Category: Zambia

Time to reflect back on observations of Zambia from behind the wheel. As before, some of these observations are really not limited to Zambia, but they climaxed in my mind here. I really wish I had more positive things to say about this country, but alas I don’t have many. Here are some general observations and ponderings:

#1. Demolition Derby. Driving the tarmacked roads (i.e., major highways and some secondary roads) in Zambia is something akin to driving in the demolition derby. First, most of the tarmack roads, even when they are not riddled with suspension-altering potholes (some of the worst roads yet, but also some of the best too – go figure), have the asphalt perched up above the gravel road edge with a precipitous edge. Sometimes the asphalt is only 1-2 inches above the road edge because that is how thick the asphalt is, but other times the aspalt is perched 3-4 inches above the road edge. And don’t forgot, the edge of the asphalt is more often than not broken and irregular. This means when you are passing oncoming traffic, especially the big rigs, you have to litteraly hug the broken edge of the tarmack with the nerve-wracking possibility of your tire slipping over the precipitous edge and causing who knows what to happen to the vehicle. Needlesstosay, you can’t just relax and enjoy the view because your attention to the road is always required. Note, because of this I usually drive in the middle of the road until I see an oncoming vehicle or some speed demon coming up from behind.

In addition, they love their rumble tracks and speed bumps, which is OK in principle. However, they put rumble tracks and speed bumps in the most unlikely and unneeded places. You can be cruising along the highway at 100 km/hr and all of sudden in the middle of nowhere there are rumble tracks and a speed bump. Why? There is nothing around on either side! The rationale behind these is a mystery to me. In addition, in the cities, such as Lusaka, they really, really love these speed control devices. Again, this device to control speed is OK in principle. However, they post warning signs for some but not others. So, you get complacent about them because you have warning signs for the first 3 and then all of a sudden there is unposted one that catches you offguard unless you are super vigilant. I can’t help but think these surprise traps are just that – traps for the non-locals to cause all sorts of vehicle damage and help keep the numerous tire and suspension shops in business.

#2. Checkstations for What? I found it very perplexing why they have supposed police checkstations on the roads at frequent but irregular intervals. In most cases, the checkstations were attended by people that did not appear to be official in any capacity based on their clothing. At a couple of these checkstations I asked the attendant what was the purpose or function of the checkstation and they replied with something along the lines of “to check the vehicle”, but for what? I tried to get further clarification but they were stumped. They had no real idea why they were stopping you. They never asked for any paperwork or money, or ever actually looked in the vehicle. They usually either just waved you on through after opening the gate or had you fill in a line in a registration book with your name and plate number. But they literally did not know what they were accomplishing other than slowing you down and giving them a job. Very strange practice that I will probably never understand.

#3. If Only Trash Could Pay. One of the most disappointing things about driving the roads of Zambia is all the household trash littering the sides of the roads. It is particularly bad around the settlements and, of course, in the city. I watched numerous drivers toss trash out the window while driving. And the trash accumulates until in some places it is almost as bad as a landfill. There simply doesn’t exist any respect for the environment. What is odd is that they usually have very tiddy yards around their rustic homes, but as soon as you leave the kraal or boma, forget it – it is a tragedy of the commons. I often ponder the psychology of this behavior and the only thing I can figure is that they are so busy trying to get by each day, hand-to-mouth sort of living, that they simply don’t have time or energy to care about anything but living each day, and I guess getting rid of trash is a burden they can’t afford. I suppose it is impossible to know how I might behave in similar circumstances.

#4. Where Has All the Money Gone. It is not cheap to visit the national parks here, even as a self-driver. Park entrance fees are steep, as are the camping and vehicle fees. But where has all the money gone? Give the volume of tourists visiting these parks, they must be bringing in considerable revenue. My impression is that it is all going into salaries for the inflated staff and very little, if anything, into the physical infrastructure to support the tourism they purport to rely on. With notable exceptions, the Park campgrounds often have minimal facilities that sometimes don’t even function anymore, and don’t even get me started on the road conditions in the Parks. I wouldn’t mind at all paying the high fees if I saw that they were being used to improve, or even just maintain, the Park infrastructure. Instead, as I have noted before, it seems like they get (or got in the distant past, in most cases) some capital to build an ablution facilities or put in solar water heaters or build a bridge over a ravine and then they just let it deteriorate until it becomes just an eyesore. So far on my journey, Zambia Parks rank at the very bottom in terms of conditions for self-drive campers.

