Zambia

---

So it was an interesting introduction to Zambia. Arrived at the border post to the usual disorganised chaos and then had to give some 20usd encouragement to the medical official to let me in the country because of some un-discrepancy with my yellow fever certificate. Good to know the price of the nations health and how effective all the 'zero tolerance to corruption posters' are that he was happily standing next while telling me that 'he was sure we could come to some arrangement'!

From here we headed for a place called Chipata where we pitched up a tent and quickly unpitched again when we managed to hitch a lift to South Luangwa national park with a random local the same day! We stayed in a campsite (Flatdogs) right on the doorstep of the park where we camped in a tree, got blocked from the toilets by elephants, found a giraffe having a nose around the store cupboard, hippos munched the grass around the tent and under the tree platform while you slept and baboons and vervet monkeys eyed your food hungrily while you cooked...the nationl park hd a lot to live up to!





On actual safari we managed to see, amongst other things, African Wild Dogs (supposed to be very rare but, I do have to say I found it hard to excited about something that looked like a cross between an Alsatian and a Hyena!) and also another male lion and leopard which we got so close to that our awesome guide (Yotam) nearly ran over it!! One of the other cars which contained a load of people who were staying in the car and hence didn't have to be out of the park by 8pm (it had already passed that) was hogging the best place and wouldn't move so Yotam did a spot of ‘completely-within-the-rules’ off roading, got us about 3m from it and then revved the engine so much when he left that the leopard got up and walked away!! haha! Chin up to the rich people staying in the park and a big hoorah for our guide!!!





Other wildlife in South Luangwa ;-) were an awesome Dutch couple Haneke and Hugo and an Hilarious English couple, Amanda and Jez who we have now been randomly bumping into and traveling around with ever since (and also a slightly strange Aussie couple who we will call Luna Lovegood and Worzel Gummage who were Malawi bound!) They were all desperate to see a leopard but, unfortunately didn’t come on our safari with us and missed out!




From south Luangwa we headed down to Livingstone where my friend Vicky joined us (as did the guys from South Luangwa). We all forewent the offers of waterproofs and consequently all got drenched by the spray from the mighty Vic Falls ‘the smoke that thunders’ (and gets you freezing and soaked!) We also managed to get lost looking for the boiling pot which is a whirl pool at the bottom on the falls and had negotiate crossing over a tributary of the Zambezi to get where we were supposed to be going!





We also took the wholly warmer and dry option of taking a micro light ride over the top of them at sunset which was truly spectacular and allowed us to see the Zimbabwe side and loads of game in the neighbouring national park. We also managed, completely by luck, to be there at full moon which meant we were able to see the mysterious lunar rainbows which form in the spray of the falls! All in all we couldn't complain too much and after a bit of a theme park tour of Zambia we headed onto Botswana….

---