty Gritty Section. No mention of police clearance was made, I think because we were traveling with a carnet. Due to a computer being down it took an extra hour. Four hours total and we were across. Not fast, but plenty of time.

The M10 Sesheke – Livingstone road

We still had to drive the feared Sesheke road. A couple we met who’d just spent six months traveling to Uganda and back and they said it’s the worst road they traveled the whole trip. To avoid this road the alternative is to drive all the way up to Mongu in, adding a day to the trip, or transiting through Botswana, adding another border crossing. 

We decided to bite the bullet and just get on with the Sesheke/Livingstone road. The first 30km is fine, where we began to think that maybe it was all hype. But it went to pieces fast, and then complete shit until a couple kilometers outside Kazungula. 

In the beginning the road is so bad it’s funny. After some of that, annoying. Then grim. Then just stoic silence. Thankfully there was hardly any other traffic, I assume because everyone else knows to avoid this road, and we could wind our way to whichever side of the road seemed least bad. More pothole than road, mostly you drive on a dirt road adjacent to the “road”. These dirt roads are so bad that there is another dirt road adjacent to them, and the whole time you are weaving back and forth looking for the least awful way to proceed.

It was so hot that the heat shimmer causes a mirage, making the “paved” portion look like smooth tarmac in the distance. Like a shipwrecked sailor running to the mirage of an oasis in the distance, many times we thought we’d passed to worst of it, optimistically popping back onto the “tarmac”, only to see the illusion broken, that we’d been duped. 

Four hours later the suffering was over, we passed the last hour between Kazungula and Livingstone in the relative peace of uneventful road, arriving at the Victoria Falls Waterfront Hotel and Campsite.

Livingstone

Last time we were in Livingstone we stayed at the Maramba River Lodge, but this time around we thought we’d mix it up and this place looked like it might be a modest upgrade to the already very pleasant Maramba. Though not terrible, it wasn’t really an upgrade. 

It does have a lovely bar deck over the Zambezi river, a bit up from the falls, and we arrived just in time to have a beer and watch the sun set over Zimbabwe’s Zambezi National Park on the opposite bank.

With excellent timing our friends Pete and Melissa walked up and we enjoyed a rendezvous over food from the restaurant, discussing our upcoming plans together for a Zambia tour, two weeks and a bit of seeing some highlights of Zambia. After which they would fly home and we will continue north. 

They spent the next day seeing the falls, and us taking care of a few odds and ends. Part of our day was spent reorganizing the vehicle to figure out how to shoe horn us all in.

Though Victoria Falls is amazing and well worth the visit, we have been there three times and would no doubt return again, so no great loss to give it a pass this time. 

The plan for the first leg was to try to make it all the way to Mvuu Camp on the banks of the Zambezi, outside Lower Zambezi National Park. It is a long drive and I wasn’t sure we’d pull it off, so we had a plan to stop early if we got behind or were tired of driving. Last time we did this the road from Mazabuka to the T2 junction was terrible and slow going, which wouldn’t help our time. 

To the Lower Zambezi

With the upcoming bad road in mind we made an 0600 departure. The T1 had light traffic, light enough that we didn’t get stuck behind any slow trucks for much time. There are two road toll booths now along the way, 20 kw each time. You show your road tax and they staple a new receipt to it to show along the way if you need to. I am happy to pay this surcharge, the road was in excellent shape. 

We passed the Moorings Campsite, more or less a half way point to either Lusaka or Lower Zambezi, but too early to stop for us. In Mazabuka we fueled and took a detour out of town, because they are working on the main road! The gas station attendants informed us that the road has been repaired, and they smiled when we told them we remembered it from before. Sure enough, back on the T1, the formerly disastrously rough stretch was now new tarmac, what a relief. We sailed along swiftly. 

Turning onto the T2 ahead of schedule Mvuu was easily in our sights. The T2 drops south and is the main route for trucking to Zimbabwe, and along the way we saw terrible accidents that had happened, the burned out shell of turned over tanker trucks, smashed 40’ containers along the side of the road, reminding us to drive with vigilance. Chirundu is the border town, if we continued on the road brings one to Zimbabwe. Also it is our last fuel stop, with jerry cans and tank topped up we turned left onto dirt road that parallels the mighty Zambezi river. We arrived at the very pleasant Mvuu Camp 10 hrs from leaving Livingstone. 

I felt pretty good about this. 10 hours is a long day in the car, but Zambia is a big country and it’s sort of unavoidable, or if you break up all the long stretches it adds quite a few days to the trip. I was feeling a bit anxious, having been in charge more or less of the itinerary, and thus committing all of us to a number of long days in the car between attractions. But watching Zambia pass by is so much more interesting than what we see on a long day on the road at home, it is much more bearable. Also it always gives rise to more questions about how it all works. What are those storage bins for, where is all the charcoal going, why are some roads so good and others so bad? Always more questions, it’s part of what is interesting about being here.

