28th August 08

Date: 28th August 08
Location: South Luangwe National Park, Zambia
Weather: Clear blue skies and sunshine, very hot 38°c
Status: Enjoying life to the full….

An interrupted nights sleep with several awakenings in the night from various wildlife neighbours who visited our cap, or maybe I should say, their home! The closest of which was an adult elephant which touched the sides of the tent as he feasted on the branches right beside our heads. It was amazing as well as being a little scary to be quite so close to something so huge, and their not the quietest eaters either!

Up before sunrise again for a light breakfast, packed everything away and headed out to the park gate only 2kms away from the Flatdogs Camp. We paid our entrance fees which amounted to £12 each including the vehicle and started our hunt for the locals. With the sun low in the sky the heat of the day hadn’t kicked in so we spotted things easily in the first half of the drive including elephant, giraffe, all manner of antelope but no elusive predators!!

The tsetse flies were flippin terrible here though and after 20mins of being bitten all over we had to make the choice to close the windows and endure the heat instead but by this stage there were already 20ish of the critters in the truck and it was a slow process of squatting them before we were totally comfortable again, Rach was most efficient as a fly-squatter.

The heat of the day really started to kick in by mid morning and as most of the animals were hiding from the heat we decided to do the same and headed back out of the park calling at two of the other camps to check out their viability as our base for the next couple of nights but we’ve totally made the right choice with Flatdogs as it’s a class above the rest and offers the only location where the wildlife can walk right through the camp.

Had a cool down swim, caught up with running repairs on the truck and then started prepping the veg for our poitjke under the very watchful eye of the local monkey clan who decided to sit in the trees right by the truck waiting for an opportune moment to grab anything we’d left out!

As the sun went down dinner was ready so we scoffed it down offering some to our night guards and came to the bar to write this.

End of day location: Flatdogs Camp, Zambia
Distance covered: 67kms