#5. The Sacred Break Time. I understand that most people need a short break from work every so often just to get rejuvinated, and of course they need to eat every so often such as at lunch time. However, the workers here treat regular break times and lunch time as sacred. It doesn’t matter what they are doing or how much they are engaged in a job with a customer, when the lunch time bell rings (not literally) they stop working no matter what. In fact, I am writing this entry right now as I sit by myself in an auto shop in Lusaka during the lunch hour. We were working on my front-end alignment issue (once again, since I am in Lusaka for a few days I though I would give another shop a try) and all of a sudden, without warning, I found myself alone in the garage looking under the vehicle. The workers simply disappeared without notice. This is not the first time with such an experience. In the States, I very much doubt that if you were engaged with workers on a job that they would desert you without notice at their allotted break time – they would finish the job and then take their deserved break.

#6. Belief Before Facts. This is a highly religious country. The evangelicals and missionaries did their job quite well here, starting with the famous explorer/evangelical David Livingstone, who was presumably the first white European to explore the length of the Zambezi River. Everywhere where I look, around every corner, in every tiny settlement, there is a christian church of some sort – mostly 7th Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and even a few Catholics. I have strong feelings about religion that I won’t share here, but suffice it to say that I am not a fan of imposing, coercing or simply “selling” organized religion to the ignorant – and I don’t mean innately ignorant but rather ignorant of how the world works because of lack of education – and vulnerable. I can understand why it was so successful here, because for unworldly and mostly uneducated peope, it is far easier to believe than to know. The empowerment of scientific knowledge over blind faith simply has not taken root here, and the abundant churches and religous primary and secondary schools make sure that their teachings and beliefs are fed to the children before they have the chance to know anything else.

#7. Why Aren’t You In School? When driving through the countryside you encounter school after school after school. Every little settlement has a school and the children have a unique colored uniform to distinguish their school from others. On the surface, this is great, since it appears that most (but not all) children between say the age of 5-11 are attending primary school, and a majority of the older kids are attending secondary school. What I can’t figure out is why I always see the children outside playing in the school yard, rather than in classrooms. I have paid attention to this and I swear that the kids spend most of their limited time at school NOT in the classroom. They have shortened days alll the time and days off of school way more than I would think appropriate based on our standards in the States. I ponder whether this minimal classroom schooling is why the country is lingering in the 3rd world.

#8. Burn Baby Burn. One thing I do applaud the country for is their burn policy. As I have noted in my posts, the both the public and private land managers have a very aggressive burn policy in which they try to burn every acre every year. They do so for lots of reasons, including keeping the understory open for human access and movement and for rejuvenating the grasses and forbs for the grazing animals (both domestic and wild). As a result, high severity fires and the accompanying loss of life and property are virtually unheard of here. The fires are all of low intensity and thus low severity. In the States, we are so risk averse when it comes to fire that we have allowed the fuel loads to build up over a century of fire supression so that today we have increassing frequency of high severity fires that result in human deaths and losses of property in the billions. We could certainly learn a thing or two about managing fire from the Zambians.

#9. The Business of Living. One thing I always find interesting while I am driving through a country is trying to observe how ordinary people make a living. Of course in the big cities, such as Lusaka, there is manufacturing, retail, service and high-tech industries that provide work for the masses, but in the rural areas it is another game. From what I have observed, the majority of rural livelihoods depend on mixed agriculture; in particular, the growing of maize, beef and milk, and perhaps a few tomatoes on the side. A majority of the small properties have maize fields with a small number of beef cattle and/or dairy cows. There are milk collection stations a plenty, beef markets here and there, and lots and lots of maize being collected in sacks by the roadside and then transported to large grain processing plants in the big cities. In the Luangwa Valley there was also a lot of cotton and thatch production. It appears that a large proportion of the rural people sustain a living this way, perhaps in combination with the male head of household holding a job away from home in an urban center – you see an aweful lot of mothers and children holding down the homestead. The other business that was fairly ubiquitous throughout much of the country was the manufacturing of charcoal on a small scale. Many households had bags of charcoal for sale on the roadside, often just a few bags but sometimes many dozens. Charcoal must be the primary fuel source for heating and cooking. Lastly, there are lots of small roadside produce stands, but often just a single item, perhaps a few bundles of tomatoes or oranges.

