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 We made the drive from Livingstone to the Chiawa Game Management Area west of Lower Zambezi National Park in one day. There isn’t a whole lot to make a stop out of in between, so we just drove through the 514kms, stopping for lunch and fuel. Tracks4Africa predicted 5 ½ hrs, and I predicted 9hrs, and I was right. We’re starting to find T4A a little optimistic, but of course it doesn’t factor in all our waffling around and slow driving.

 

This was really our first proper drive into Zambia, and we were keen to get a feel for a new country and see some of Zambia pass by as we made our way along. At the beginning we didn’t see much, because it was foggy. The main road, the T1, is good out of Livingstone and you could easily drive the 100 kph speed limit, but the road is also being used by bicycles and pedestrians, and passing through villages it was hard to see, so we started out driving slow and taking our time. The sun was backlighting the fog and we got to see some fantastic images of village life highlighted in the fog, but still it made for slow progress.

 

Eventually the fog cleared, and we swapped drivers so Christian had a little time driving on good tarmac to get a feel for the cruiser and for African driving, looking out for livestock, bicycles, pedestrians and bold overtaking.  Fortunately traffic was light. Not long after we made it to the town of Mazabuka. We had been warned by multiple people that the road would deteriorate drastically after Mazabuka, it was true.

 

From Mazabuka to the T1/T2 junction the road is terrible. Outside of town the road starts to look like has been hit by mortar attack, with potholes that you can’t see the bottom of, and it deteriorates further in parts to no pavement and just chunks of road bed and little islands of pavement. Traffic starts to back up a bit and everyone begins weaving back and forth across the full width of the road, looking for smooth ground. Seeing a large truck drunkenly swerve directly at you might appear alarming, if you didn’t know that it was all happening at a sedate 15 kph, and everyone seems to make their way back to their side when you need to pass each other, and then each continues their wandering wavy search for smooth passage once passed.

 

After turning onto the T2 the road becomes beautiful, with just enough potholes to keep you paying attention, and there was almost no traffic at all. We barreled along and descended the escarpment almost 1000m to the Zambezi river valley and arrived at Chirundu, a border town, with Zimbabwe lying across the river.

 

For other travelers it may be of interest that there is a brand new Shoprite supermarket in Chirundu for provisioning. We fueled up and headed east towards the park. When we left in the morning we weren’t sure where we were going to stay, but it is early season and so bookings are not essential. After some hemming and hawing about driving distances we settled on the Gwabi River Lodge, just 10k or so from Chirundu, on the western side of the game management area (GMA).

Gwabi was perfect for us. There was one other set of campers there and it was generally empty, but the proprietor, Ann I think, was very welcoming and we got a wonderful campsite right on the Kafue river with excellent big shade trees for $10 USD/pp. Firewood was provided. Ablutions were simple but clean and had hot water and decent lighting, a feature that is sometimes under appreciated until you try to take a shower in the evening.

 

 We enjoyed a beer and the sunset on the bar deck and then cooked over the fire and enjoyed our riverside camp.

 

There are not many options for camping in the area, and she and her husband gave us our choices, with no apparent bias for staying closer to the park, they were great about giving us the lay of the land. We decided we’d leave early in the morning to drive into the GMA and see what game we could see, and then on the way back decide where to camp or to return to Gwabi.

 

She said that earlier in the week she had seen Lion, elephant, impala and wild dog just on the main road towards the park, all while in the GMA, so we departed optimistically.

 

It’s about 70 km from Gwabi River Lodge to the park entrance, which Ann said could be done in 2hrs, but there is no way we could have managed that without driving irresponsibly, though I’m sure the guides can do it with knowing the road well. As usual we went slowly, but the first 30 km or so is near perfect freshly graded gravel road, so we had a good start. After that things slow down quite a bit, and the road passes through many villages we slowed for those as well as the worsening road conditions.

