A visit from Ken Bates II this time it's personal

Friday sees heading East to South Luangwa national park, some 9.30 hrs drive away. Most of the drive is on pretty good road but the last 130k is on a dirt track that is heavilycorrugated. I’m told to drive at 60kph otherwise the car will feel likeit’s gonna fallapart, which is true. The only problem i

s that at that speed it feels like the car will slide off the road any second, a bit of a roller coaster.We arrive late afternoon and dad is introduced to the wildlife immediately as I nearly run over two Giraffe who are meandering down the dirt track to our camp, Flatdogs. We’re staying in a posh permanent tent with proper beds and ensuite outdoor shower & toilet (Thanks for paying dad). It’s right on the edge of the river Kafue overlooking a raft of Hippos who are snorting & grunting but otherwise doing nothing. There’s a large elephant stool 2ft from the tent, I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing.

Next morning I go on a walking/driving safari & dad on a drive (Claims of bad ankleand all that). My trip is fascinating but mainly consists of studying dung whilst the old boy gets to see a leopard, a herd of Buffalo & a parade of elephants walking trunk to tail. I’m not sure he realises how lucky he is, people spend their whole lives hoping to see a leopard. In the afternoon we watch the Lions (British Lions) take on SA and nearly come back from the brink to snatch victory. It’s hard to be that disappointed when you’re somewhere as stunning as south Luangwa. The next morning we do a drive together and have great fun tracking Lions and follow a herd of stampeding impala, who we think are being hunted by the lions.

It turns out to be wild dogs on their trail. Whilst not as glamorous as Lions they are way more rare and quite a spot. We stop for tea in the Giraffe’s front room as our guide puts it which is also amazing. We spend the afternoon in camp watching a “Tower” of Giraffe wandering around the camp and a single Bull elephant meandering through it. I’m not sure the health &safety boys would be happy about this.

That evening the piece de resistance a night Drive. We start at 4pm and mooch around until sunset where we stop for G&T’s and an opportunity to drop our jaws at the all round splendour of our surroundings.

Whilst here our guide hears tale of a badly wounded Lion who’s been in a scrap with another male, he’s strayed into the wrong territory. A bit of a moral dilemma here, is it voyeuristic to find it and have a gawp, maybe, but we’re gonna do it anyway. The poor thing really is in a bad way, intestines hanging out and barely a movement from the chest cavity. The vet’s on the way and they’re hopeful of saving him but as rule it’s the law of the jungle here and they rarely intervene.We see some still lights and investigate, there’s a leopard in them there trees and our guide and spotter gently tease it out. We follow it for a few minutes, most of which I spend busily deleting photos from my camera as it’s decided that this would be the perfect

moment to tell me memory card is full. It’s an amazing animal and surprisingly small, still wouldn’t fancy taking it on though. Next stop, an eagle owl hidden away in a culvert, god knows how the spotter saw it and whilst not as thrilling as Leopards an incredibly rare find. As we head for a pride of Lions we’ve heard about we come across another stationary vehicle and get our second Leopard spot of the night

We’ve become blasé about leopards and move on quickly to find the lions which we duly do, a pride of about 6.

They are the females & younger males of the injured Lion we saw earlier, the guide gets uncomfortably close. Apparently unless we move they think that we’re just one big animal and will leave us alone. One young male saunters past our open topped car within stroking reach of me, needless to say I didn’t move. We were then privileged to watch a hunt. One young male left the group and circled a grazing Puk

u whilst the rest got into stealth mode, spread out and made their way towards the unfortunate beast. Almost immediately it knew something was up and stood stock still waiting for events to unfold. The team from the south were pushing him towards the lone male in the

north, good military tactics here. Inexplicably the lone lion in the north decided to arc round and approach the Puku from the east which opened up the north for it to flee, schoolboy error my friend back to Sandhurst for you. After all the excitement back to camp for dinner and a few beers before retiring as we head off at

5.30am the following morning. We wake to hear from our tent guard that a Lion killed a buffalo outside the tent 2 doors down from us during the night, health & safety really wouldn’t have been happy about that one. So off we go, stopping in Nyimba for Tea & Muffins at Sarah’s (Canadian VSO) on the way. We get back to Lusaka early evening and I take dad for a pint at Poritco to round off what’s been an awesome couple of weeks, look forward to your next trip Ken!