After my adventure wilderness drive through North Luangwa National Park and overnight at the delightfuul Samala Campsite, I headed north to Tanzania, but with a couple of one-night stopovers along the way to break up the trip.

My first stop was Kapisha Hot Springs roughly 3-4 hours drive from Samala, which gave me the better part of the day to enjoy the riverside campsite, lush grounds that had a “bird walk”, and of course a good soak in the soothing hot springs. Here are some photos:

Next stop, Chisimba Falls:

My next stop was Chisimba Falls National Monument located a little west of the town of Kasama. In stark contrast to Kapisha Hot Springs, which caters to tourists (i.e., mostly white westerners or affluent white Africans), this place caters to local day-visiting Zambians. A quick scan of the registration book revealed that very few tourists visit this site. The monument is not really set up for camping, but they let you camp on the grounds next to the water anyways for $15 USD, with space for perhaps 2 or 3 parties – I was the only camper. This monument was established in part for the natural beauty of the waterfallsand the geological and geomorphological processes, but also for its cultural heritage. Apparently the Bembo people from a region in the neighboring country of what is today called the Democratic Republic of the Congo (or DRC) immigrated to and settled this area in the mid-17^th century, and I guess this site has historical significance to these people. The site also contains fossil evidence of ancient inhabitants. Today, the Falls are also the source of hydro-electric power generation. Here are some photos:

My intended last stop in Zambia before crossing the border into Tanzania was going to be some place near Mbala, as shown the map below, but I decided instead to cross the border into Tanzania since nothing was striking my fancy near Mbala and I was near the border early enough in the day.

The border crossing into Tanzania was my kind of border. I spent 5 minutes on the Zambia side and another 20-30 minutes on the Tanzania side. I was the only person/vehicle at the border post making the “crossing” unfrenzied, so I guess that was in my favor. And there was no need for assistance by a “runner”, in fact there weren’t any, as the crossing was so simple and straightforward – no running back and forth between several different offices and getting several different stamps, etc., as when Nancy and I crossed into Zambia. However, I think the real key is to cross at a remote border crossing like this one instead of a major border post on the national highways where all the commercial vehicles cross. Here is a photo of the Zambian border post – nice!

I ended up staying in the first and only major town/city en route in Tanzania, Sumbawanga because I was delayed by 5 hours trying to get a sim card to work in my mobile hotspot, which was unsuccessful for some unknown reason. I didn’t leave the shop until after dark and thus found the first place to camp, which ended up being at a Lodge in the city with a parking lot for camping – yuk! The name on the GPS was “Country Lodge” so I thought it might have a bit of a natural setting, but alas, not. Worse part was that this area must be an islamic stronghold as I had to listen to call to prayer bells and then prayers broadcast over loadspeakers close by in the evening and then again at 6:00 am. I don’t know why they have to be so public about it. Anyways, I will be glad to leave here today. See you at my first Park in beautiful Tanzania, Katavi.

After leaving South Luangwa National Park I headed north up the Luangwa Valley intending to stop for a night or two at the small Luambe National Park and then spend a few nights in North Luangwa National Park. However, I had learned of a brand new “wilderness trail” called the Amatalolo Experience in North Luangwa (Amatalolo means “wilderness” in the local languange) and I was eager to experience it. Unfortunately, the few exclusive wilderness campsites along the Amatalolo Trail were only available for the next two nights and then they were booked for several days. This experience was too enticing to pass up, and the Green Dragon, well, she was urging me on for the challenge. So, I made the 11 hour drive up the east side of the Luangwa Valley, mostly outside the Parks, to get to North Luangwa National Park.

