To those in the know the South Luangwa National Park is considered to be one of the very finest wildlife destinations in all of Africa. Boasting the greatest concentration of predators in Southern Africa the park promises some extraordinary sightings. Leopards in particular are present in large numbers and the South Luangwa has earned quite the reputation for regular and exceptional sightings. If you have watched any of the recent David Attenborough programmes, chances are you’ve seen footage of Leopards leaping from trees filmed right here.
Sarah worked in the South Luangwa for a year back in 2014, Clare and Jacqui have also visited on multiple occasions having grown up in Zambia. However it is my first time, and I’m keen to make the most of it.
South Luangwa Day 1
At 6am the South Luangwa park gate is open for business. There’s only one way in or out, and that’s over the Luangwa bridge. We arrived for our self-drive safari on time, and by 6:25 the paperwork was completed (only 20 minutes to write a park permit!) and we were on our way over the bridge.
Sunrise is very pretty from the Luangwa bridge, and by the time we crossed the sun was just starting to peer above the horizon. We stopped to take a few photos before moving on to find some wildlife.
The delay at the gate actually played in our favour, when quite unbelievably we ran into a pack of wild dogs, almost as soon as we had turned off the main road.
Finding wild dogs is the most difficult task for a self driver, the only reliable strategy is to spend enough time on the road so eventually you run into them, or more accurately, they run into you. There is of course a bit more nuance to this effort, but the gist is the same. We were given a helping hand by a small group of buffalo, whose attention was firmly directed towards the dogs on the edge of the plain, and not at us. We raced down to find them, and spent a brief minute with the pack of eight dogs before they trotted off into the distance. These were quite a pretty pack of dogs, more patterned than the ones in Liuwa. Most noticeably there was one very white coloured dog whose almost entire body was a surprisingly clean white colour.
It was great to get such a good sighting early in the day, it took a the pressure off finding anything else of note, and we could relax and enjoy the small things. Flocks of Lilian’s lovebirds were a treat to watch, bright green small parrots pecking at the ground, periodically flying up in unison to hide from danger in a tree before returning to graze one-by-one.
The scenery in South Luangwa changes around every corner. One minute you’re in open grassland, the next beside a swampy hippo pool. Large trees characterise the landscape, tall acacias, leadwoods and ebony trees line the banks of the river and the waterholes. Huge pods of hippos fill the main Luangwa river, and the various ox-bow lakes along the riverside. As the day wears on enormous crocodiles make their way out onto the riverbank to bask in the midday sun. Take one glance at the river and it looks fairly empty, but look a little harder and you’ll spot ten or twenty crocodiles in even the shortest stretch of water. Two metres away from the waters edge is the rule, and I was not inclined to break it.
As we wound our way northwards up the Luangwa we came across a Safari vehicle watching a leopard in a tree. We were 100m or so away, but as we rounded the corner the leopard jumped down from the tree and strolled into the bush. Had it not moved at that moment we’d never have spotted it. Our rule is to generally try to leave safari vehicles alone and find our own sightings, but sometimes you can’t help but bump into them.
Nowhere in the national park is prettier than the ebony grove outside Mchenja camp. We visited the back of house to see some of the staff Sarah had worked with ten years ago at Norman Carr’s Nsolo bush camp. She was enthusiastically greeted by the assistant manager, guide, and head chef, all of whom had been promoted into great positions in the years since Sarah left. The lodges are now run by a firm called Time+Tide which is a name which makes no sense, especially considering the strength of the Norman Carr name which they discarded. It’s not the only mistake the company has made in running these safari camps, they used to employ the best guides in the whole of Zambia, but economising has cost them dearly and now the better guiding is found elsewhere. In particular Shenton safaris seems to have picked up the top top guides. Having experienced and knowledgeable guides is the most important part of a safari experience, especially on a walking safari, sadly Time+Tide has focused on adding frills rather than substance.
After meeting staff at Mchenja Bush Camp we continued on our way bumping into Innocent, another guide from Sarah’s time at Nsolo, who now works with a different firm. I’ve never seen anyone so excited to see anybody, words can’t really explain how much it meant to him. After sharing stories and blocking all traffic for half an hour he had to race off to the airport to collect some guests, but not before telling us the location of some lions further north. We dutifully proceeded to the spot and sure enough a small group of four lions was found under a bush. It was the middle of the day and they weren’t up to much, so we continued inland away from the Luangwa river towards Nsolo.
