Zikomo Zambia

From Nkhata, we headed to Zambia. Our first few days there were spent in South Luangwa National Park. We stayed at FlatDogs, which is expensive, but worth it. After an extremely bad minibus experience—3hours waiting until the bus got full to leave + overheating + breaking down + waiting two hours for a replacement bus arrived +realizing that it was a third of the size of our already overcrowded bus + arguing about a refund so that we could afford to pay a taxi to take us the rest of the way = seven+ hours to travel 120 km and my throwing a total tantrum—we settled into our tents. We arrived after dark (almost hitting a hippo a mile from our destination) and had to be escorted to our tents by nightguards. The next morning, I awoke to a hippo mud-bathing about 30 feet from my front door. (View of hippo from my tent)

I was so busy taking pictures of the hippo that I almost missed the elephants that were tromping through camp. After they moved on, I headed to breakfast, but was sidetracked by the giraffe that was munching his way from tree to tree. Throughout the day that giraffe would appear over the top of my shower or while I was sunbathing next to the pool.

(Resident giraffe)

(Some of the monkeys that would wait for us to finish breakfast before sneaking over to grab our leftovers)

My tent ended up being the prime animal viewing spot. My hippo, elephants, baboons, and antelope kept stopping by all day. At one point, we had all of them there at once.

We saw so many animals, we almost didn't need to do any safaris. But I was determined to see the leopard, which had thus far eluded us and which is known to be common in South Luangwa.

On our night game drive, we FINALLY spotted a Leopard! We have now seen all of the Big 5. The leopard was much prettier in person than in any of the photos I’ve seen (or taken).





(Sunset)
That night, I woke up with a hippo loudly munching grass less than two feet from my tent. It was a long night, which made me a bit groggy for our early morning game walk/drive. The walk itself was very informative, though we saw very few animals. Most of the two hour walk consisted of examining animal poop, tracks, and sunbleached bones. We saw more animals on the drive afterwards.

We spent the rest of the day hanging out by the pool and bar and enjoying the excellent food at Flatdog’s Restaurant. We caught a cab at 1 a.m. to begin our long journey to Livingstone.