I am not going to describe the two new Parks (Luambe and North Luangwa), as they are very similar to South Luangwa in many respects, other than to say that they are very much less visited and rather poorly designed to accommodate overlanders like myself. In addition, the vegetation is more dense as you go north up the valley so the wildlife viewing is more challenging, and I observed that the wildlife were very skiddish and generally took off at the first sight of me – an indication of either infrequent encounters with humans and/or a history of intense poaching, probably both. Instead, for this post I am going to change it up a bit to keep things new and fun for you – I hope – by directing you to watch this 13 minute slide show with music of my 3-day journey up the Luangwa Valley and along the Amatololo Trail in North Luangwa National Park. This slide show puts YOU behind the wheel as we travel from South Luangwa National Park and my Track and Trails River Campsite up the eastside of the valley through mostly community lands, but in and out of South Luangwa and Luambe National Parks as well, and along the Amatololo Trail for 2 days and nights, ending at my campsite at Samala Camp just outside the northern gate of North Luangwa National Park.

Before watching the video, here are a few notes about what you are going to see:

Fist, I took all but a few of the photos actually from behind the wheel, looking straight ahead or out the side window. SO, you will be seeing what I saw as we move along the route. Also, not all the pictures are beautiful photos as I simply took a picture at irregular intervals and whenever something caught my fancy. However, I deleted many of the less appealing photos so as to not totally bore you.

On Day 1, we will pass through many small villages but I have very few pictures of this, mainly because I felt too guilty to photograph these places when there were so many locals around watching me – and they were always watching as a vehicle was apparently an exciting event for the day. We will also pass by cotton fields that look like wild patches but trust me, they are growing cotton, and you will see a heavy truck loaded with the cotton bales as proof. We have a few low water river crossings that are much more exciting than the pictures depict. I gave out quite a few pencils but only managed in my excitement to get one picture – sorry. In one place, after crossing a river there were 3 children waving and saying hello to me and NOT begging – which was a rarity – so I stopped to give them paper and pencils. When all of a sudden I was ambushed by probably 20+ kids. I have no idea where they all came from – hopefully not holes in the ground. At one point I had at least 10 sets of small hands reaching in through the open window. Lastly, the day ends with an exciting pontoon river crossing before arriving at my sublime exclusive riverside campsite called Mushiki on the Luangwa River at the start of the Amatololo Trail.

Day 2 is devoted to driving along the Amatololo Trail from my Mushika campsite along the Luangwa River floodplain and then along a major tributary river, the Lufila, eventually climbing a couple thousand feet into the mountains to my campsite at Lufila Falls. We cross numerous steep-sided gullies or ravines which I simply couldn’t adequately capture in the photos for some reason, but trust me, sometimes I felt like I was vertical. The track up the mountains also provided some rocky challenges that I didn’t capture in the photos because I was too focused on driving. This trail was aptly named, as it was truly a wilderness experience. The track is not much more than a narrow corridor cut through the vegetation and there are no camps, roads or people for many miles. It was a good thing I did this trail now because in a few years time, after the inevitable neglect on maintenance, my guess is that the trail is going to be impassable.

Day 3 takes us along the last stretch of the Amatololo Trail until we exit the Park at the Mano Gate and end at my beautiful streamside campsite at Samala.

I hope you enjoy this 3-day journey boiled down to 13 minutes. OK, let’s take a drive:

Luangwa Valley and Amatololo Wilderness Trail video (13 minutes)

Was that fun? Cheers.

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:

Nothing to report here other than to say that I returned to Lusaka en route to Luangwa National Parks and spent 3 nights at Pioneer Camp, the same place I stayed previously and reported on, getting some R&R. The main reason for delaying in Lusaka for 3 nights instead of 1 was to wait for the delivery of my Carnet de Passage (CDF). A Carnet is essentially like a visa for the vehicle and allows you to “import” your vehicle into certain countries without paying a huge bond feeb that is something like 80-90% of the vehicle’s value – yikes! On my trip, Kenya is the only pain-in-the-you-know-what country that requires a Carnet. Unfortunately, a Carnet involves putting a substantial amount of money on deposit with South Africa Automobile Association, which I will get back (or at least most of it) when I return the vehicle back to South Africa. The problem has been the total incompetence of the person in charge of Carnets at SAAA. I have been trying to get the damn thing for 3 months and at last arranged to have it shipped to Lusaka. It arrived today, at last, and I am once again on my way with papers in hand to eventually get into Kenya.

Cheers!