Mvuu is on the banks of the Zambezi, a large camp in mostly shaded campsites, as well as bungalows on the opposite side of the bar, restaurant and pool area. We were the only campers that day, but we had pre-booked as we wanted to get one of the two riverfront sites. Each site is named, and the riverfront sites are Elly and Mvuu, both equally good, though Mvuu is adjacent to one of the bungalows.

Each site has private outdoor ablutions (Only one small scorpion, 5/5!), hot water, baboon resistant trash receptacle, fire ring, and a camp attendant to helps you and other campers out to keep you safe(er) from wildlife, builds you a fire in the evening and does dishes in the morning. Fancy camping, but also not cheap. In our case this was Stanley, and he pointed out the absolutely monstrous crocodile about 20 meters from our campsite down on the grassy bank. This croc sat sedately, but it certainly prevented our interest in a closer view of the river.

Stanley, wanting to ensure our respect for the wildlife risks that exists here I suppose, pointed out that we must be careful, a guest was killed here a few years ago by and elephant, and his own wife was killed by a crocodile while doing the dishes at the river bank last year. That cool water tempered the mood somewhat, and not long after Stanley ordered us down from our camp to a sitting area near the bank, high enough to be safe from crocodiles, but low enough to be safe from the heard of elephants that came through camp. It was quite a welcome to Zambia for Pete and Melissa. 

After a long day in the car getting here we set aside the next day for a short exploratory drive in the Game Management Area (GMA) adjacent to the park, and then an evening boat trip organized by Mvuu.

Driving around the GMA we saw elephant, warthog, impala, all very skittish compared to the animals that we’re used to. My goal today was to take a look at Chongwe Falls, on the Chongwe river that makes the border between the GMA and the Lower Zambezi National Park.

We wound our way through the tracks up to the falls, to find a dry river bed and empty falls. Not surprising since it is the end of a long dry season. The falls are also accessible from the park side, and we decided to drive a rough track up onto the park side and to the park gate to chat with the rangers at the gate. 

At the gate we met a guide told us about a huge pack of wild dogs in the park, and where to find them. We’d already booked the boat trip for that afternoon, and going into the park was going to cost us. On the other hand, wild dogs are a fairly rare sighting, particularly a large pack, and after agonizing for a bit we pulled the trigger and went for it. 

Not having been into this park before we weren’t confident we’d be able to follow the guide’s directions. Crossing the wide open plain we found the conspicuous termite mound he mentioned and noted his tire tracks. Sure enough, a little off the road was a very large pack of wild dogs. Thirty-three by our count, a huge pack. There were pups that were beginning to mature, all in one pile, getting up and reorganizing themselves frequently. A heap of less active adults about 20 meters away. We were able to spend quite a while with them, and even though it was their rest time in the heat of the day they did move about a bit to give us some interactions to watch.

We were pretty pumped up by our wild dog sighting, but it was time to head back for the boat trip. We departed the park by the main road, which requires a river crossing that was about the height of our tires, but along a rocky riverbed with good traction, so little chance of getting stuck. 

Only a few hundred meters from the river crossing, into the GMA we sighted a leopard. Incredible luck. the leopard watched for a few seconds and took off parallel to the road. We moved up and were able to spend a few minutes with it (not sure if it was male or female) before it took off. The Lower Zambezi was certainly starting off well, it was turning into quite a day.

Getting on the water for the boat trip was a nice break from the heat, the Zambezi Valley being one of hottest places in Zambia, only rivaled by our next planned stop, the Luangwa Valley. We zoomed along glassy water as our guide and boat driver pointed out birds, hippos and crocs in extremely pleasant riverine scenes. 

He brought us to a carmine bee eater colony nesting in little holes in the riverbank, and we turned the engine off and drifted along the bank, watching them swarm the bank and the trees, many with beaks holding moths or bees and other insects. They fly into their nests and feed their young, or perch on the crest of the river bank, posed in near perfect afternoon light for us next to their comrades. Beautiful. This nesting is exclusive to this time of year, one benefit of tolerating the heat of October or November.

Further along we watched a herd of elephants organize themselves on the Zambia riverbank and plunge into the river, crossing to the Zimbabwe side. At the deepest part it is just their trunks above water, and the littlest elephant is in the middle of the group, being held up, squeezed in between larger adults to stay afloat. 

