South Luangwa
on Rachael's VSO experience (Malawi), 03/Oct/2011 12:30, 34 days ago
So I finally booked my holiday to go to South Luangwa National Park in Zambia, a four day trip leaving Lilongwe 29th September and returning 2nd October. So I decided to head to Lilongwe on Wednesday as we needed to meet at 7.30 so we could leave at 8am. The guide from Kiboko describes the tripStay at Kiboko’s idyllic eco friendly tented safari camp, located on the banks of the Luangwa River overlooking a busy wildlife crossing point. The park contains over 100 species of mammals including lion, leopard, buffalo, Thornicroft giraffe, Cookson wildebeest, zebra, elephant and hippo. Experience an untouched wilderness, extensive wild and birdlife, and capture the true feeling of Africa.Day 1Morning, depart from Lilongwe towards the Luangwa Valley in Zambia, lunch on route. Arrive at the lodge and spend time acclimatising to the African Bush. Enjoy dinner at the Kiboko tented camp restaurant, overlooking the Luangwa River, watching elephants cross at dusk and listening to the sounds of the great outdoors. Relax over a drink before retiring for the evening.Day 2Start the day with a pre game drive breakfast at the Kiboko tented camp restaurant followed by an early morning game drive, with one of our experienced guides. Enjoy the sights of the national park before returning to the camp for a well needed brunch. After lunch there is the possibility to swim in the lodge’s pool before entering the national park to go on a late afternoon/night game drive. This is a unique way to view the nocturnal activity of the park. Dinner will be served at the Kiboko tented camp restaurant.Day 3After an early morning breakfast it is time to expand your list of spotted game, by going on a morning game drive. Return to the camp for lunch. After lunch it is time to relax (take a swim) at the lodge’s pool, before going on the second late afternoon/night game drive. Coming back to the lodge, and enjoy your dinner (prepared and served at the Kiboko tented camp restaurant).Day 4After breakfast depart for Lilongwe. Stop on route at the Tribal Textile Workshop to see the beautiful fabrics made by the local craftsmen and artists. Arrive back in Lilongwe in the late afternoon.7.30 on Thursday morning I wait outside the Kiboko office and meet the four other people I am going to spend the next four days with; 3 American girls working in a village in Lilongwe with a Church missionary group who are all around 21 and an American guy who is on holiday for 2 weeks. After stopping for lunch on our way we eventually arrive at our camp site at about 3pm. The camp site was absolutely beautiful, it's right alongside the south Luangwa river and the facilities were amazing, a bar, a pool, tents with real beds inside and mozzie nets. Once we arrived at the campsite we met the guy who was going to be our guide for the 2 days at the park, Gondwe. Gondwe warned us that sometimes game animals wander around the campsite at night, he gave us a little safety talk and told us once it gets dark (6pm-6am) you must have one of the two guards to accompany you to the bathroom to ensure you are safe. He said if there are wild animals near the tents stay calm as they are just eating the plants and will view the tents as permanent structures so are unlikely to bother you, he said some of the baby elephants like to play with the tent pole but the guards won't let them do any damage. Our Kiboko chef Dapason made us a lovely dinner and we all had a little chat getting very excited about our first game drive on Friday morning. Gondwe told us the plan is to be up at 5am breakfast at 5:30 and leave for the four hour morning game drive at 6am. The reason for leaving so early is it is hot season so the temperature over lunchtime can hit 40 so it's not safe to be out in the open game vehicles. So very excited at the thought of our first game drive and exhausted from sitting in a car all day we all head to bed around 9pm, at 11:15pm I hear a noise that at first sounds like someone walking really slowly by my tent, then I hear munching. I open my eyes and less than 6ft away from me I see a huge male elephant happily eating some fruit from the trees in the camp site. I'd seen a couple of elephants on my Victoria falls trip but never this close it was just amazing and despite the earlier reassurance from Gondwe it was quite frightening! I look around the camp site which is only lit by a few night lights and see not just one elephant but 4!! One baby elephant is right next to an empty tent opposite mine and is pulling at one of the outer poles at which point Christoph the night guard says loudly“Naughty elephant! Elephant NO!” and the elephant stopped I presume just from hearing the loud noise not because it was behaving itself!! The elephants were wondering