Next up on the merry go round of meetings was Alfred, a utility driver at Kakuli Camp who also used to work with Sarah. Word had got around on the radios that we were visiting, and everyone was out to track us down. He let us go after promising to drop by in the coming days to properly say hello. He also mentioned nine lions sleeping near the road a couple of kilometres further up, so we proceeded with caution to try to spot them.
We needn’t have bothered with the caution, the lions were impossible to miss. Right by the side of the road nine enormous cats were chilling out. There was no place to drive other than right next to them, and I mean within a metre or two of the sleeping lions. The Luwi pride were snoozing in the shade of a large tamarind tree, but one of them was an imposter. A decent sized young male had tried to force his way in, and was sleeping next to the pride, everyone seemed relaxed for a while, but then after we’d been sat next to them for a good 30 minutes something incredible happened..
One lioness took it upon herself to investigate the interloper, approaching him as he sat off to one side of the pride. She sniffed him up and down, gave him a dirty look, and then started snarling and growling. This prompted another four of the Luwi pride to join in, the five lions crept towards the male, all the while making a deep growling sound. The male was unfazed, and he just slumped down closing his eyes wishing the whole thing would go away. In time the pride lost interest and also went back to sleeping, apart from the one lead female who continued to chunter away for the next twenty minutes. The noise the lions make when you’re up close cuts right through you, even now it’s still daunting to have a pride of angry lions only a few metres away from your open car window.
We left the pride and headed up to Nsolo camp, the back-of-house has had quite the makeover since Sarah was working here. After the guests departed for their activities we were shown around the front by the staff, who even treated us to a slice of cake. It would have been an incredible place to spend a year.
We stayed at wildlife camp in Mfuwe, it seems to be the best campsite around, and it’s ok. The views to the river are excellent, although the campsites are squeezed very tightly together and the baboons are a menace. There are no campsites within the national park, so you have to make do with here, tracks and trails, or croc valley. The latter two are often overrun with overlanding vehicles, which also accounts for the crowded safari areas around the park entrance. Neither have quite the sunset view that wildlife camp does, it is simply astonishing.
Wildlife:
Wild Dogs x8, Lilian’s Lovebirds, Elephants, Hippos, Crocs, Leopard at a distance, Lions x3, Lions x9
Distance: 113km
Cumulative Distance: 6,418km
South Luangwa Day 2
Our morning self-drive was uneventful from a wildlife perspective. The most exciting point of note was a poor driver from Puku Ridge camp who drove past us without stopping exclaiming there was a black mamba under his car. We were a bit puzzled, especially as everyone had been so friendly and willing to stop for a chat. A hundred metres up the road there was a gigantic herd of buffalo crossing, and our man must have swerved through these without stopping. A further kilometre up the road all became clear, we found a dead black mamba in the middle of the carriageway, freshly squashed by the wheels of a car.
I’m sure I don’t need to explain a black mamba to you. These are the animals that are most feared in the region, the biggest venomous snake in the region with the most deadly venom, a bite from a mamba and you’re as good as dead. They are rarely seen and very shy of humans and will only ever bite when cornered or startled, but chances are the snake has seen you long before you see it, and will slither away to avoid conflict.
Nevertheless the poor Puku Ridge driver must have been scared that the mamba he ran over wasn’t dead, and somehow alive, clinging to the bottom of his vehicle plotting its revenge. At the Luangwa bridge by the exit to the park we saw another Puku Ridge car and let this driver know we saw the dead mamba so he could radio his colleague to stop doing laps of the park at 50kmh.
By now we were 6 weeks into our trip, and I was in need of a haircut. So during lunch we took a trip to Aroo Gee’s Barber Shop in Mfuwe. I apparently was quite the attraction, many local residents stopping in to take a look. Mr Gee was very careful in his cutting technique, apparently quite nervous not to make a mistake, and certainly inexperienced at cutting mzungu hair. Once he realised it was easier to take the guard off his clippers and just freestyle it by hand he grew in confidence, in the end making a very decent job of it and requesting only 30 Kwacha (95p) as payment.
Returning to wildlife camp our new neighbours Dean and Jannie delighted in showing us the lion prints around the campsite from last night. We chatted to them, and the other campers around for so long we didn’t even have a chance to park the car back at our campsite before having to head out again for the evening.
Given our failure to find any wildlife of note self-driving in the morning, we had decided to employ a guide for our evening drive. Wildlife camp prohibits hiring external guides, insisting you must ride with their in-house team, so we had to be more canny about our plan. This involved driving to the Oasis petrol station, leaving our car there, and jumping on a game viewer driven by our guide Ruwan and assisted by his helpful spotter Adron.
