Things that go "ROAR" in the night!

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Great game drives, terribly trying transport.

That just about sums up our final few days in Africa.

It's great when you find somewhere that you absolutely love in the world, and spend the following weeks telling everyone you meet to go there. South Luangwa National Park in Zambia is one of those places. The game drives were great as you could do early morning drives or evening/night drives, times when the animals at at their most active. On our first drive, we spent a long time following lion paw prints in the sandy roads and eventually we were rewarded with a sighting of 3 lion cubs sitting together in a tree. The mother was no-where to be seen, presumed to be hunting. On a subsequent drive we found the whole family - male lion with his fuzzy mane, mother lion with her three cubs, and two "teenage" lions. The best drive was when we came within 20 feet of a leopard eating an unfortunate impala. We watched him as he tugged at the carcass, hurrying to eat before the hyenas arrived to steal it.

The thing that really made the park stand out, though, was Flatdogs camp. We luckily managed to get one of only two cheap cottages, which was basic but fine. It was like staying in a wildlife hide. On our first night there we were woken up by the loud rustling, or rather ripping down, of trees right outside our hut. We peered out through the gaps in the wooden walls and door and saw a huge elephant walk by just a few feet away!

For the next two nights, Flatdogs was full so they drove us to a neighboring camp, Croc Valley. On the 2km drive between the camps we saw about 5 elephants and some giraffe. I guess the animals do not stay within the park boundaries here! We stayed in a "backpacker" room for the first night at Croc valley and a beautiful stilted chalet the next night as it was the only thing available. The luxury was lovely but the price I wouldn't like to think about. Still, this camp had a great location too overlooking the river with its resident hippos and the occasional hard of drinking elephants. We took a walk to a neighboring camp one afternoon and saw a family of elephants walking right through, along the paths, delicately avoiding the lanterns along the edges. In the middle of the night we heard a lion's roar and a hyenas whoop. The next morning the night watchman told us that the lions had been prowling around camp - scary!

After two nights, we got to move back to our hut in Flatdogs for the remaining two nights. The short drive between camps again turned into a mini game drive with at least 15 elephants spotted. It was wonderful to check into Flatdogs again as it really gives you the luxury lodge feel at budget prices. The bar and restaurant area are wonderful, and have monkeys scampering through and elephants meandering by. It also had a lovely pool, but it was off-limits one morning because the elephants were eating the trees there, much to my delight! (see photo)

All these animals made it dangerous to walk around at night, but it also made it so much fun, never knowing what you might wake up to find snooping around outside the hut. Each night when we left the restaurant, we had to have a night watchman accompany us back to our hut, shining his torch along the way. And each night, we saw elephants and hippos along the way. We also heard that there had been a leopard just 100m away from our hut in the middle of the night. Leaving the hut alone after dark would clearly be suicide!

It's a good job that South Luangwa was so amazing as it made up for the rediculous journey there, and the exhorbitant visa fee for Brits of $150! If I told you it took us 16 hours to travel the final 120km to the park, would you believe me? I can hardly believe it myself! Check this out:

The Long and Winding (erm, dusty and slow) Road

DAY 1
We were woken up at 6am to jump back onto the Ilala ferry from Chizumulu island, which had thankfully been delayed for 7 hours, meaning we got to check back into our room and spend the night in bed rather than on the ship's deck. Unfortunately, the ferry ran out of bottles of water, coke, juice, and in fact anything else to drink other than beer, so everyone was pretty dehydrated by the time we arrived in Nkhata Bay at 11:30am. We scrambled off through the ever-crowded second class deck and jumped onto a mini-bus for the 1 1/2 hour ride to Mzuzu, where we would spend the night. Unfortunately, the mini-van's door fell off a few times, and every time we stopped to let someone off or on (frequently!) the engine refused to start for some time, finally spluttering to life just as we thought the starter motor would surely fail. It was on that journey I learned that you can bump-start a car in reverse!

DAY 2
We boarded a bus at 7am, it was filled up and ready to leave by 9am, and by 9:40am it had managed to negotiate out of the chaotic traffic in the bus station to start the seven hour journey back to Lilongwe. For a moment I actually missed the incessant honking of Indian drivers - there was no way it would take 40 minutes to get out of a bus station in India with all of the honking that would go on! The bus ride went smoothly, and it was a good day for a travel day.

DAY 3
The mini-bus to the Zambian border only took 30 minutes to fill up so we were soon on our way. Two hours later we arrived at Mcinji, having luckily avoided being covered in vomit by the infant next to me who'd thrown up after being fed a whole bottle of Fanta! We switched into a shared taxi to the border gate where I paid my exhorbitant $150 visa fee (Scott's was thankfully free as his old visa was still valid) and we entered Zambia. We got another shared taxi to the town of Chipata and got taxis here, there and everywhere to ATMs and guesthouses in Lonely Planet that had fallen into disrepair, until we finally checked into a random place. There was a power cut for most of the night, but thankfully we had managed a luke-warm 4-inch deep bath by that time, which quickly turned brown from all the dust (there was no shower). We had had one errand for that afternoon - to call ahead and book accommodation for the two nights that Flatdogs was full. We got no-where so gave up. We blew out our one candle and went to bed early.