around the camp and the campsite next to ours until about 2am, at one point the large elephant was about 3ft away from my head. It would have made an amazing picture but it's not a good idea to scare an elephant as they are wild animals and behave unpredictably so I stayed still and watched.So after not much sleep everyone was up at 5 and after a lovely breakfast we set off on our first game drive. It's hard to explain in words how wonderful it was, we saw so many animals the main and most exciting being elephants, zebra, lions, giraffes, warthogs. Four hours flew by and our guide was amazing not only finding us so many animals but also being amazingly knowledgeable and telling us so much information about all the animals.We returned to the campsite about 10:30 and were told we would leave for the next drive around 3:45pm and return around 8:30pm. The night drive was really interesting, it's such a different way to see the animals, at dusk we saw a pack of wild dogs which hadn't been seen in the park for a year. Gondwe managed to find and stalk a leopard for about 15minutes it was so beautiful and appeared very relaxed by our presence. We got back to the camp just after 8pm and had some dinner, then all headed to bed after a really busy and exciting day. The second full day in the park followed exactly the same plan as the first and we saw all the animals that we were hoping to, it's amazing seeing them in their own habitat and the animals are not at all concerned about the cars. Unfortunately two hours into our night drive it started raining! Gondwe explained that we could stay if we wanted to and see what we could find but animals would tend to hide from the rain, we stayed for another 30mins but were all soaked through and the wind got up so we al got very cold very quickly. It was a shame to have to end it early but we had seen all the animals that we were hoping to so no one was that upset. It was very strange as our camp site was about 1km away from the park, once we were about 50m outside the park the pouring rain stopped! We had already seen a small herd of elephants just outside our camp site when we left so we were all expecting visitors that night. Gondwe explained the group we had seen included included 2 females 2 baby elephants 1 old bull and 1 very young bull elephant. Bull elephants are forced to leave the herd at 13 and tend to become quite aggressive at this age, they are much more likely to be offensive where as elephants are normally defensive. They'll generally just make noise or make themselves bigger to let you know they are aware you are there, we experienced that on our first night drive when we came across a female with her baby and suddenly she turned and faced us and almost growled and made herself really big by making her ears stand out. So very worn out on our last night we all head to bed around 8pm, an hour later I hear a huge commotion and suddenly two elephants come running from the camp site next door into our site, later I find out that the students in the next camp chased the elephants out of their camp site because the elephants had stolen their coffee!! What idiots!! They were incredibly lucky that the elephants were scared and ran rather than standing and fighting, we were also very lucky that none of us were outside when the elephants came stampeding past my tent. Throughout the night there were about 10 elephants and 3 hippos all feeding around the campsite which made it a very noisy night! We were up at 6am the next day and left around 8am and headed to a textile shop. All the things were beautiful but because they were all made there and aimed at tourists everything was so expensive, if I were just on holiday I would have bought wall hangings, throws, pillow cases, handbags ect but at $30 for a childs T-shirt and $50 for a handbag it just seemed expensive. I'm always grateful when prices are in dollars as I always look at it as pounds and when you remember that I spend about $50 on food a week spending the same on a handbag seemed a lot. It was beautiful stuff though and I believe you can buy it online so you should all have a look.Well that was my south Luangwa trip. We arrived back in Lilongwe about 1:30pm on Sunday and I very easily found someone to sell me some $ as I had to borrow $50 from Czar to pay for my visa into Zambia as I couldn't buy any dollars in Mzuzu. Then I got a bus we eventually left Lilongwe about 3:30 and got back to Mzuzu at 10pm. It was such an amazing holiday but I was really tired afterwards. So now I still have a week before I go back to work, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I might head up to Karonga and Livingstonia I have some work to do so I might just see how I feel just relaxing, making the most of the Mzuzu 'summer' which still seems cloudy and cold at times.