In the area around the entrance to the South Luangwa national park there is a mobile phone mast providing excellent LTE (5G) coverage to a decent sized chunk of the park. This has had a pretty dramatic effect on the guiding in the park. Instead of communicating via radios, there is now a dedicated whatsapp group for the guides where they share information about all the sightings in the area. Given that we had suggested we would like to see a leopard, our guide hung around the area famous for great leopard sightings. “Left for Leopard” is the renowned mantra for sightings just over the Luangwa bridge.
I can’t help feel that Ruwan was slightly half-arseing his approach to guiding, and as soon as a leopard sighting popped up on the whatsapp channel we headed straight there. As did ten other safari vehicles…
Lucy is the famous female leopard in the area. Regularly she puts on a show for the crowds of safari goers, and this evening was no different. Lucy sat in a tree for ten minutes eyeing up a herd of impala, and then promptly decided to make a move on them. This wasn’t the most subtle of hunting strategies, the herd of impala soon caught sight of her, and that was the end of her chances. An entourage of eleven land cruisers didn’t help things, but then neither did her standing up in a clearing in plain view of the antelopes.
The area around the entrance gate in the park is very crowded with safari vehicles, and it’s clear why. Good leopard sightings and a whatsapp channel to bail out the less good guides. Whilst we did get a great sighting of Lucy the leopard, it’s a lot more special to find your own sighting and keep it to yourselves. In that regard we find self-driving much more rewarding.
Wildlife:
Leopard
Distance: 87km
Cumulative Distance: 6,505km
South Luangwa Day 3
Zambian safari guides are renowned for being among the best trained and most skilled of any. We employed Ruwan and Adron for a full day, attempting to get the best out of them and hoping for some excellent sightings.
Exciting action was in scarce supply today, all large carnivores managed to evade the web of guides and remained hidden away from view. Sarah and I took advantage of the lull in activity to learn about trees and birds. South Luangwa National Park is home to some beautiful landscapes, which change quickly almost around every corner. Ebony groves are about the prettiest, but there’s beauty to be found in every large Leadwood, Tamarind, Rain Tree or Sausage Tree. The large baobabs which form a small cluster away from the river in the centre of the park are yet another example of the diversity. Dean and Jannie back at wildlife were certainly impressed by our enthusiasm for tree species of Southern Africa, usually Brits head straight, and only, for lions.
The birds weren’t to be outdone, and although the carmines evaded us we had a great time spotting firefinches and waxbills, crowned cranes, crowned hornbills, herons, storks and of course the bee-eaters.
As night fell our evening drive has yielded precious little wildlife of interest. Althought we did at least experience a spectacular sunset down by the river. The South Luangwa spoils us in this regard every day and it’s easy to get complacent, there will always be another great sunset. Ruwan and Adron had begun to look a little harder, their whatsapp feed had dried up. As we were running out of time for the night we took a last, desperate move down to the riverside opposite Chinzombo. A herd of Impala were grazing peacefully on the grassland as Adron skimmed his flashlight over them, single green eyes reflecting back the torchlight indicating a large group of herbivores.
Two yellow eyes staring back at us quickly caught the attention of everyone in the car. As the flashlight held still, the eyes realised they has been rumbled, and dipped down. Whatever it was, the animal was just down the riverbank, head just peering over the side to eye its potential next meal.
We headed over to the riverbank to investigate, we soon realised it was Lucy the leopard once more, the small slender and energetic shape is characteristic of all female leopards. It’s very easy to tell it’s a female, but they’re very difficult to tell apart from one another. Luckily we knew this was Lucy’s territory and this time she would put on a real show, but a private one only for us.
Her eyes above the riverbank edge were almost certainly a ploy to call us over, to see what she was up to. As we approached she wasted no time, and zipped right up to the car, positioning herself by the front right wheel and flattening herself to the floor, impossible to see for any of the passengers.
Ruwan wheeled the car around, Lucy remained still, and we pulled up ten metres away from her to get a better view. Adron avoided illuminating the leopard in direct light, and likewise with the herd of impala, lest any of the animals gain an advantage from our presence. Lighting up Lucy would put an end to her hunt for the night, shining the impalas would dazzle them and potentially give her an easy snack. Impartiality was the name of the game, and we did our best to view the spectacle in indirect light.
Incredibly, when the light was off, Lucy dashed once more right up to the front wheels of the car. It was only when Ruwan wheeled around for the second time that it became clear what the plan was. Lucy was using our car as a shield to get closer to her prey.
In an effort not to intervene we switched off and waited. Lucy was unmoved, she had all night.
