Zambia, Part 3: Safari in Kafue National Park

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September 22nd 2018

Published: April 5th 2020

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Katha Turbostern

Lions I

The first male lion we saw on the trip. Amazing how he blends in with the grass.

Our third adventure during our stay in Zambia was going to be a safari in Kafue National Park in the West of the country. We were going to stay at Kafue River Lodge, a lodge located in the park on the banks of Kafue River, for five nights. There would have been an option for us to spend a few days in Busanga Plains, further into the park, with the likelihood of seeing more wildlife. But this would have meant another two days (out and return) on the road from Kafue River Lodge, and we had decided against it.

Our driver came to pick us up early from our hostel in Lusaka in the morning of the 15th of September, and the first few hours went nice and easy: The roads were good, we were sitting in an air-conditioned car, and we were moving rather quickly, having a nice conversation with our super friendly driver. Before leaving the paved road in the town of Mumbwa, about 150 km west of Lusaka, we stopped at a service station to buy some snacks and to go to the bathroom (where we found a sign indicating cholera alert 😞). And then it happened:

Lions II

The same lion pondering whether to cross the river or not.

We had just left the town of Mumbwa and were driving on an unpaved road when suddenly our jeep stopped. The engine was still running, but the car was not moving any more. Our driver got out of the car, had a look at the engine and crawled under the car to see what was wrong. He told us that what had happened was a major problem that he would not be able to fix himself. He said he would stop a car and ride back into town with them to get a mechanic and leave us here waiting. We suggested to call a mechanic, but our driver told us he did not have a phone number. So he told two boys who had ridden past us by bike to stay around and look after us and stopped a car going back into town to take him with them. So there we were, in the middle of nowhere, with two boys whom we could not communicate with because we did not speak their language, and with no idea when our driver would come back. We had water and food and our books, and so we just waited. We started worrying

Lions III

Finally he decided to cross the river. The scent of the females on the other side of the river must have been too tempting.

a bit because we knew that somewhere on the way there was a pontoon bridge that we had to cross before sunset, and it was getting later and later. I cannot even say how long it took until our driver came back with a mechanic. The mechanic quickly diagnosed what was wrong with the car. The automatic gearbox was broken, and for this he would need to order spare parts, so this was nothing that he would be able to fix on the spot.

However, we were lucky. Another car with a driver and two German tourists drove by. They were on their way to Kafue River Lodge as well. When our driver had called the manager at Kafue River Lodge, the manager had called the driver of the other two tourists, instructing him to pick us up on the way and to take us to the lodge. When starting a conversation with the German couple, we realised that we had been even luckier than we had thought in the first place: Originally, they had been supposed to be picked up a lot earlier, but since they had arrived from Germany only the previous day, they had decided to

Lions IV

The female lions on the other side of the river - four of them!

allow themselves a slow morning and had asked for later pick-up. Had they been on the road the time they were supposed to be, they would already have been past the spot where our car had broken down. The rest of the driver seemed to take forever, but the couple was nice, and we had a good conversation. We passed the pontoon bridge (which turned out not to be a bridge, but a ferry) without problems and finally, in the late afternoon, we arrived at the lodge.

There was a super friendly welcome by the manager and staff, and we enjoyed our welcome drink on the terrace overlooking Kafue River. Then we were shown to our bungalow. It was beautiful, with an outside bathroom at its back, nice and comfortable beds, and a terrace facing the river. We made ourselves comfortable and then felt like walking after having sat the entire day. We started walking down the road we had arrived on when one employee came running after us asking us where we were going. We explained that we wanted to go for a walk. She said that this was not a good idea because there had been lions

Lions V

The lions resting in the afteroon sun.

in the lodge the other day. Wow, so we were really out in the wild! She did not need to come up with any more explanations, we had no desire to walk any further, and instead happily walked back an forth between the bungalows and the staff quarters for a bit before having a nice dinner on the terrace of the lodge.

The next four days were completely dedicated to safari. We were woken at 5:30 in the morning, and a tray with tea and biscuits was placed on our terrace. We were served breakfast by the fireplace just a few metres from our bungalow, and then we set off for either a morning game drive or a morning river cruise in a small boat. When we arrived back, there was a big breakfast served on the terrace, and then we went into siesta until high tea at 3 pm. After tea, we set off for a second game drive or river cruise. When we arrived back at some point after sunset, dinner was served on the beautiful terrace. Our guide was Evaristo, a super friendly and knowledgeable man who explained a lot not only about wildlife, but also

Lions VI

And the male lion resting not too far from the female ones. It was worth crossing the river!

about life in Zambia in general.

