August 2-5: South Luangwa National Park

After leaving Lusaka for the second time, this time with Carnet in hand, I drove east on “The Great East Highway” half way to my next destination Park. Perhaps at one time it was indeed a Great road – probably for a couple of years after construction – but now, after years of neglect, they should change the name to “The Highway From Hell”. I must have dodged 10,000 potholes and hit another 1,000. The Green Dragon was not happy with me, but there was no avoiding all the potholes without going into the ditch. I curse the Zambian transportation authority!

I stopped for the night at Luangwaa Bridge camp overlooking the Luangwe River to break up the drive and then drove on to Zambia’s most famous and popular park, South Luangwa National Park, located in east-central Zambia. South Luangwe NP (3,490 sq. mi.), established in 1972, is situated in the Luangwa Valley at the southern end of the Great African Rift Valley system, which extends roughly 2,500 miles all the way from the Red Sea down to the Pungwe River mouth in Mozambique. The Park is dominated by miombo woodlands on the higher slopes of the valley (which I did not visit) and mopane woodlands in the bottom of the valley on the drier sites, both of which I have described in previous posts. I spent all of my time in the extensive valley bottom floodplain zone, which is dominated by woodland savannahs characterized by scattered trees with grassy understory, pans small and large, abandoned channels, and oxbows or lagoons from historical meanderings of the main river channel. There are lots of pans and pools of all sizes and one can only imagine the water wonderland this floodplain must be like in the rainy season. Here are some photos of this varied landscape:

Given the varied landscape it should be no surprise that there was lots of wildlife to see on my drives. Rather than describe the highlights, I will let the lengthy composite video do the talking. Note, give the length of this video, it is for the dedicated follower and lover of African wildlife. It is a potpourri of the many different wildlife species I observed over two days in South Luangwa:

South Luangwa composite video (39 minutes)

Knowing how popular this Park is, I made reservations at a campsite called Croc Valley located just outside the Park on the banks of the Luangwa River. Note, there are NO public campsites inside the Park so unless you want to spend a fortune on a lodge inside the Park, you stay at a campsite just outside the Park. Despite the positive reviews of the Park online, I found it to be an absolute circus. The few campsites were indeed on the riverfront with a great view but they were essentially on top of each other. The site they had me in was squeezed in between two sites and I could just about reach out with my arms and touch the people, chairs, tables, etc. in the adjacent sites. There was literally NO privacy. Moreover, I later realized that the lodge was also a party scene in the evening with loud music and voices. It felt like what some state park campgrounds in the States are like, with people and kids running around and screeming. SO, I quickly abandoned that Lodge/campround and sought better accommodations. After looking at two other lodge/campgrounds, one which was fully booked and the other was a dump, I found a lodge/campground right next to Croc Valley called Track and Trail River Lodge. It too is located on the riverfront with a nice restaurant/bar/pool overlooking the river and a nice campground set back a little away from the river. To my great surprise, there was almost no one else at the lodge and the campground was empty – Eureka! My elation was a little premature as another party came in late that night. Turns out they were quite a nice couple from Cape Town and actually new my vehicle, the Green Dragon, and had even been in it in Cape Town. They live very close to the person I bought the vehicle from outside of Cape Town – small world. In any event, the campground turned out quite nice. Here’s a photo of my site under a huge shade tree:

One of the fringe benefits of staying here was that there were bushbucks walking around everywhere and they were quite tame, allowing me to photograph them, whereas they are usually quite shy and difficult to photograph. There was also a friendly hippo, Franky, that wandered around the site grazing on the lawn. I ran into Franky on the way to the reception desk once and had to backpeddle for a while so as to not encroach on his personal space – that could be a fatal mistake (see the video). On my last day there were also 3 bull elephants that came by my campsite and then wondered around the lodge grounds frightening the staff and the other few quests, but they were totally passive and nothing to worry about unless you did something stupid (see video):

OK, I’m off on an adventure to the more remote and much, much less visited North Luangwa National Park. See you there!

Photo Gallery: