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Published: October 1st 2012
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I apologise in advance for beginning this entry with yet another moan about my trials and tribulations with public transport in Africa. However, the majority of this entry will be about 3 fantastic days I spent at the Croc Valley Camp right outside the South Luangwa National Park. In between chilling out by the pool in the perfect sunshine, I managed to get two game drives in. But first about my experience of getting up there.
To get to South Luangwa NP by public transport is not easy. There is one bus a day that goes the from Chipata to Mfuwe, the nearest town to South Luangwa NP. I left Lilonwe at 7 a.m. to make sure I got this bus. I ended up getting over the Malawi - Zambia border, with very little hassle and arrived at the bus station in Chipata at about 11 a.m. I found the bus going to Mfuwe and waited 3 hours for it to fill up - with passengers. It took another hour to get everybody's luggage into the minibus and another half an hour queuing for petrol just outside the bus station.
They are building a tarred road from Chipata to
Mfuwe, but at present it is only tarred for about 30 km. The rest of the journey is on dirt tracks either side of the road under construction. It was a fairly miserable journey, punctuated by one amusing incident, when the driver spotted a couple 'courting' by the side of the road. He reversed back, rolled down his window and shouted something in a local language (Zambia has 73), which I of course didn't understand, but got the gist of, as the whole bus exploded into laughter at the mortified couple.
20 minutes from Mfuwe, we got a puncture and we didn't get into Mfuwe until 9.15 p.m. Luckily, the bus driver rang the owner of Croc Valley, a South African named Sean O'Driscoll, who came down to pick me up. Croc Valley Camp is set on the banks of the Luangwa river and is not fenced off. I set up my tent in the pitch dark with the sounds of hippos wailing through the night.
The next day, I got up late and signed up for the night drive, which goes from 4 until 8 p.m. South Luangwa is a beautiful park, with lots of game. It
looked particularly stunning in the evening light as the sun went down. We saw all sorts of animals regularly enough, but the highlight was definitely seeing two leopards up a tree. One of the leopards had its kill, an impala, up the tree with it and was eating with a few hyenas below. Once it became pitch dark, it was difficult to see much, even with our driver shining a torch into the bush. But we did see two elephants fighting each other in the distance and caught a glimpse of some lions asleep in the bush.
The next day, there was no group doing a game drive, so I spent the day swimming and relaxing by the pool. I got on a game drive the following morning, when an overland truck had arrived. I was up just before 6 and got on the game drive with Pat and Maria from Galway and Andrea from Zimbabwe. It was absolutely freezing when we first set off and it wasn't helped that we didn't see many animals for the first hour or so. Things definitely picked up though and we saw pretty much every animal except for the leopard, which is
very elusive in the day time. The highlight was definitely two elephants crossing the river with their baby in between. We actually got out of the jeep to watch this.
As I said previously, I was camping here and every sound through the night caused me to jump, especially as we were told that animals regularly wander around the camp at night. One morning a girl had said that she had seen a leopard from her tent. I spent my last night at Croc Valley rigid with fear as I could hear something pacing metres from my tent. It then crashed through a fence nearby in a way an elephant only could. Just as I started to relax, I heard it come back and stayed as still as possible so as not to spook it and have it charge at my very small broken tent.
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