After watching the sunset on the boat we disembarked back at camp after and absolutely incredible day of watching wildlife. We sort of messed up, setting such a high bar on our first day in the bush for our friends.

The park is about 45 minutes from Mvuu, so it doesn’t make much sense to do a traditional morning and evening game drive, too much time is taken by going back and forth. This inaccessibility is part what makes this park less visited. Determined to try to get to know the Lower Zambezi better the following day we headed in early for an all day game drive. 

We explored countless tracks through wide open plains, through forests along the river bank and in denser woodlands. Many of the river bank areas having channels that hold water inland from the river with wetlands that have abundant birdlife and wildlife. We saw an endless amount of impala, many warthogs, lots of jumpy elephant, waterbuck, great big herds of buffalo, some bushbuck, but no predators. One of the few other vehicles we ran into had just seen a leopard, but we couldn’t find it. 

Overall we had a really nice day in a park that felt very wild. Some of the tracks were rough and dense, Pete thoroughly enjoyed the 4×4 driving as we ranged around the bush tracks in the wilderness. T4A did not have many of the park tracks that I imagine are seasonal, as much of the area we explored must flood or become a morass of black cotton mud in the rainy season. 

The wildlife seemed skittish, usually bounding away from us as we came into view, whereas our experience is other parks is that wildlife is quite tolerate of vehicles. We wonder if this is due to poaching pressure, or perhaps during covid the lack of tourists has made them lose their previous comfort with vehicles?

That night in camp an elephant came through while we cooked on the fire. Stanley was off by then, not there to supervise us, but we retreated on our own to the cooking area. After spending a little time eating leaves from the tree right over Pete and Melissa’s tent the elephant moved on in not too long a time.

Knowing our plans for the next stretch would be busy we took a rest day in camp. Fixed a couple odds and ends, Pete and Melissa honing their setup in the ground tent, we decanted jerry cans, the camp staff did our laundry, and we jumped in the pool several times to cool off. We’re really roughing it here in Africa.

The plan coming up is to cross Lower Zambezi National Park, exiting to the east. This road did not used to be passable, more used by poachers on foot we are told. But now it has reportedly opened up, if not always passable. We had asked at the gate and they said it was open. This would allow us to not have to backtrack through Lusaka. Also it appeals to me to explore deeper into the park and make a crossing of the park that I have not read much about. On the other hand, since I am the planner on this portion of the trip, I do have some trepidation, having signed the rest of our party up for this more “interesting” route, whether they want to or not. After the crossing we intend to wild camp east of the park, or perhaps make it all the way to Bridge Camp, a normal halfway point between Lusaka and South Luangwa National Park.

After that I am also keen on trying the Petauke Road. This is the back road to Mfuwe and the Luangwa valley. The normal route to South Luangwa is along the Great East Road, the T4, turning Northwest at Chipata. I was hoping to avoid this long and relatively boring drive, taking the Petauke road, only accessible during the dry season. 

Now I sort of feel like the trip is really starting. It is funny, there are a lot of big milestones to kicking off a big trip like this. The last time we walked out of our house. Getting on the plane. Arriving in Windhoek. But meeting up with our friends on this long delayed trip together, and now diving deeper into the bush it feels like we are really starting.

Next time: 

-We Learn the hard way about black cotton soil, getting very stuck deep in the park.

-Crossing the Lower Zambezi National Park

-The Petauke Road and bush camping in the Luangwa Valley

The Nitty Gritty

Katima/Sesheke Border

We were the only one wearing masks, and we went through the paces. Because of covid, first stop is health. The heath officer inspected our PCR tests and filled out our covid medical questionnaire for us, without asking about symptoms, just checking “no” for everything. You take this slip to immigration. 

We had a 3 year multiple entry visa issued in the USA. The price is $100 USD, and as we knew we’d use it at least twice (north bound and south bound) it is at minimum the same cost of the normal $50/ea. Also it saved us some time. The immigration officer was surprised, but after inspecting the visa and the receipt she stamped us in, though only for 30 days instead of 90. She said they are under orders to not offer more than 30 days, even on 90 day visas, and that if we needed longer we could get an extension before our 30 days runs out. We’ll see if that works.

After this you take your health slip, stamped by immigration back to health and they take it. After that, customs. At this point, wanting to speed things along, Jenny and I divided. I took customs, she road tax. This is our first time traveling on a carnet, so I handed it over and the customs officer filled it out, thankfully knowing the drill. It’s incumbent on the carnet owner (us) that it’s filled out correctly, but everything was in order the first time around. 