A Visit from Ken Bates - Vic Falls

So, the old boy’s arrived. The plane was only 3 hrs late so I’ve been waiting at the airport since 6am for no reason. Oddly I barely noticed, I must be getting truly Zambianised. I wonder if this makes “Culturally sensitive”, something VSO keep telling me off for not being. Anyway, more importantly, when did my dad turn into Ken Bates?!

Our first trip is to Livingstone to see the falls. We’ll be staying at Jane’s (A VSO in Living

stone) and picking up Luke & Rosanna (VSOs in Choma) on the way. It’s about 600k but takes about 6hrs because the road is so bad at Zimba, what’s euphemistically called the Zimba by pass. It’s in fact 40k of dirt rd followed by a stretch of tarmac so potholed they can only be avoided by driving along the side of the rd. We arrive about 8pm and Jane has kindly organized a food for us from the restaurant she has just launched with her ladies from the church. Its dad’s first introduction to Nshima, he copes remarkably well.

Next morning we head for the falls, which as normal are on great form, there’s a bit more spray this time than last and of course we get completely drenched, the good news is it’s hot enough to dry off in minutes. Sadly we’re a couple of days late for full moon, when you get the amazing site of a Moonbow. Nonetheless the water is high enough to create a number of rainbows and its great fun to look down on them from our vantage point on the bridge. As dad says you can see pictures & film footage but nothing quite prepares you for the awesome power of the real thing.

After a couple of hours wandering around the falls we head for the “Boiling pot”. The falling water is forced through a narrow gorge that turns straight right. This creates an amazingly powerful whirlpool of water that crashes around looking for somewhere to go, hence the “Boiling Pot”.

Its a +600m hike down the gorge, through rivers and over boulders, it’s not a tourist friendly route! But worth it when we get there, the ascent is as challenging as the descent. However, we meet a Flange (I think it’s that) of Monkeys on the way back messing around in trees and busy grooming each over, especially cute were the babies. It was pretty hard work and Dad did well to get through it so I took him for Beer and burgers at the Zambezi Sun. An appallingly distasteful hotel but right next to the falls. After being fed & watered we met up with Jane, Luke & Rose.

I had promised dad an afternoon snooze by the pool but it’s getting late and we need to head for the Royal Livingstone for Sundowners. The RL is the poshest hotel on the Zambian side and has a decking area on the Zambezi from which you can watch the falls and the sun going down over it, a memorable experience. Dad’s had enough excitement for one day so we head off to Olgas for dinner whilst he heads back to Jane’s for some shut eye.

The next day we take a swift trip to the bridge and take a look at the Falls from a new angle. The mid point of

the bridge is the border with Zim, so we can officially claim to have visited Zimbabwe, I hope mister Mugabe doesn’tmind, I have been quite rude about him in the past.