DAY 4
Today goes down as the most irritating travel day of the whole trip (erm, apart from the death trap bus ride to Leh in India due to the sheer fear that day!). This is the part where it took 16 hours to go the final 120km to South Luangwa national park. I kept a running diary at the time, just to remind myself that it really did happen:

6:00am - woken up by alarm.

6:15am - ate a breakfast of 2 pieces of plain white partly stale bread and 1/2 cup of coffee.

7:00am - Our taxi was 15 minutes late so we decided to walk and find another, which was easy.

7:15am - We boarded the bus for the start of the 120km trip to the park. There are already about 10 people on board, which is cool as it means we will surely go soon.

7:30am - Bought two packets of biscuits to supplement the meagre breakfast, but one is too disgusting the eat.

9:00am - Signs of life! Oh no, the wheels are now off the bus! Not looking good for an imminent departure.

9:30am - The wheels are back on the bus, but it is still only half full. No signs of departure yet.

12:30pm - Still waiting the leave. The disgusting biscuits are slightly more appealing, but still taste nasty!

12:35pm - Abandoned the biscuits and scoured the shops filled with soap bars and shoe polish for anything to eat and bought the only edible thing they had- crisps. A nice lunch, despite the growing stanch of urine from outside and body odor from inside as the day gets hotter.

12:40pm - Just found out from the man next to us that, unless the bus gets really full, it doesn't go. In other words, we might sit here all day long and never go - aarrrrgh!

1:00pm - Had a junk food breakdown and bought another packet of crisps. After all, it wasthe highlight of the day so far.

1:15pm - It's been exactly six hours since we boarded the bus and we have gone precisely zero miles per hour! Unbelievable!

1:30pm - A man got on the bus to put line after line of tape across the qwindow to create makeshift glass - not sure it will hold up!

3:00pm - I just finished my book, all 614 pages. Now what?! This is getting pretty rediculous!

3:50pm - Hooray! We are finally off after eight and a half hours of waiting in the bus.

3:52pm - Uh ho! We pulled into a dusty car park right outside the station for people to run up and fill the bus with petrol out of a jerrycan, smuggled in illegally from Malawi. Couldn't somebody have thought to do this some time during the previous 9 hours?!

4:05pm - Finally we are off for real!

4:15pm - Stopped to look at the exhaust pipe, which is making a lous noise. I'm wondrting why two out of three buildings around us is a pub?! I guess if i had th deal with African inefficiencies every day I too would turn to drink!

4:40pm - The bus stopped and 50%!o(MISSING)f passengers got off, peed in the buses. piled back on, and then the bus did a u-turn! Apparently it was something about there being too much luggage on top, and having to pay a bribe.

4:50pm - We pulled into the police station all the way back in central Chipata for the driver to pay the bribe. I guess it took so long to get to the turn around point as the bus was trying to take back routes to avoid the police - it didn't work!

5:10pm - The fine is paid and we can finally set off. I can't believe it's been over an hour since we set off and 10 hours since we boarded the bus and still we've gone no-where!

5"11pm - Had to stop before even leaving the police station car park as something fell off the roof. Scott offered to put it by his feet so that we could get going.

7:00pm - It's pitch black outside. As our headlights pass by, trees are lit up, momentarily white like skeletons against the night sky before vanishing into oblivion. There are a million stars overhead. The only other light comes from open fires outside the odd little shelter or, disturbingly, the odd tree that's burning for no apparent reason but somehow doesn't ignite the long grasses surrounding it.

7:45pm - Somehow, a tonne more people just squashed on. The air is getting really bad despite the fact that we opened the windows fully.

11:00pm - Hooray! We are in Mafuwe town, almost there! Hmm, not sure about our back up plan of staying in the Cobra Resthouse as there are dozens of drunks hanging around outside.

11:10pm - Dropped off at Flatdogs camp after 16 hours on the bus - phew!!!

So that was where the journey ended. Thank goodness South Luangwa was worth it! As it turned out, the bus connection going back was amazing, with no waiting and a not-overloaded bus that could go at a pace of more than 10mph. We ended up making it back to Lilongwe in just 6 and a half hours, a journey which took two days coming. No wonder no-one can be reliable in Africa - you seriously never know if something will take two hours or two days to complete!

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Photos

Our hut at Flatdogs
It was pretty basic, but it was a great wildlife hide!