Safari Park Adventures vol. 4

9^th-12^th May – Days 222-225 – South Luangwa National Park, Zambia

The normal way of getting somewhere.

We will!

For some reason, when you think of Africa's great game parks, you think of the Serengeti, the Maasai Mara, Ngorongoro Crater, Kruger and so on. For most, South Luangwa doesn't really come to the top of the list and it's a park I'd barely heard of before although what little I'd heard was pretty good – beautiful place, lots of wildlife, lots of variety and so on. Having spent some days there I can say with near enough certainty that South Luangwa's low profile can be put down to the Zambian Tourism Ministry, the fact that fewer visitors come to Zambia than to the big safari tourism countries or whatever else.

The social life in South Luangwa is not great

A rare sighting of Dumbo

A rare sighting of Indiana Jones

It's definitely not because South Luangwa lacks anything that its more famous cousins have. In fact, I'm the kind of safari tourist who will start to get tired of game drives after a while - “another zebra, great... another elephant, great...” - yet in two days driving around South Luangwa I didn't feel a tinge of this. This was partly because of our great guide Masuzyo, who knew everything about anything that happened in the park and partly because South Luangwa just has so much variety in terms of scenery, animals, birds, habitat... as you drive through the park, it constantly changes, and it's just impossible to take your eyes off what is unfurling in front of you. It's just brimming with life.

Posin' with Masuzyo, the king of South Luangwa

These are actually the first lions I've ever seen

Of course having parents around means that we have to allow the expedition a slight touch of comfort so we ended up spending the time in a safari camp by the shores of the Luangwa river where hippos cavorted at night, monkeys got up to various types of monkey business, baboon got up to various types of baboon business and monitor lizards crawled around trying not to get trampled by the elephants who came to eat the bushes a few metres away from the camp. This was easily observed along with the big red sunset from the camp bar with a cold Windhoek beer. It could have been far worse.

In a park like South Luangwa it's tough not to see anything interesting and the night drives opened our eyes to the side of Africa's wildlife that comes out after dark – civets, genets, lions hunting in the back garden of the camp and, disappointingly for M, no clear sightings of leopards, again. She did think she saw one off in the distance from behind in the dark though so all's (sort of) well that finally ends well!

A civet.

The old man achieves another aim for life - holding a nightjar. Cool.

Token night scene #8823723989

It's hard to write loads about a national park I suppose but it's a beautiful place all in all and one that I'd be happy to go back to any time... maybe when I'm older and richer...