After leaving Lochinvar a day earlier than planned, my next stop was Kafue National Park, located in western Zambia and the largest park in the country. Kafue NP (8,649 sq. mi.), established in 1950, covers a massive area in western Zambia and is centered on the Kafue River, running north to south through the park. Most of the park is covered in miombo woodlands (which I introduced in a previous post from South Africa), which are open semi-deciduous forests of trees adapted to periodic wildfires, but there are scattered open grasslands throughout the park as well, mostly in the form of what they referred to in the local language as “dambo”. Much like elsewhere, these dambos are low-lying areas that over the course of the year collect too much water to support woody vegetation, so instead become grasslands that vary from wet to dry depending on the season, and may even form pools of water at times. Here’s a tilted shot (no, I wasn’t drinking and driving) of a dambo:

Overall, the miombo woodlands here support relatively dense vegetative cover, which makes wildlife viewing somewhat challenging. I also found interesting that, as I understand it and the empirical evidence supports this, the land managers here attempt to burn every acre every year. I can only assume that this is done to keep the woodland understory relative open for human movement (e.g., so they don’t step on hidden poisonous snakes) and to rejuvenate the grasses and forbs for the grazing animals. Can you imagine such a burn policy in the states? I don’t think so! It is hard enough for land managers in the states on public lands to get approval to burn a tiny, almost insignificant, percentage of the forest and woodlands each year, and the consequence is steadily increasing understory fuel loads and ever increasing occurrence of high severity wildfires. I think we could learn something from the Africans in this regard. Note, because of the frequent burning, these woodlands burn at low intensity and thus low severity, with almost nary a woody stem except the very smallest killed (for better or worse). Here are a few photos of the landscape before and after burning:

Like certain other Parks I have visited, both in Zambia and Zimbabwe, this Park has a long history of intensive wildlife poaching, both for ivory and for meat. Consequently, populations of the larger game animals such as elephant, rhino and most of the antelope species along with their attendant large predators (e.g., lions, leopards, etc.) have been dramatically reduced, or even extirpated in the case of the rhino. Fortunately, steps have been taken recently to restore wildlife populations through aggressive anti-poaching operations and the turning over of management of the Park to Parks Africa, the same organization, you may recall, that took over management of Matusadona National Park in Zimbabwe. It is too early to see the results of the change in management, but hopefully in 20-50 years there will be a thriving wildlife community. The owner of KaingU Safari Lodge said that she has already seen changes in the numbers of some species and, importantly, in their behavior towards humans. However, I suspect they have a long way to go, as long-lived species such as elephants have a very long memory, and pass on that history to their offspring. So, I think it is going to take some time before this Park is going to support ideal wildlife viewing. I saw very little wildlife while in the Park and surrounds, other than birds, and thus certainly could not recommend it to anyone seeking a great African wildlife experience. I did see a new primate species, the Yellow Baboon (looks and behaves just like the Chacma Baboon to the south but with a fur coat that is generally more yellow – dah), and a new antelope species, the Puku (a mid-sized antelope associated with wetlands), a new subspecies of the Waterbuck called the Defassa Waterbuck, and a Warthog with the biggest tusks I have ever seen. See the photo gallery below for pictures.

My first campsite was actually outside the Park on the opposite side of the Kafue river at KaingU Safari Lodge, which is across the river from the southern section of the Park. In the video below I show a hilltop view of the Kafue River valley and discuss my campsite and the river, so I will not show pictures here:

KaingU Safari Lodge campsite and river ( minutes)

One of the most rewarding things I did while camping at KaingU Safari Lodge is take a guided inflatable canoe trip down a section of the Kafue River in front of the Lodge and my campsite. This was a beautiful section of the river flowing through volcanic rocks. The video below is an unnarrated audio-video of my 2-hour canoe trip condensed into 4 1/2 minutes. If you are so inclined, sit back and relax and imagine you are in the boat. Here we go:

Kafue River canoe trip (4 1/2 minutes)

I also took a delightful guided morning birding walk with another one of the Lodge guides and picked up another dozen or so new bird species. Here’s a picture of my very knowlegeable guide, who has been guiding people for 23 years in various Parks in Zambia.