Jenny had less luck at the road tax desk. The system was down and he had called his supervisor. After some waiting around I went outside and managed to change some money and buy SIM cards from the money changers. 50 kw/ea SIM and air time, 20 kw for 2gigs for a week. Exchange rate is ~ 17kw:1USD. We’ve found the weekly data bundles to be the most economical, though without too much calculating. Cheap enough for us. If you have data left over after you get this first week at 2G you can get the next week at the minimum data amount and the remainder will rollover.

Still waiting for road tax I chatted with the money changers for a while. They were very laid back, not pushy like at lots of places. With no other customers they were happy to chat. Eventually they pointed out that the road tax guy can fill out the paper by hand, he is just too lazy. They told me to go insist that he do it by hand and not wait for the computer. It worked! 20 dollars and a few minutes later we were done. I believe there is also supposed to be carbon tax, which we asked about more than once, but I think in the confusion of the system being down they forgot. 

Last stop is council tax. Drive 100m or so around the corner to the right and they flag you down. Council tax was cheap, I think 50 kw. 

The actual last stop was booth by the gate where they glanced at our paperwork and were waved on. We were through! And no mention of the infamous police clearance. I suspect this is because we were traveling on a carnet, though I didn’t want to ask lest it become an issue. A shame to not get to the bottom of this.

I would say the Katima/Sesheke border post is good and I wouldn’t hesitate to use it again, even though there were a few hiccups this time around.

Livingstone

Insurance

We purchased our required 3rd party insurance online from Phoenix Insurance. This meant at the border we already had the insurance in hand and didn’t have to fuss with the local insurance sales people. Phoenix Insurance has an office in the Falls Park Mall in central Livingstone to allow us to purchase COMESA from them. 

COMESA is 3rd party insurance that is valid through many African countries, including most of East Africa. Having it ahead of time would simplify our logistics for the many border crossings ahead. You could also buy insurance at each border, but it is not always available and you might have to proceed to the next town, turning it into an extended chore. COMESA works as a rider of sorts on top of existing insurance. We decided to buy a year’s worth of insurance for Zambia, price roughly 400 kw (sorry, I forgot to get the precise amount before we threw away the receipt) and then a year’s worth of COMESA for all valid countries. The price for validity over 200 days is the same, so no loss to go all in if you are past that number. You might save some money if you are going to less countries or for less time, the insurance person will have a chart showing the price for whatever combination you require. The year’s worth of COMESA was ~1,300 kw. They were cash only, but in not too long we were sorted, very hassle free. I’d definitely recommend dealing with Phoenix for ease, I believe the prices are fixed between companies, so I don’t think there is any advantage to shopping around. 

Victoria Falls Waterfront Camp

There are about a dozen campsites set fairly close together amongst the trees. The property is within the Mosi-Oa-Tunya National Park, though fenced to discourage visits from elephants. Each site has water, a washing up sink, and theoretically power, though we found many didn’t work. The day we arrived camp had one large group in ground tents and two other vehicles. To my surprise on the second night they were full of private vehicles. Some South African, some europeans with vehicles they owned. 

Ablutions – two blocks that are shared amongst the campers. Cleanliness, lighting and functionality was mediocre. They certainly did the job, but I wasn’t impressed. I wonder if they cut staff during covid and perhaps the facilities suffered a bit? 2.5/5.  There is a large wonderful pool in the shade, very clean.

Food was decent at the restaurant and the view of the river is really nice. A big place and clearly locals come for food and drinks, not just overnight guests. In the future we’ll probably go back to Maramba River Lodge.

Logistics

We shopped at the well stocked Shopright in central Livingstone. Nearby, Heartland’s Best Farm Shop, on iOverlander, also had a good selection of specialty stuff, including a hard to find item in Africa we always keep an eye out for, limes.  

We refilled our water tank from the Nyanjawisi Aqua Mineral Water bottling place west of town on the M10, about $5 to fill our 60 liter tank with very good water. We’re experimenting if we might try this more often.

Mvuu

Excellent Camp in the lower Zambezi area. I believe the closest camping you can get to the park gate, though in the past there used to be a community campsite that was closer, however that is closed. There is a sign at the entrance to the GMA that [undesignated] camping is not allowed in the GMA, unlike some other GMAs. 

Price varies by site, the waterfront sites of Mvuu and Elly being more expensive. All the sites are good really and I would take the inland sites happily, you can walk just 50m to the river whenever you want. Mvuu and Elly sites are relatively expensive, ~$38.50 pppn

We asked at the gate about camping in the park. They said a campsite had been started but is on hold due to lack of funding, same as we were told in 2018. When pressed the gate rangers said you could camp at the gate and enter as soon as they open at 0600. 

Mvuu Boat trip is $44/pp USD

Details on the park and park fees in the next post.