 

These villages were the first simple and more out of the way villages we’ve really driven through on this trip and were interesting to see. People here were clearly poor, but not poverty stricken as we have seen elsewhere. Housing compounds were mostly round boma style mud brick houses with thatch roofs, but also some rectangular more western style small presumably one room houses with corrugated tin roofing. Every place we saw was very tidy, clean and organized, some with plants at the doors of dwellings, all swept clean of leaves and debris, no loose trash lying around, it was obvious that people took pride in their property.

 

Water comes from manually operated borehole pumps, and we saw gatherings of people at each pump fetching water, universally women and children. We saw women carrying loads on their heads in the traditional African fashion, and one in particular stuck in my mind. She had not one but two buckets of water on her head. Maybe a 3 gallon bucket and stacked on top of that 2 gallon bucket of water, so 5 gallons of water, weighing roughly 35 pounds, and she appeared perfectly at ease, and yet we could see the water sloshing in the buckets. How she could balance with the counteracting forces of two sloshing buckets of water seems impossible to me, but she was doing with no problem, walking gracefully along.

 

Even though life here is simpler than we are used to in the west, people have smart phones, we saw a couple cars, everyone looks presentable and we were greeted with smile after smile and wave after wave, almost everyone seeming really friendly.

 

There were small farm plots and numerous tidy gardens, and we saw heaps drying vegetables, what we think were cassava and maize, but I’m not sure.

 

Eventually we made our way deeper in the GMA and started seeing impala, warthog and a few elephant. We wandered our way along the road all the way to park gate, which requires a modest river crossing to get to. For this time of year water was about rim height with a river rock bottom, no problem for the cruiser and probably good to rinse some of the sand and grit from the brakes.

 

The ranger post was spartan, a basic two room wood house. The front room had a few sacks of cement, a desk, chair and MF radio and thats about it. The rangers seemed surprised to see us, and from the front room you could see into the back room that there was some simple wire single beds in the back, so not only were they checking people through the gate but they also lived in this building.

 

The park was enticing. Wikipedia says that the park is only accessible by fly in visitors, which isn’t true, we were keen to prove the internet wrong. However by this time it was already afternoon, and we didn’t want to fork over the more than $100 USD fee for all off us to enter the park for the day. So we chatted with the rangers at the gate and decided to head back through the GMA to Mvuu lodge to camp for the night.

 

On we took a few side roads on the way back, in no hurry, and continued to see similar game as on the road in. At one point we saw about 5 elephant making pretty good time headed inland, and when they crossed the road behind us we saw a baby elephant with a pretty bad leg wound limping between the adults. It’s not our area of expertise, but it did not look like a laceration from a predator attack, it was thin and horizontal around the ankle. Later we talked to one of the guides at Mvuu and he thought that the elephant could have been trapped in a poacher’s snare, who are targeting antelope for bush meat, but of course a snare catches whatever crosses it’s path.

 

About 2 km east of Mvuu, after a long day of vigilance looking as deep into the bush as we could and systematically scanning the underbrush we saw a leopard right in the road about 50 meters ahead. It was on a impala kill, fresh enough that the impala was still twitching. We could hardly believe our eyes. Leopards are the most elusive of the large cats, allegedly doing their hunting at night and remaining out of sight during the day, they are hard to spot and typically only seen very early in the morning or shortly before sunset. But here we were, 3 in the afternoon watching the rare sight of a leopard on a kill, not even in a park and not needing to pay any fees to be in the game management area. Fantastic.

 

He stared us down for a minute and decided to move off the road. Without any apparent effort he clamped his jaws over the neck of the impala and quietly drug it into the bush off the road. We moved forward and found that he had settled on a spot only 20 feet off the road, but camouflaged behind some brush. We could see him and his penetrating stare only because we had seen him move there. In fact, a safari vehicle headed to one of the lodges blew right by us while we were watching him and took no notice. No doubt we too have driven by many an interesting animal just off the road that we didn’t see.

 

After a few minutes of me frantically trying to get the camera to focus through the brush and of watching the leopard he decided he’d had enough attention and he vanished, impala in tow, into the brush.

