Along the Luangwa

We left Livingstone for one of our longest stretches of travel to Chipata, in Zambia nearly on the border with Malawi. It was about a 6 hour bus ride to Lusaka, where we had to change buses, and had planned to stay two nights as a buffer for any travel problems. Lusaka wasn't too impressive a city - decrepit buildings and lots of trash were the first things we noticed.
On the other hand it has a more diverse population than other towns and cities we've been in, and we had a good Chinese dinner followed by an interesting conversation with the restaurant bartender/manager about being Chinese in Lusaka. The Chinese have a growing population in Southern Africa. After a day of walking around Lusaka, we were back on the bus, this time for about eight hours. The bus was less geared to tourists than the one from Livingstone had been and boarding was somewhat chaotic, but we got off almost on time, and the ride itself was smooth. At one of the stops, we saw a sad goat with his legs tied together being thrown into the trunk of our bus :( Shortly after Lusaka we drove through some mountains, the most hills we've seen since Namibia. In the middle of the mountains was a bridge over the Luangwa River, along which we'd be spending the next few days, but much further upstream. After leaving these mountains, we got back into flatter terrain, but dotted with occasional solitary rock outcroppings. The air was getting hazier though - we were getting into more frequent villages, and there were fires everywhere - burning trash, clearing fields, and as the main heat source for cooking; the smoke was filling the air and in the dry season there was nothing to flush it out. In the late afternoon, we arrived in Chipata where we checked into our our night's accommodation at Dean's Hillview Lodge. Over dinner we met the other folks who would be with us into the park. There was a Irish guy, a Scottish guy, and a couple that was basically from Canada (one via the UK) who were one year into a two year stay in Lusaka as project managers for a charity organization.
The next morning we headed to South Luangwa National Park where we were staying with Jackalberry Safaris at Wildlife Camp,

just outside the Park. The park was beautiful, with animal-filled plains, oxbow lagoons, and the biggest trees we've seen for a while.

Our five day/four night safari included: afternoon/night game drive, morning game drive, walking safari to/from bush camp,

visit to a wildlife education center, full day game drive (6:30am to 8:30pm), and a bush breakfast at small salt pan.
On our various drives and walks, we saw several animals we hadn't seen before and animals we had seen were in greater densities than we had seen elsewhere. A lot of this was due to being able to go on night drives where we were able to see nocturnal animals such as hyenas.

We also saw our first wild leopard,

this one having a snack of impala or puku (another first sighting for us) while its cub was nearby also hidden in the bushes. Later the same night we saw another leopard in the grass stalking impala.

This was actually all on the first night drive, and it nearly proved anti-climactic, as the next large cats we would see wouldn't be until the last hour of our last game drive when we saw a small pride of lions. This was also a really cool sighting. Although these lions seemed thin and in need of a good kill, they walked so gracefully and their confidence really showed in the way they walked.


We also saw hippos

in numbers we hadn't seen before, including this really crowded beach,

which also provided us with another hippo yawn, and hippos storming the water.

They had been scared into the water by a heron landing nearby! The river was also lined with crocodiles.

It was suggested that between the hippos and crocodiles here, the Luangwa might be the world's most deadly river. Another night we had to wait on the road as an enormous herd of elephants went by - it was really amazing, they just kept coming and coming.

We also had a sadder elephant sighting. It was hard to see, but this young elephant had lost its trunk to a poacher's snare.

Its days were numbered as without its trunk it couldn't graze, and would soon starve to death. Sadly, poaching still remains a problem throughout Africa, although there are some good efforts to prevent it and to educate people against it. Another exciting sighting was of this male kudu - we had seen lots of female kudu (who don't have the long horns), but far fewer males, and hadn't gotten any pictures of them yet.

Waterbuck

and puku
were the two new kinds of antelope we saw here, and of course we saw the usuals: impala, giraffes,

and zebra.


We also had some really knowledgeable bird people with us who were able to show us a lot of really beautiful birds, including these crowned cranes,


a rare species which arrived at our breakfast salt pan just as we did. There are just so many species of birds out here, far too many for us to keep track of, or remember all the subtle difference between!


In addition to being one of the best safaris animal-wise, it was really super people-wise as well. We had a really nice time with the other people on safari, and Gavin and Rosey and the others who work at Jackalberry really made it a wonderful trip.
The South Luangwa trip marked the end of the wildlife portion of our trip. We have now made it to Lilongwe, Malawi where, sadly, on Sunday Katie will be leaving Africa and Tom to return to work. Tom will have an exciting few more weeks traveling through Malawi and Mozambique, although not through areas known for wildlife.