The wildlife we usually saw on our river cruises were various birds, including egrets, kingfishers, and eagles, and crocodiles and hippos. There were quite a few groups of hippos around our lodge. They make a very funny noise that sounds a big like laughter. Evaristo explained that people say that that the hippos tell each other jokes while underwater and then lift their heads above the water and laugh. I loved this explanation.

Our first encounter with elephants was scary, and so were all the subsequent ones. It completely mixed up my idea of elephants being friendly giants. I knew they were wildlife and I knew one is not supposed to get too close to them, but what we experienced here was a totally different story. We were on a game drive and had joined the German couple we had come with, and their guide Eidos and our guide Evaristo were with us in the jeep. We spotted a few elephants from afar and stopped the car. Eidos turned the engine of and we sat still, just watching. There were more and more elephants appearing, until finally there was a group of

Elephants I

At first, we saw them from a distance, with more and more of them appearing.

at least 30 animals of all sizes and ages. They walked past us at a distance of maybe 100 metres. We could see that our presence made them nervous. Some of them kept looking at us, and we had the feeling that they were trying to get past as quickly as possible. When almost the entire group had passed, Eidos started the engine. In this very moment, a few of them turned around and started approaching us, their ears flapping. What can you do when an elephant is approaching you? There is no way to outrun them because they can run at a speed of 40 kilometres per hour. Climbing a tree does not make sense either because they will just pull the tree down. So what do you do? Clap and shout. I am not kidding. This is what Eidos told us. He asked us to stand up, clap our hands, and yell “hey” at the elephants. Incredible as it may seem, it worked. They turned around and walked away. But all too soon, Eidos started the engine again, and the same thing happened again. This time, he waited a bit longer before he started the engine again, and

Elephants II

Then they walked past us, looking at us suspiciously.

we were able to drive around the little woods the elephants had passed. However, there were more of them on top of a little hill, and when our jeep was passing them, they attacked us again. Clap and shout, once more. And finally, they turned around and walked away, and we could make our way back towards the lodge. I cannot tell you how scared I was. I would describe myself as a brave person who does not get scared easily, but here I was full of fear. I can’t even remember having been that scared any time in my life.

Again, I remembered all the stories I had read and heard about elephants in the wild, and the only explanation I could find for myself why the elephants here were so different was the history of poaching Kafue National Park has. There had been poaching for a very long time, and only pretty recently had it stopped, and wildlife was still in the process of recovering. Elephants have a good memory, and they must have been very scared of man (for a good reason!), so I guess now they were just being overly careful and protective of their

Elephants III

Walking past us in smaller groups, some of them by themselves.

babies.

We had two more close encounters with the elephants, and I found both of them scary. The first one was during one of our boat cruises. We could see them cross the river. For them, this is a dangerous endeavour as well because there are crocodiles lurking at the banks of the river. That is why they have to take good care of their babies. So there are elephants on both sides of the river overlooking the banks, and the herd crosses the river in small groups, with the babies walking between the grown-up elephants holding on to their tails with the trunk. When they saw us, of course they got nervous. However, Mizzi and I were just as anxious and scared, and Evaristo did not get too close.

The second encounter was on a game drive. We could already see them from afar, they were somewhere in the woods not too far from the road we were driving on. We did not stop, we just kept driving past slowly. There was one young elephant bull with teary eyes who saw us and started running after us immediately. You would not believe how fast these huge, big

Elephants IV

We saw them again on another day, crossing the river.

animals can run. My adrenaline went spiking up, and I cannot tell you how relieved I was once the elephant stopped following us. Later on we learned that the teary eyes meant that he was rutting. A lot of the single young bulls do not get to mate with a female elephant, and this makes them even more frustrated and aggressive than they would be only due to the fact that they are rutting.

We saw them a few more times during our game drives, but these times they were rather far away, fortunately. Whenever we set off for one of the game drives, Mizzi and I were rather tense and were hoping that we would not see the elephants again.

Our encounters with lions were not scary at all. We saw our first male lion when we were on a game drive together with Evaristo, Eidos, and the German couple. Eidos spotted the lion from very far away. He was walking the plains, and we followed him for a bit, until he walked past our jeep within a distance of not even three metres. He did not take any notice of us. From this close distance we

Elephants V

Crossing the river in small groups, with elephants guarding them on both sides of the river.

could see that he had a porcupine’s spike piercing his lower jaw. That must have been painful, and I felt sorry for the lion. Eidos explained to us that the lion was still young and that he was looking for females. We followed him down to the river where he sat down for a bit, sniffing and looking around. All of a sudden, he walked into the water, crossed the entire river, and disappeared into the bushes on the other side. This is not something lions do easily. The only cats that love water are tigers. But Eidos explained to us that the lion must have caught the scent of female lions on the other side of the river. During another game drive, we found him again, together with five lionesses. He must have had a fight with another male lion, and he must have won, so now he was in the position to mate with all of the females. And we did see them do it. From the sounds they made and from their movements I would say both the male and the female were enjoying it. But it was a rather quick thing, a few minutes at most.