welcome to Lochinvar

So it’s true, I’ve bought a car. She’s a bit of a monster, Toyota Hilux surf 3litre turbo diesel but I’ve managed to convince myself that there’s a rational reason for doing this mainly based on Safety. In truth I just couldn’t bring myself to buy a rav4, I’m not ready for hairdresser school just yet.The change of ownership process is almost as much fun as getting your license. It starts with a letter of sale (After you have paid) given to you by the previous owner along with the white book (Which is neither white or a book). You take this to the police to check that it’s not a stolen vehicle; frankly a bit late given you’ve already paid for the dam thing!! The police tell you to go to ZRA (Zambian Revenue authority) Lawrence sucks his teeth and shakes his head at this, Lawrence is the agent helping me buy the car. He claims that the ZRA will want 3% of the value of the car in tax (k1.4m) but If, I were to give him K200,000 he could sort it out for me. I kinda know that this is bullshit but I really don’t want to take a risk with ZRA so I give him the cash and we move to phase 2. “Physical Check”... Whilst Lawrence is off doing his thing with the ZRA, his buddy Colins takes me to Ridgeway RTA for my cars physical. Fortunately he knows everyone there and I get bumped to the front of the queue, pushing in is so much more fun when it’s you doing the pushing. The inspection consisted of the bonnet being opened and the front driver side tyre being kicked, gently. Fortunately Lawrence and Colins offer to go to Lumumba RTA to hand the documents in and get the white book transferred to me, which will save me a couple of hours of queuing, two days later it’s all done. PS I’m still on my temporary license as after two months they’ve still not managed to print my permanent one.
Now I have a car I need to use it and I know just the place, the bank holiday is almost upon us and a bunch of VSO’s are going to Lochinvar National park, so I become nominated driver. Lochinvar is geographically the nearest park to Lusaka but it is actually quite hard to get to because the roads are so bad and it has no big cats which is what the people want but it does have a lot of birds, great. It’s 7am and I’m on the road to Monze to pick up Tash & Dhun (Two VSO’s) and a friend of theirs Michelle. I turn on the radio to hear a familiar voice. Anne, is an ex VSO who now works for Iconnect (Zambia’s leading ISP), she is also a Toastmaster and is doing a feature on Phoenix FM trying to drum up interest. She sounds bright and articulate, which she is, oddly she gives out her personal mobile number, which will come back to bite her. The road to Monze is fine and takes about 2.30hours but from here to Lochinvar is a nightmare. It’s 45k of which the first 25 are on a graded road which has pretty much been washed away leaving just flinty underlay, it feels like you’re gonna lose your fillings on this stretch. The last 20k is a dirt track that honestly doesn’t warrant the title track. All in all it takes 1.3hrs to do 45k; at least the car got a work out.
We’re staying with “Griff” a friend of Tash who lives and works in the park. So that afternoon we go off to visit the plains and hot springs. Sadly these are too hot to take a dip (approx 90c) but do have an interesting array of poached insects floating on the surface. Griff’s house neatly sums up a lot of Zambia it’s in the middle of nowhere but has satellite TV but no running water. So we get to wash in buckets but can keep up with Paris Hilton’s search for her new best friend. On Saturday we go out into the park and soon the value of no big cats becomes clear. We spot a bunch of Zebra & Impala about 500 yrds away stop the cars and make our way towards them. It’s great gently sneaking up on them and clearly something you couldn’t do if there were Lions & Leopards in the park. They didn’t seem in the least unnerved by us and in fact seemed to rather enjoy our amateurish hunting technique. From here we went off rd, a good thing as the roads are much worse here than driving in the Bush, stopped in the middle of nowhere and off walking again. After 15 mins we arrived at a small lagoon hosting about 30 hippo, an incredible sight. A few facts about Hippos: the collective noun is a “raft” of Hippos, they’re very big and fat (A Hippos head alone weighs 250kg) and apparently they are the biggest man killer in Africa, so be careful. They spend all day lolling about in the water only coming on to land in the evening to eat. They are creatures of habit and follow the same path to their feeding ground, known as the “Hippo highway”. The highway is demarcated by the Hippo intermittently defecating against a tree and using its gentle wafting tale to spray said tree. If disturbed they head straight for the water down the highway and stop for nothing, so if you do disturb one don’t get between it and the Agua!!

We stop for Lunch at an old bush camp by the Lagoon, which stretches +20k to the river Kafue. It’s a beautiful spot and a real shame that

tourists no longer visit in enough numbers to keep such places running. It seems that whilst most of Africa is short of water Zambia i

s not, apparently it gets about a third of the total water in Africa, which make

s it even more annoying that they have such a crap water supply. The camp is now used by the wardens to hang out whilst not ch

asing poachers. They tell us about a Python they found this morning and take us off to find it. It’s resting under a rotting canoe about 5 mins away and is well over 3 metres long, which they didn’t tell me when making me step over the canoe to get a better look. We oooh & ahhh at it for a while and then realise the wardens are cowering some 10m behind the Mzungo, what do they know that we don’t. It turns out that they believe the python can jump and that it’s got a sting in its tale, neither is true but the power of folklore is amazing.

After this we go to Drum rock, so named because hitting certain parts of it produce the sound of a drum. Our guide also tells us a story about initiation ceremonies for young men that used to be held here. I won’t go into detail but it involves doing som

ething young men do a lot of and reaching a certain distance in order to become a man. We then head off to the giant Baobab tree which is hollow inside and accommodated 6 of us. And Home