Happy birthday to Mrs. D&D! And I got to spend it with her! Oh, and happy St. Patty’s Day, too. Anyway, after a quick breakfast, we were on the road again by 8 am. Driving from Chipata to South Luangwa National Park was pretty much the same: more bumps, more construction, more puddle potholes, more village huts, more kids waving hi while walking to school and shouting Mzungu!, and more animals crossing the road.
Once we got to the park, we had to find Wildlife Camp, where we’d be staying the next few days. Before you enter the park, there is a game management area, which isn’t national park, but it sure looks like one. On the drive through this area to our camp, we spotted giraffe! My favorite! It was really cool to see them up close and in their natural habitat.
Next on our to do list was finding the camp. All four of us spotted the Wildlife Camp sign, yet all four of us missed the arrow pointing in the opposite direction. Mr. D&D took the truck down the dry season path where we found a log covering the path and more giraffe. Did that stop us though? No! After a few more minutes, we realized the water on the road was steadily turning into a stream and then a river. Lo and behold, we got stuck in the mud. In the game park area. With no way to contact anyone. After Mrs. D&D blew the horn several times and Mr. D&D tried to push us out, eleven Zambians working at a nearby camp heard our distress honks and pushed us out of the muddy watery hole. I wish I had 11 men walking toward me every day! J We were lead along the proper path—the wet season path—to Wildlife Camp. We had reservations for the ensuite tents, but because of all the rain this time of year, they bumped us up to the chalets for free! Sweet! The chalets look like bigger versions of the village huts from the outside and fully furnished rooms complete with African textiles and mosquito netting inside. T and I were living the good life! We were even greeted by a green mamba snake on our front porch upon arrival. We explored the area a bit before getting ready for our first game drive!
BJ was our driver for all our game drives and boy was he funny! He did a great job! Anyway, we left our camp around 3:45to head into the park for an evening drive. We saw lots of baboons along the way and some vervet monkeys (like Rafiki from Lion King). They came up right by the truck! We also saw some antelope type animals—impala, puku, and bushbuck. Here’s how you tell them apart: impala are smaller with the black markings on their butts (McDonald’s M’s according to BJ, even though they don’t have McD’s here), puku are larger and are all brown, and bushbuck are shy and have white spots. We saw a monitor lizard basking in the sun on a rock. We saw elephants a few times. We ran into a few herds of zebra. Nighttime brought on more impala, giraffe, and shrub hare. Also a long-spotted genet (looks like a baby leopard according to BJ), a Nile crocodile, and lots of hippos (they only leave the water at night). We saw way too many birds to remember, but my favorites were the hornbills (Zazu from Lion King), the lilac breasted roller (gorgeous aqua and black feathers), the “go away” birds (that’s what their call sounds like), the Jesus birds (because it looks like they can walk on water), and the guinea fowl aka suicide chicken (because they run in front of the safari vehicles). I was amazed at how close we were to some of the animals. We were definitely less than 30 feet from some zebra and impala that night.
My favorite part of this drive happened early on. We turned a corner and we were all looking at some zebra when I turned my head and saw an elephant walking down the middle of the road towards us. It walked right up by us and passed us and then stopped. It must not have been too happy because it proceeded to run a bit at our vehicle, trumpet at us, hide behind the bushes, come out, get stuck in a tree a few times, and chase the zebra across the road. It was pretty funny!
After returning at 8:30, we had a nice meal—I had pesto basilico noodles—while listening to the hippos grunt and the lions roar before turning in. I fell asleep to the sounds of the hippo once again.
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