Arriving

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Background
I'm joining my sister Hazel in Mfuwe, Zambia, for the last month of her 3 month stint as the doctor for the local clinic and safari lodges.

Arriving

It did enter my mid to send Haz a reminder that today was the day to get excited about - I was arriving at 1300 hrs! But in the end I didn’t and Murphy’s law she’d pencilled my arrival for 2 days hence. Luckily after touching down in Mfuwe, a Norman Carr Safari guide, there to meet guests, thought I was Hazel (had the same experience in Lusaka), the good doctor, so struck up a conversation and finding me alone, unloved, and abandoned arranged for me to join another car that was going in the right direction (well there’s only one road). If we spotted Haz on the road I was to hop off but in the end we got to the main gate of the South Luangwa national park, where they were able to call Flatdogs (where Haz lives) to get her to pick me up.

Reunited in the end. First order of the day was taking out the doc’s car for a drive in the park and going for a ‘sundowner’, which is a huge pastime here - all it entails, is driving around then stopping to watch the sundown drink in hand. We had water which isn't ‘sundowner' traditional; to be true to the past-time we needed alcohol, and lots of it.

Flatdogs and the doc’s lodge

Just outside the main gate to the Luangwa national park, Flatdogs (slang for crocs) is one of the amazing camps in the valley. The doctor, which rotates every 3 months lives in Flatdogs in a wonderfully rustic house; towel racks are rusted nails, the bath is a sunken concrete mini lagoon and there’s wildlife everywhere you look: little frogs hibernating (waiting for the big rains at the end of Oct/beginning Nov) in pen boxes and snuggled in clothes; scorpions and geckoes in the bath; baboons screaming at all hours; the smaller vervet monkeys running on the roof; giraffes and elephants grazing just outside; hippos munching at night. It’s incredible. It’s the season for babies. I’ve whiled away hours watching the baby vervets scampering unsteadily on spindly legs, tails swinging madly to keep balance, running after mum.

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Photos

Hazel and doc's car
Our first sundowner