Back from our Safari

June 13, 2008

I am sitting on the upstairs balcony of our chalet at Track and Trails Camp in South Luangwa National Park in Zambia, and am watching some hippos in the river and listening to them snorting.  We arrived here yesterday around 3pm after about 3 hours on a good paved road, and about 3 hours on a fairly bad dirt road – not as bad as we thought it would be.

This is a budget version of lodging but it is really lovely - a 2-story chalet roofed in a beautiful thatch with an irregular scalloped border and decorative tufting on the top ridge.  There’s a king sized bed on the main level, and a sleeping loft with a double bed on the second floor, along with the second floor knode railed in small peeled logs.  Elephants come through the camp quite regularly, even during the day, and since it is on the river, hippos apparently come quite regularly during the night – although the river is low right now and the banks are steep and about 15 -20 feet high where we are.  The river flooded the entire camp during the rainy season this year, which is hard to picture.

This was a great thing to do after leaving Livingstonia, as it feels totally like vacation, and a distraction from having left all our friends there.  We went on a 4/12 hour game drive starting at 6am this morning, and as we were entering the park only 5 minutes from our lodge, there was a small herd of Elephants by the entrance gate, and only about 20 feet from our open topped vehicle.  I leaned over and asked John if our guide, Gondwe, had a pistol or anything and I’m still not sure but stopped worrying about it very quickly as the animals don’t seem bothered in the least.  Of course we haven’t seen lions, leopards, civits or hyenas yet, so that might get me concerned again.  Hopefully tonight we see one or more of them as this is one of the few parks in Africa that allow, night drives, so we will go back out in a few hours.

On today’s drive we saw elephants, impala, puku antelope, hippos, crocodiles, zebra, giraffes, warthogs, baboons, velvet monkeys, a herd of about 500 cape buffalo and about 30 species of birds – and there are probably some that I don’t remember.  I thought Liwonde was great when we were there last year, but this park is about 8 times the size, and has a much greater variety of species and habitat.  We had to get up around 5am this morning for the drive, so I’m going to take a nap before we go tonight.

June 14, 2008

We are back from today’s morning drive, and both it and last nights drive were amazing. We went out at around 4pm last night so were in the park while it was still light, all the way through dusk and the beautiful sunset.  They use a powerful light after dark to look for the shining eyes mostly, ignoring the ones that we saw through the day especially the antelope, which have eyes that would be damaged by the light.  In fairly short order, we saw hyenas and then came upon a pride of lions with a recently killed zebra.  We couldn’t have been more than 15 or 20 feet from them and at one point I heard the bones crunch.  It was 2 or 3 females and 2 or 3 cubs, and while I thought I’d be horrified by what had happened and what we were watch – including the red muzzles when the lions looked up at us, it was fascinating. 

As we left, there were more hyenas in the area, but our guide says not enough to get the kill away from the lions.  And today when we went back the lions were all lying around in the shade, and I think we got even closer than last night as they didn’t seem to care much about us being there.  The male lion was there too, and Gondwe says that is probably because he needed to come and help protect the kill from the hyenas last night.  The lions were all very sleepy and had eaten most of the zebra and dragged it to the bushes so it wasn’t quite as easy to see them as they were all lying around in the shade of the bushes with their zebra. 

Yesterday it was cloudy all day, so never really got that warm, but today there is not a cloud in the sky so it has warmed up a lot.  It has been very cool at night, but with the clouds, not as cool last night either.  The first night I slept in a fleece top as I didn’t bring any warm nightclothes, but last night was probably around 65 and very comfortable. 

We’re off to brunch shortly and I think I nap will be in order as there were 4 elephants munching on the tree about 10 feet from our door at about 11:30 last night so very little sleep was had until awhile after they left when my heart rate slowed down again.  It was amazing how much noise they made.  John and I were both ready to accuse the other of rummaging around in a large plastic bag that we brought, and I remember thinking “my god, hasn’t he found what he is looking for yet!” and then I saw him standing in the doorway and realized it was something else – got up and saw the elephant.

June 15, 2008

We are back in Lilongwe after another dusty drive, but a little shorter than the drive there.  Last nights drive was amazing.  We went to see the lions again, and pulled up about 15 feet from one of the females who was lying down with a full belly.  Just across a short gully, they had pulled the carcass into the bushes and the male still was with them and mostly they were still resting, and the cubs were playing.  I hadn’t noticed that there was another lion by the one resting closest to us, and it got up to walk passing about 10 feet away from us.  When I saw it I gasped and our guide apologized, because I was kind of scared since our vehicle was wide open. 

Our other big sighting for the night was a leopard, and a civet cat, although we didn’t get close enough to get a photo of either of them.  It was very exciting to see them though.

It was quite amazing to see all those animals so close to our open vehicle the whole time.  And while we were having either breakfast or tea at the hotel, an elephant walked through camp about 20 or 30 feet away from us.  In fact today when we were leaving, there were 3 elephants at the exit to our hotel, and we tried pulling up the vehicle, but that just made the smallest male look a little aggressive, so our driver gunned the engine sounding like a big roar and they finally moved away. I’m putting a selection of the photos from the park.

It gets stranger and stranger to think that we are leaving in 2 days.  As we were driving back today on hours of dirt road that must be just impossible during the rainy season, I said “I’ll never look at Minnesota potholes in quite the same way again”.  While I’m trying to stay present to all that is happening here, I’m trying to find a way to picture myself in Minnesota again.  I was trying to picture working on the garden at home, and thinking that I need to get to a farmers market when we get home, as I don’t think I can tolerate food that’s not fresh anymore.  Also, we both gained so much weight on this trip that I need to start eating much healthier than we have and doubling up on the fruits and vegetables with less fried or heavy foods.

I’m trying to think of what clothes I can leave behind since my suitcase is way too heavy and there are still clothes I don’t need that I know people here will need much more.  Our friend Justin is coming to see us off at the airport, and I have several dresses to give him for Esther and her sisters. 

The internet isn’t working at the hotel in Lilongwe, so it may be tomorrow before I can send this.