Zambia World Wide

The Chipata to Mfuwe Road.  This road needs a title.  It is horrendous.  It almost beggars description.  We drove along it for about 20 kilometres and almost turned back.  We phoned Flatdogs Lodge in South Luangwa, where we were booked, to ask about the rest of the road.  The depressing news was that we still had another 160 kilometres to go and it would take us four hours.  Divorce was imminent.  Otto was furious with me for bringing my brand new car (and him) to this outrageous place.  Did I realize how this road would damage the car?  Night was falling and the road was getting worse – it was more like a small dried-up river bed strewn with boulders than a road – would the roads to come be even worse?  After discussions (and tears), we decided to literally bash on.  The road did not improve, but we finally made it to tar at Mfuwe after three and a half hours.  Flatdogs Camp was a welcome sight.  Our companion driver had arrived two hours before in his Land Cruiser and my Ford Ranger 2 X 4 was still in one piece – along with my marriage – just!

We are going to get a sticker – “We Survived the Chipata Road”.

Flatdogs (named for the nick name for crocodiles) is an interesting camp.  It is run by an Italian born in Malawi, who came from Namibia six years ago, named Valentino.  None of the white staff are Zambians – mostly American, which seemed weird to me.  The restaurant serves tacos, steaks and burgers and no nshima.  Strange.  The bar does not serve Klipdrift or Coke Light – thank goodness we topped up in Lusaka!  Most of the tourists are Americans working for HIV NGO’s in Lusaka – stranger still. 

Our guide in South Luangwa was aptly named “River” and he was very well trained and even knew the scientific names of trees.  We booked a morning drive and a night drive – Luangwa is famed for its leopards.  We saw many new animals – firstly the baboons are different – fine-boned and dainty – they are called Yellow Baboons, as opposed to our South African Chacma Baboons and are much more attractive.  A funny thing about South Luangwa is that most of the animals are smaller there, including the impala.  The elephants are positively diddy and many of them have no tusks, a result of the heavy poaching in the 70’s and 80’s when the tuskless one were spared and are now breeding – about 40 per cent of the ellies now have no tusks.

We saw herds of beautiful ginger little puku.  The impalas were a sort of pastel in comparison to ours and the zebras were Crayshaw’s variety of Burchell’s zebra – being beautifully striped in bright black and white with no shadow stripes – really attractive.  We had two lovely drives and saw a very large herd of buffalo, many large-spotted genets and a coalition of two young male lions of about three years old.  We also met an interesting German chap called Joe who was a zoology student working for the Frankfurt Zoological Society in Kenya, but the FZS is also very involved in Luangwa and helping to totally eliminate poaching in the valley. We never saw any leopards!