South Luangwa National Park

Trip Start May 31, 2006

Trip End Oct 14, 2006

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Flag of Zambia South Luangwa, Zambia
Thursday, September 7, 2006

6th September - involved a drive along some very bad roads...debatable whether they are actually worse than the northern Kenyan Roads...but luckily far less distance...so the drive passed uneventfully and around lunch time we arrived at Flat Dogs Campsite...there were several elephants in the camp ground when we arrived...so we had to wait for them to move off a bit before we could dis-embark from the truck...we were briefed on the wildlife in the campsite and the precautions required involving food...none in tents and only locked up on the truck...then got ready for the pool and put names down for a night game drive. The afternoon passed with a bit of food and reading by the pool and looking at hippos in the river...then Marc, Ange, Angela, Tracey, Sara and myself headed out in our open safari vehicles to the South Luangwa National Park, a matter of minutes drive from our campsite and hence the wildlife in our camp. We drove for a little bit seeing several birds and a warthog, but told our driver we wanted to see lions, ...he heard where there was some so we made a bee line for it...passing a crocodile with his mouth wide open only feet from a Puku - a new animal sighting - and a new sub-species of the common plains Zebra, the Crawsheyi Zebra

Lion couple!

. When we arrived at the lions we found it was a young mating couple...which was dead cool...after sitting watching them for a while another male walked up, so there was a bit of a half hearted fight - it was his brother after all - and I heard a lion roar...then they walked towards our vehicle and sat/lay down and chilled right near us...it was so cool. We watched for a bit with the sun setting behind us, before heading to a lookout for a drink and a leg stretch before setting out again with large torch light scanning the horizon, we saw a spotted hyena...the red eyes shining...we saw large spotted genet, and passed so many hippos out feeding. We saw a white tailed mongoose, as we were headed back into camp, amongst the elephants by our site. When we arrived back the food was almost ready - burgers and chips...so we chilled by the campfire talking about the lions and other sightings until food was ready. In the morning it was an early start for a 6am game drive, and we heard of the elephant outside our tent in the night which was scared off by a catapult and clipped one girls tent, and the lion which roared from the bushes...all of which I had slept right through! The vehicles arrived and took us in to the Park, where we parked up and took a walking safari looking at tracks, dung, and the wildlife that would stay around close enough to us (including Zebra, yellow baboons, warthogs and Impala) before then heading for a two hour driving safari, where we saw waterbuck, Greater Kudu - another new one...like a deer but bigger with funny ears and no antlers...so not really like it but gives you some idea!, Thornicroft giraffe (the 4th kind we've seen...and this one you can only see in the national park), more hippos but in the river this time, more crocodiles, a banded mongoose, some buffalo, and on our way out some spotted bush buck. Back at camp we made some brunch and then chilled out in the bar...and I updated this...and here you have me passing away the afternoon on the 7th September.