Elephants VI

Arriving on the other side of the river safely.

Other than that, there was not much happening. All the beasts were just lying underneath trees relaxing. During yet another game drive, we saw three male lions, bachelors, that were hanging out together. But they did not take any notice of us either.

A little less spectacular, but still interesting and fun were our encounters with other animals. My favourite ones are the warthogs. They have these funny faces, and before they start running, they put up their tails, which look like antennas. When they then run off quickly it looks as if they were remote controlled. Maybe I am influenced by Pumba from the movie “The Lion King”, and maybe that is why I find these beasts so cool. But anyway, I was always happy when we saw them. Usually there were quite a few of them together, often with young ones. The animals we saw most frequently were probably Puku, a kind of deer with a brown fur and about the size of our deer here in Germany. There were quite a few groups of hippos in the river, and here we always made sure not to get too close. They look so big and clumsy, but

Elephants VII

Grown-ups with a baby elephant between them so that they can protect the little one.

in fact what they do when you get too close is they will tip over the boat, and you do really not want to be in the water with them. Finally, we saw a lot of different birds: guineafowl, egrets, eagles, kingfishers, even a stork couple.

The driving was true off-road driving. Eidos often drove through the shallow river to get to the other side of the river. Also, he drove straight into the woods, and at times straight through dry branches and trees, simply knocking them over. So one always needed to take good care in order not to be hit into the face by a twig, and at times we had to hold on to the seat in front of us when it got bumpy. In order to prevent us from mosquitoes, our guides set dry elephant dung in a bucket on fire and suspended the bucket from the tow coupling in the back of the jeep. It seemed to work, there were no mosquitoes around, and besides the scent was rather nice, like the grasses and herbs the elephants eat.

One interesting thing we noticed about the language and that we had already learned when

Hippos I

Hanging out in the water and making this funny laughing noise.

we were staying with Daphious was that some of the local languages do not have the letters “i” and “r”. So often people just leave out the “i”. For example, they say “German” instead of “Germany”. Instead of the “r”, they will often pronounce an “l”. I remember Evaristo talking about the “clocks”, and I was wondering whether a clock was not only a device for measuring time, but also some kind of beast that I had never heard of. Then I realised that he was talking about crocs, short for crocodiles. When getting familiar with this mispronunciation, we sort of over-compensated. Mizzi told me that once she was wondering what kind of a beast a “rion” was, until she realised that “lion” really meant “lion”.

Altogether, we had a really good time. We were very lucky with all the wildlife we got to see, and it was interesting to learn more about their habits. Both of our guides, Evaristo and Eidos, were very knowledgeable, explained a lot of facts to us, and even shared a lot about what living in Zambia was like. The other staff members were super friendly, warm, and cheerful. There was a lot of

Hippos II

Hello? Who are you? What are you up to?

laughing. We enjoyed the game drives (apart from the ones where we had encounters with elephants), the lovely food, our wonderful bungalow, the nice terrace by the river, the quiet in the afternoon.

All too soon, our time was over, and we headed back into Lusaka. The drive took all day. First, the ferryman, who was on the other side of the river, was not around, and we had to wait for quite some time for him to see us and to take us across the river. The drive through Kafue National Park took long because one cannot drive fast. When we finally reached the paved road in Mumbwa, we could drive faster and were quite happy when we were approaching Lusaka. However, we got into a horrible traffic jam upon entering the city. One lane of the road was closed. For me, it was a given that there would be a detour, but there was not. Therefore, the driving was completely chaotic. Some cars drove on the unpaved road on one side of the tar road and then tried to merge with the traffic at some point, with the others not letting them in. It was a complete

Antelope

There were not so many of them around.

mess, and I was glad once our driver drove off onto a side road. However, I had the feeling that he had no idea where to take us, and it was dark already when we finally arrived at Gossner Mission. We were glad we could take a few steps to the restaurant where we had had dinner on our first evening in Zambia, and then went to bed early.

My flight back home was not until the late afternoon, and Mizzi’s not until the late evening. Therefore, we decided to visit the Lusaka National Museum to learn a bit more about the country’s history. It was interesting and definitely worth a visit. When we got back outside and waited for our taxi driver to arrive and take us back to Gossner Mission, a group of school children and their teacher approached us. They were intrigued by seeing to foreigners, asked us a lot of questions and wanted to take photos with us. If you ever want to feel like a superstar, this is your place to be.

Finally, our taxi driver arrived and took us back to the mission. I packed my bag, and then there was a