 

At this point Christian was pretty blown away. Keep in mind this was his first day ever of game viewing and without entering the park he’d seen leopard, hippos, elephant, impala, warthog, numerous birds. On top of this a modest river crossing to get to the park gate and some decently rough roads, all adding to the “out there” feel. It was a great beginning for our time in Zambia, which would continue to deliver smiles, a welcoming feel and great wildlife and wilderness.

 

We retired to Mvuu for cold drinks on the deck over the river for sunset, all while being serenaded by the call of hippos. We camped for two nights and forwent the morning game drive and instead had a luxurious slow morning in camp, coffee and a real breakfast and lounging around.

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 Late mornings lead there way to chores, and we conducted our first “service” on the vehicle. I pinched a land cruiser weekly inspection checklist from an NGO I used to work for, so we moved through our list of various tasks, greasing U-joints, checking suspension bushes and fluids and conducting a general clean and tidy of the car. We are asking the cruiser to carry us far and deep into the bundu (the bush), subjecting the cruiser to more punishment of dust and sand and dirt than a normal car, and torturing the suspension on twisting roads and ruts and rocks; thus we give it more attention, hoping to ward off any surprises while we’re solo in the bush.

After chores were done we had a little while to kill before heading out on one of Mvuu’s boats for the afternoon to check out the river. I was wandering around the river bank, drinking coffee and looking at hippos with binoculars for a bit, and while I was walking back to camp Jenny and Christian come walking over making some sort of weird silent gesticulations. I couldn’t figure out what was going on and piped up “What’s up guys?” Nice and loud. This produced more rapid silent gesturing and the strong whisper “elephants”. Ahh, I see.

Our doors were unlocked and we were ready to jump in the car if need be, and we stood behind some small trees and walls built around camp and watched from a distance. A few minutes later 12 more elephants walked into the edge of camp, which seems cool but was too many elephants for me one foot, particularly since some were very young and thus might have protective mothers. After about 45 minutes they worked their way across camp and were clear, excitement over, and very fun but a bit of a relief.

That night Christian had another wildlife experience. He was thinking of getting up to pee in the middle of the night and he heard a munch munch munch munch noise right next to his tent. Hippos, nocturnal grazers, had come into camp and chosen the grass right by Christian’s ground tent. We had just been reading the book the day before on how dangerous hippos could be and how not to piss them off, so he was feeling pretty cognizant of trying to stay on their good side. Also this is funny because Christian has the worlds loudest air mattress, where any movement brings a sort of rustling noise, so not easy to be quiet.

 

Bursting to go the the toilet he laid perfectly still and listened to two hours of munch munch munch munch as the two hippos grazed a few feet from where he was lying. After a while we woke up and listened to the amazing noise of them eating, and we started unzipping zippers on our tent to look out and see if we could see them. Christian was silently willing us to stop, as he was a little freaked out and didn’t want us to agitate them, which the next morning we found hilarious.

 

Alls well that ends well, after a couple hours they moved off and Christian finally got to go to the toilet. Now he always brings a Nalgene bottle to the tent, just in case he is again stranded.

 

Our boat trip earlier was fantastic, and getting out on the river is the way to go. We saw heaps of elephant, hippo, a few small crocodile, buffalo and our guide even started to chip away at our terrible bird knowledge.

 

After three nights in the area we had to move on and we headed towards South Luangwa National Park, via Lusaka.

 

 

Logistical Notes:

 

 

Drove to the gate of LZNP. Road was spectacular freshly graded gravel for ~30km, but deteriorated fast after that. Gwabi said 2 hrs to the park gate, but that would be fast I think. There was a modest water crossing needed to get to the park gate, but no worries, no higher than the top of our rims, probably less.

 

At the park gate the rangers confirmed the routes out of the park to the north to Chongwe and to the East to Luangwa were not yet open for the season, but were routes that were in use by park staff later after the dry season.

 

Mvuu – 25 USD (most sites), 28 USD (“monkey” site, closer to river), 30 USD for riverside sites all prices pp/pn. Firewood inlcuded, also camp attendant, hot water showers, bar, restaurant, very nice, highly reccomended.