Sitting and waiting is a nervous experience, we were only a couple of metres away from an apex predator, lights off, she was ready to make a move.
It became clear that Lucy was waiting for the car to move to take her closer to the impala, we simply couldn’t do it. Time had run out on our side, we had to exit the park by 8pm or risk a fine from the authorities. We left the leopard to hunt her prey alone.
Wildlife:
Trees: Leadwood, Ebony, Rain Tree, Sausage Tree, Fried Egg Tree, Tamarind Tree
Lucy the Leopard
Distance: 36km
Cumulative Distance: 6,541km
South Luangwa Day 4
Today our self-drive safari made a mockery of the idea that hiring a guide is the best way to safari.
Shortly after dawn we made our way to the far end of the dry Wafwa ox-bow. There we found three hyenas picking at the long-dead remains of a giraffe. Hyenas are nocturnal, and usually quite skittish, so it was a treat to see them in the morning light enjoying themselves.
They weren’t the only ones enjoying themselves. As we sat patiently observing what the hyenas were up to, a large bus full of locals arrived on the scene. This weekend was a public holiday, and many Zambians were out enjoying their countries natural beauty. The bus pulled up right next to us, and it was a treat watching the passengers press themselves to one side of the bus, mouths wide open in awe as they watched the hyenas, Every single one of them had a phone out taking a video, and they seemed to be having a whale of a time.
Another self-driver arrived and informed us of the potential presence of a leopard at the other end of Wafwa, only a kilometre or so away. Given that we’d spent an hour with the hyenas we decided we could move on. As we approached the end of the dry lake bed we could see a small group of safari vehicles starting up their engines and beginning to drive towards us. We opted to stop and wait.
We were rewarded with a fantastic view of a leopard strolling through herds of puku, zebra and impala, and into the bushes behind us. It was a stroke of luck, but we were in exactly the right spot. The antelopes were all alarming furiously and pronking towards the leopard (it’s best for the antelopes to keep any predator in firm view, hence why they actually move towards the leopard). As the game viewers rounded the corner and started approaching our location the leopard, aware of what was happening, sped up and jogged away into the the trees just behind our car.
Today we were heading north again to meet some more ex-colleagues of Sarah’s. On the way we bumped into Innocent again, always happy to see us he gracefully shared the location of two male lions, exactly 18km away from where we met.
I have no idea how he did it, but we kept our eyes glued to the odometer. Quite magically as we rounded the final corner the gauge clicked over to 18km and there were two sleeping male lions under a bush. The guides at the posh lodges in the South Luangwa are just made differently.
Soon we were made aware of the presence of another pride of lions (3 lionesses and 2 cubs), and a leopard sleeping under a tree. We filled our boots with the sightings before trying to realise our main objective of coming this far north. Tracking down Philemon.
Philemon was the manager and guide at Sarah’s camp in 2014, and there is no doubting he is one of the very best in the business. Last year he led Robin Pope on walking safari, enough said. We tracked him down to Shenton’s Mwamba bush camp, a beautiful camp in a great location far away from the crowds of Mfuwe. Shenton certainly seems to be a great operation, I’m sure the prices are to match.
We spent far too long chatting to Philemon, and had to race back to the gate in time for the 6pm curfew for self-drivers. We made it just in the nick of time, but not before we got one more sighting of a leopard, this time the best of the lot. In the dying evening sun, a male leopard was strolling across the open ground to begin his nightly activities. When we first saw him he was sitting still, on the dry mud, and yet perfectly camouflaged. Dust was lingering in the air from a nearby buffalo herd, and we would have driven straight past had the guide in the lone game viewer not alerted us to his presence.
Three leopards, two separate lion sightings, and some hyenas. Not bad going for a day’s self-driving.
Dorphil’s is the restaurant run by Philemon’s wife Dorica. They serve excellent western and Zambian cuisine with perfect hospitality. Everything is made entirely from scratch, and it takes a while, but it’s a great place to visit nevertheless. Dorica is a force to be reckoned with, running her restaurant business and looking to expand with an on-site hotel, she also trains the cooks down at wildlife camp and even finds the time to be part of a local netball team.
On the way back into Wildlife Camp for the last time we followed a very large and very slow bull elephant, he refused to get off the road for anyone. It was a great note on which end to our time in Mfuwe.
Wildlife:
Hyena x3, Leopard, Lions x2, Lions x5, Leopard, Leopard
Distance: 116km
Cumulative Distance: 6,657km
Small Holiday Big Dream 
Leave a comment