Our July/August 2007 trip to Zambia, Africa, started with a connection in London where we stayed one night before heading to on an overnight flight to Zambia. Upon arriving in Zambia, we spent the first two nights at the Luangwa River Lodge which had extremely nice accommodations and exceptional gourmet food in this little lodge with 10 huts out in the middle of nowhere in the African bush country! We saw wonderful game of all types there including two different leopard sightings. In fact we actually saw a Leopard being chased from its kill of an impala by about 30 baboons while the vultures took advantage (included in the pictures) of the hullabaloo between the baboons and the leopard. It appeared as if the leopard had its fill anyway as the carcass was pretty much down to bones and some remaining hide. Additionally, we saw many Giraffes, hippos and elephants close up despite the encountering a number of other vehicles from other nearby camps while we were there.
The only thing we didn't see at the first lodge was lions but our next stop was the Kaingo Camp Lodge where we spent three nights and ended up with our full dose of Lions including a couple of young males lounging on one day and then 3 lioness and 6 of their cubs on the next day. A truly amazing and wonderful experience! We were able to follow the lioness' on their hunting trips over two evenings and with some good guiding actually got to see them take down a prey from start to finish. It took them a few tries with a couple of false starts but watching their strategy was as amazing as it was to watch them take down an Impala and devour it within 15 minutes.
We also loved watching the elephants at the river crossings and all their interaction with each other and their dusting after the river “bath”. One of the pictures on the site is showing an elephant getting up on it's hind legs to reach the top of the tree, a truly great pictures of something rarely seen in the wild. We also saw hundreds of cape buffalo in large herds (in the sunset picture) and lots of giraffes, many varieties of antelopes, too many hippos to count, hyenas (which are nasty smarmy looking little devil), huge crocodiles and all kinds of birds including storks and fish eagles; literally something around every corner day after day
Our last stop was three nights right on the Great Zambezi River at the Chiawa Camp in lower Zambezi. The game drives were not as active as the first two camps but we were told by others that the week before there was a lot to see so I guess during our time there, the animals had moved to a different part of the park. Nonetheless, we reserved a “superior” tent which turned out to be an amazingly luxurious setup with its own private bathroom including a deep bathtub with all the hot water you could want and both an indoor and private outdoor shower. On one day we just stayed at our tent in the afternoon to relax on our large front porch where, to our delight, the animals literally came to us rather than us driving to look for them. Right in front of our tent platform were elephants, cape buffalo, wart hogs, a large group of baboons plus a group of smaller monkeys, birds and all types of creepy, crawly critters right at our front sitting area. It was great to see them interact without knowing we were there.
The highlight of that third camp was that we finally got to see a full grown male lion with a very large mane (also in one of the pictures). We literally tracked him for a couple of days to no avail on a number of game drives and then one night we heard his roar and were fortunate enough to track him down as he cut through some tall grass between a couple of dirt roads used for the game drives. I must admit that it was a very nervous couple of minutes as he walked right next to the front bumper of our open sided Jeep style vehicle although it ended up that he was totally uninterested in us or the vehicle….good thing!
All in all, the African Safari was an incredible experience and one which I will never forget. And yes, were as close to the wild animals as many of the pictures indicate, We will be posting many more pictures up on Google’s Picasa website but for now we hope you enjoy some of the more interesting pictures that we selected for posting on the 1512 Registry and will follow up with some additional pictures as soon as I can shrink them down small enough to send as a zip file.
Based on our experience on this trip, our first safari experience, we are now planning the next trip for four or five years from now when for Kenya or Botswana where, hopefully, we will both be fully retired and enjoying not having to head back to the US until we are darned good and ready to do so! I also highly recommend it for anyone who wished to enjoy good food, plenty of your beverage of choice and the incredible experience of getting up close and personal to wild animals in their natural habitats...truly an experience of a lifetime.
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