Welcome to the Jungle!

Last Sunday, still sad because Beth had left us, we started the trip that we were waiting since we got here: The safari!! The place: South Luangwa National Park, a 9,000 km2 park located in the eastern region of the country, near the border to Mozambique, and with the Luangwa river (subsidiary of the “Mighty Zambezi”) as the water source giving life to an incredible variety of fauna and flora.

Many people recommend visiting the park during the dry season, specially because the animals are easily spotted in those areas where there is some water remaining, so one can find hundreds on each herd. The rainy season (no doubt for us that we are in the rainy season) brings dense bushes and water everywhere, so it is more difficult to find the animals. Fortunately, the rain took a break during our visit to the park, and we had a gorgeous weather, with some clouds but with very little rain, that allowed us to enjoy some sun and a wonderful starry night that I hadn’t seen for many years.

Our trip began with the news that our flight in gold class (no idea what that means) will take only an hour rather the 2 hours that our reservation stated. The reason, the flight leaving Lusaka can be either to Mfuwe via Chipata or to Chipata via Mfuwe, depending on who knows whom makes the last minute decision. Fortunately, our host has a vast experience in this unpredictable schedule and was ready to pick us up at the Mfuwe International Airport (really impressive that this tiny airport can hold international flights!!).

The trip from the airport to the lodge was quite of an experience. This 30 km approximately route has a really busy transit, not from cars but from bicycles and pedestrians that move from one village to another for many different reasons, but the most important is to get some water that can’t get from the nearby rivers as they are infested with crocodiles. (Will try to upload some pictures if our connectivity allows us).

Once we arrived to the Kapani lodge, our home for three days, we rapidly threw our light packing in our rooms and with no rest we headed to our first encounter with the wildlife. Obviously we were so excited that every animal we saw received the full attention of our cameras, no matter how bad our photos were. Elephants, hippos and baboons were the first (and most common) targets of our trip. By the second day we were so used to their presence even bother to stop and look at them.

After a break in an open space where we waited for a sunset accompanied by some Mosi (the local beer) we started the search of the nightlife in the wild. Apparently the park turns into a very active place during the night, especially because predators come into scene to get some food. Unfortunately, the only animals that we were able to see were the other visitors of the park unsuccessfully trying to catch with a small array of light what is going on behind the dense bushes in the immensity of the jungle.

Once we got back to the camp we quickly learned a local and centenary tradition in the region: the sound of the drums announces that the food is ready. One note regarding the drums: The person playing them didn’t seem to be very enthusiastic in his job, producing just a vague, uncoordinated sound, that makes me think that if the local people depended on someone like him to know when the food was ready, they definitely would starved to death!

The night came with the advice of not leaving the room because wild animals usually walk around the camp at night time. What we first thought as an exaggeration was confirmed the following morning when the Shady (our guide) showed us the footsteps of an elephant that has passed by the front of my room. The night was accompanied by a variety of sounds (a weird band formed by hippos, hyenas, baboons, and others) that prevented some of us (not me particularly) from having a deep sleep, so after our doors were knocked at 5.30 am, Ron and Heather showed up with clear signs of being sleep deprived.

By our second day we realized that every trip will be more of the same: Lots of elephants, hippos resting in the water, baboons waiting for us in the park entrance, impalas everywhere and some new animals. Little by little the we were checking all the boxes with giraffes, buffalos, hyenas, wild dogs, lions (very cute cat when it is quietly resting by the side of the road, but I ask myself if it wasn’t drugged and placed in that strategic location so that everyone would be able to watch him, something that definitely would suspect if the park were located in the US!!). The only animal that we couldn’t cross from our list was the leopard, although we were able to see one of its prays, an impala killed a couple of hours ago that was hanging in a tree.


Another curious experience was our way back from the park to our lodge. The road, with many animals around, brought us a group of approximately 15 women carrying over her heads piles of wood that were twice their height. We crossed along with these women every noon and they didn’t seem to be scared at all from the elephants grazing a couple meters from them. Shady told us that time to time elephants attack people, specially bikers that get scared and from some reason the wheels make the elephants crazy and they start stepping over everything that moves. Another reason for not going running in the area!

The rest of the trip continued with the same rhythm, a little bit monotonous I would say. In our last night we had the opportunity to see the sunset over the Luangwa River (not a 100% clear sky, but fair enough). Our trip back to the airport brought us again the image of the people coming and going along the road. A little stop in a shop for local fabrics, everything has its price marked, so no bargaining this time ☹.

When we got to the airport we learnt why they recommend you to arrive there an hour in advance. It is neither because going through “security” will take you a lot nor because there will many people for checking (although checking in six people in our outbound flight took more than 25 minutes). Once we got our boarding card (not a printed boarding pass but just a card that we had to return 2 meters away from where we received it) we found out that our flight was leaving 45 minutes EARLIER than what was expected. Zambia keeps surprising us everyday!!