Another Weekend in Kafue NP

Life in Zambia is moving along. I am getting busier overall, which I think is a good sign. The pace of meetings has picked up a bit, and I have more follow up to do after these meetings. My “to do” list hasn’t been cleared off since I returned to Lusaka three weeks ago. I also am attending a yoga class!

As life in Lusaka gets busier and the air gets dustier, it’s nice to escape for a weekend. So a group of four of us packed into my friend’s small 4x4 and headed to Kafue National Park for the weekend. We spent Friday night at the Mukambi Safari Lodge campground and enjoyed the night time noise of a local hippo. We went on a game drive with the lodge on Saturday morning and saw a reasonable number of the usual lovely critters. Then during the tea break, someone radioed our driver that there was a herd of buffalo near by. So, we went to have a look see and were rewarded not only with the buffalo sighting, but a pack of 5 wild dogs loping towards them and us! Wild dogs are rare in Zambia so this was quite a treat for us. After the wild dogs checked out the buffalo for a while (see the picture), it became clear that they weren’t hungry but instead wanted to drink some water. The buffalo moved off and the dogs moved very cautiously towards a pond. As they nervously approached the water, it was great to watch a fearless warthog march right past them and head to get a drink. It’s an interesting example of how different animals have different survival strategies. This picture shows the warthog in the foreground, one of the wild dogs in the middle and a seemingly oblivious puku further back. Later we were treated to some mild sparring between this puku and another male, probably vying for territory.

Saturday afternoon we drove slowly north through Kafue NP to stay at the Lufupa Lodge campground. It was a beautiful drive (including sightings of some hartebeest, shown here), but there were a few too many tsetse flies for my liking. We spent a lovely evening at the campground at the confluence of the Kafue and Lufupa rivers, and then went on another early morning game drive. After a nice view of a pod of hippos, our guide drove us to the place where a pride of lions had been spotted the night before. Lo and behold, he found them not far from their previous location. We drove right up to the resting pride and didn’t seem to disturb them at all. There were 5 females and one young male in the group. Here’s a lovely shot of one lioness with a termite mound in the foreground.

I feel really blessed by having yet another opportunity to see such wonderful creatures. I’m just sorry that ya’ll couldn’t be here to share it with me!