For my last 2 nights in Kafue National Park I moved north to Mayukuyuku Bush Camp, also located on the Kafue River but in the northern section of the Park. Nothing too remarkable about this site other than it was also situated on scenic section of the river, so I spent my siestas sitting on the river bank under a shade tree enjoying the view and the animals, and spent some time conversing with fellow campers. Specifically, I met and spent quite a bit of time talking to a very nice younger German couple that have spent 1 month every year for the past 12 years backpacking around various places in sub-Saharan Africa. They travel on foot and use public transportation. Brave soles to be sure, and they have had nothing but positive experiences in their 12 years of journeying, with one exception in Gabon. I also met a party of Namibians who have rental cottages on the beach in Namibia for us to rent at wholesale rates whenever we go to Namibia. Here’s a shot of my campsite and sunrise:

Perhaps the biggest observation of note regarding this Park is the prevalence of tsetse flies. These are nasty biting flies about the size of a deer fly that seem to be attracted to motion and the color blue. Consequently, driving through the uplands attracts these flies by the dozens, and they harrass you constantly by flying into your face, eyes, ears, etc.. More importantly, if you let these guys settle on you for more than a few seconds, they bite with something akin to a poke with a red-hot needle. Needless-to-say, wildlife drives with open windows become a bit challenging and uncomfortable. You end up spending as much time battling the flies as you do watching for wildlife. Fortunately, they seem mostly attracted to motion, so if you stop moving they eventually go away – which doesn’t help too much on a wildlife “drive”. Also, they don’t seem attracted to the riparian environment along the river, so my campsite was relatively free from attack. It’s a good thing too, or I probably would have packed up camp and moved on. Another fortunate thing is that here in the Kafue they apparently don’t carry the parasite for the disease trypanosomiasis (a.k.a. “sleeping sickness”). The last reported case was something like 60 years ago. That’s a good thing or else no one would want to visit this place, including me. Oh ya, they also don’t like the cool weather, so there is a respite at night and early morning. Note, I tested out this theory on my morning guided walk, which was from 7-10 am and we didn’t encounter any flies until after 9.

I’m off back to Lusaka for a day or two and then on to the famous South and North Luangwa National Parks – let’s hope they are tsetse free!

Photo Gallery:

My first destination park in Zambia was the relatively unknown and rarely visited Lochinvar National Park, located southwest of the capital Lusaka and situated on the southern edge of the Kafue Flats, a wide floodplain of the Kafue River. Lochinvar NP (165 sq. mi.), established in 1972, is centered on the river floodplains and the shallow Chunga Lagoon which fluctuates considerably in size with variations in river levels, but the Park also includes extensive marshes, grasslands and wooded uplands as you move south from the river. Kafue Flats is the exceptional ecological feature – much like the Okavango Delta in Botswana – that extends along the river for more than 100 km and is up to 50 km wide in places. The Flats include numerous braided channels of the river along with pools of all sizes, sloughs and extensive abutting marshland and grassy plains that vary from partially flooded to dry in response to the wet/dry annual cycle. Here are a few shots of the ecological gradient from the Kufue flats immediately abutting the marshland to the upland woodlands:

One unappealing aspect of this National Park, at least for my tastes, is that they allow certain commercial resource extraction activities, including a large open-pit gypsum mine in the middle of the Park with heavy hauling trucks going in and out all day and a local commerical fishery by communities located both inside and outside the Park, a boat harbor for the latter shown here:

In addition, cattle from the adjacent lands are allowed to forage and access water within the Park, and since the community lands outside the Park are limited in both resources, the cattle make significant use of the Park. To me, it is a bit tragic that a national park has to be used in this way, even though I understand that without these compromises they probably would not have been able to create the Park in the first place, so I guess it is better than not having a Park, but then again I’m not sure in this case what it really means to be a “Park”. It didn’t feel much like a National Park as I passed huge trucks hauling out gypsum and ran into cattle herds on several occasions, including waking up to a herd of several hundred cattle approaching my campsite. Here is the view from my campsite – not what I hope for in a national park:

On the flip side, I took advantage of the local fishermen and had one of them take me out into the marsh and lagoon in his boat, as I show in my video below, so I guess I shouldn’t complain too much.

Lochinvar NP is particularly well known for the large herds of Kafue lechwe, an antelope species endemic to the Kafue flats (i.e., it is found here and nowhere else) that reaches numbers in the many thousands. Everywhere I looked on the flats I saw herds of Kafue lechwe.

