We left Mitch in Chipata this morning and the four of us travelled in Monty North of Chipata to the edge of South Luangwa National Park. Despite advice to the contrary from the guys at Mama Rula's the road was pretty bad. As it rained hard the night before it was muddy in places and where it wasn't muddy there were potholes and corregations. It took us about 3 hours in the end to travel the 150km.
We reached Flatdogs camp just after lunch only to find it closed for the month - this is definately something to consider if you plan to travel in Zambia in the rainy season! It wasn't a big deal though as we found a campsite very close-by called Croc Valley. The owners, Sean and Millie are a lovely couple and they made us feel very welcome. As we set up camp next to the river Sean gave us a few words of advice - 'watch out for hippos and elephants at night' and 'don't go right down to the waters edge because four people have been eaten by crocs in the past 5 years!'. They even have a little pool next to the bar where hippos come to bathe at night. I was very glad to be in our roof tent - poor Pim and Git are on the floor in our little one man tent!
At about 4pm we left for the afternoon/evening game drive. We decided to hire a vehicle and guide this time so that Ric could completely focus on watching for animals rather than driving. I was a little apprehensive when a vehicle with no roof turned up though, particularly as we were told we were pretty much guarenteed to see lions! Our guide assured us though that 'it is almost always okay'. Great.
South Luangwa Park is a great place and I highly recommend it. It feels a lot more remote that the Serengeti - we only saw 2 other cars all afternoon, and one of those was a ranger. The paths are also very good and, unlike the Serengeti, there doesn't seem to be too much trouble if you drive off the paths a little. The only problem is we were visiting the park in the wet season when there is so much lush vegetation around and watering spots that the animals can spread really far out - which makes them more difficult to find. Despite that we did manage to find giraffes, zebras, impala, baboons, monkeys, a number of different birds, lions, elephants and even a couple of porcupines.
It was also really great to watch the sun set over the park and do a night drive. We went back to see some lions we had found earlier in the afternoon and they were much more active after dark. The group consisted of three females and one male. They were all extremely fat from a recent super of buffalo - the remains of which we could still see and smell! We went back to the camp at around 8 and got caught in a rather nasty thunderstorm and as a result we arrived back rather wet. The thunderstorm was really impressive to see though - the clouds were spectacular and we watched the folk lighting from a great vantage point in the park for a while. Super and an early night followed - mainly because we wanted to get safely in our tents before the nightime wildlife arrived!