My campsite was what is referred to as a “bush camp” or “wild camp”, which means it was just a spot that I chose for my campsite but without any facilities at all. I simply drove as far as I could out on Kafue Flats until I hit wet grassland and marsh and stopped next to a tree and slough, set up my campsite (i.e., opened the rooftop of the Green Dragon) and sat back to enjoy the amazing sunset, as shown here:

Unbeknownst to me, it turned out that the fishermen from one of the local villages located inside the Park used this area to launch their boats from a small channel about a 100 meters away. After setting up my campsite I walked over and talked to one of them and arranged for a boating trip into the marsh the following day. Here’s a composite video of my excursion out on to Kafue Flats in a very small and unstable wooden canoe – if you are so inclined, sit back and enjoy the canoe ride with me:

Lochinvar National Park Kafue Flats composite video (15 minutes)

After my morning canoe ride I decided to change campsites for a change of scenery. I drove to the other side of the Park to the edge of Chundu pool, which is the enormous pool – lake, really – we boated out to, as seen in the video above. However, the one site with a very limited view of the open water was strewn with trash from the local fishermen that use the spot as a harbor. I decided it was too unpleasant and there were no other camping options since it was too long a drive to get back to my previous campsite, so I left the Park.

Overall, while Kafue Flats was exceptional in many ways and my canoe ride was quite memorable, the Park had little else to offer. There was very little wildlife to see, other than the lechwe and the wetland birds – which were great – and there were zero facilities for campers. I saw a couple of baboons and vervet monkeys and I heard a spotted hyena and that’s about it. In retrospect, I’m not sure it was worth the long drive to get here on rough dirt and gravel roads for a single night and a 3 hour canoe trip. Oh well, live and learn.

I opted to drive halfway to my next destination, Kafue National Park, to save me a very long drive the next day, and “wild camped” along the way. My iOverlander app directed me to a “flat spot behind a tree”, which was sort of true, but also put me on some private property with an undetermined owner or owners, so I went to the first house enountered off the road at that point and asked for permission. The person didn’t speak or understand a word of English so I had to use sign language to indicate my request. I felt like Merriweather Lewis communicating with the native Americans on his journey across western North America in 1803. Ultimately, I think I got permission, so I gave the person 50 kwacha, or the equivalent of $2.50 USD, which doesn’t sound like a lot but is in fact a lot here, and went to my chosen flat spot behind the tree. Later, after dark, a couple of other women with a small child showed up and tried to communicate in their native language. I determined that they too wanted some kwacha, so I ended up given them each 50 kwacha and the child a box of crayons and drawing booklet and they went away happy. No other visitors after that, thank goodness.

Next morning, I continued on my way and had an interesting pontoon ferry crossing of the Kafue River, as shown here:

Eventually, after driving some distance on mostly pretty decent gravel roads and one sketchy dirt track leading to my final destination, I made it to KaingU Safari Lodge and my campsite. More on that in the next post. Cheers.

Nancy and I said goodbye to Mana Pools National Park and Zimbabwe with sadness since we really loved our visit to the country and its wonderful Parks and people. Our first stop was the border post with Zambia at Chirundu. Fortunately, we engaged a helper and there was almost no one else in the queue so the process went relatively quickly; i.e., 1.5 hours. However, the process to get through this one-stop border post (i.e., leave Zimbabwe and enter Zambia) was the most convoluted and complex process imaginable, and one that we would never have been able to navigate ourselves. In and out of several offices, back and forth between customs and who knows what other offices, stamping this and that, paying this and that, and all done in a whirlwind frenzy. At one point they didn’t want to let us leave Zimbabwe because we didn’t have a police authorized and notorized declaration form stating the vehicle was not stolen. After about 20 minutes of pleading my case they relented and stamped me through that step of the process, but it was touch and go for a minute and I wasn’t sure if they were just trying to get me to pay a bribe or not so I just kept on pleading my case until they agreed. Apparently, this is the worse border crossing in all of southern Africa – who would have known.

After the “crossing” we stopped at Chita Lodge just outside the town/city of Kafue about 1 hour south of Lusaka. The Lodge offered camping on the Kafue River front and seemed like it would be a sweet spot to rest up before Nancy’s departure from Luska. Well, turned out my research on this place wasn’t too accurate and informative. What could have been a really sweet place turned out to be a wild and raucous hang out for the local affluent 20-30 year olds and the ablutions were crap (i.e., no hot water, no water at all in the morning, dirty and smelly). Partying went on until 11:00 pm. Needlesstosay, we didn’t get the nice nights sleep we desired. I’m very sorry I subjected Nancy to this on her last night. Argh!

It was a very sad goodbye to Nancy in Lusaka as she departed Africa and headed home to Colorado. She is my ultimate and perfect travel companion and made everything more special. I’m very sad to see her go. But, the journey must continue.

I ended up finding a very sweet lodge and campground just outside Lusaka for the night (Pioneer Lodge) and had the entire place to myself. Beautiful setting, hot clean showers and ablutions, attractive open air dinning and lounge area, and gardens, and all for $12 USD! Laundry service, dinner (butternut squash soup), and a hand-made tote bag (for carrying stuff) all for $35 USD. Nice deal!

After a few shopping chores in Lusaka, I am off to the relatively remote and poorly visited Lochinvar National Park for a couple nights. Don’t know what kind of wifi service I will have, so I’ll be back online with the next episode when I can. Cheers.

Our 4^th country on this overland trip is Zambia, and once again, it is worth sharing a few factoids about this country to put things in better context and to educate myself (and you, if needed) a little about this corner of the world.

• As you can see in the map above, Zambia is a land-locked country bordering Namibia, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique (and it touches Botswana too) located between the latitudes 8-18 degrees south, which in terms of distance from the equator is the southern hemisphere equivalent to, say, Columbia and Venezuela in the northern hemisphere.
• Roughly the same size as Texas.
• Roughly 20 million people, compared to ~332 million in the U.S..
• 7 official languages, including Bemba, Nyanja, Lozi, Tonga, Luvale, Lunda, and Kaonde, the latter three being languages of North-Western Province. English is the official language of government and is used for education, commerce, and law.
• Government is a democratic republic, which includes independent executive, legislative and judicial branches with a structure similar to the US, except that the legislature is unicameral and thus contains only a single national assembly. Since 1991 it has become a stable multi-party democracy.
• Official currency is the Kwacha, but many tourist places (e.g., hotels, lodges, etc.) accept US Dollars.
• The major export is copper in various forms, comprising roughly 75% of all exports, and a wide range of less important items include gold and other minerals, tobacco and, you guessed it, diamonds, similar to Zimbabwe.
• It is unclear what percentage of the population self-identifies as indigenous, but there some 73 self-recognized tribes.
• Zambia’s European colonization history is very similar to Zimbabwe’s. The indigenous Khoisan hunter-gatherers began to be displaced by Bantu peoples some two thousand years ago, and the influx of various Bantu peoples continued through the 19th century. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to sway influence over the region during the 16^th and 17^th centuries but never assumed any real colonial control over what was then the Mutapa Kingdom. Eventually, the British arrived in 1855 in the form of English explorer David Livingstone, who encountered the spectacular Mosi-O-Tunya falls on the Zambezi River, and called them ‘Victoria Falls’. Subsequently, in the 1880s and 1890s, British companies, specifically the British South Africa Company, began mineral extraction and eventually consolidated the territory into what they called “Northern Rhodesia”, which became a British protectorate in 1924 when the company charter expired. Northern Rhodesia was forced into a federation with Southern Rhodesia (today’s Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (today’s Malawi) in 1953, but this sparked protests and independence movements, particularly in Northern Rhodesia. The federation was dissolved at the end of 1963 and independence activist Kenneth Kaunda became the president of the new independent Republic of Zambia in 1964.
• Did you know that Zambia has termite hills the size of a house – awesome!
• Did you know that more than 70 languages are spoken in Zambia – wow!
• Nshima is a traditional Zambian dish made by pouring maize (corn) flour into hot water, and it is eaten pretty much every day and with everything, but only with your hands if you want to fit in with the locals – no cutlery please!
• Has ~41% of its total land area devoted to national parks, reserves and wildlife management areas – amazing accomplishment and the highest in all of Africa!