Visitors and holidays

So we have just come to the end of a month full of family visits and trips away and now it’s back to the mundaneness of day to day life.

My mum and sister were our first visitors at the end of March. Paul was unfortunately still at school during their stay so we could only go away at the weekends but we still managed to pack in as much as pos. We went away the first weekend to Kafue National Park which is about a 5 hour drive west of Lusaka. We stayed at a camp called Mayukuyuku right on the banks of the Kafue River which was a stunning spot.

In fact it’s so directly next to the river that the actual campsite was flooded but this was fine cos Paul and I could pitch our tent right next to the safari tent Grace and Mum were staying in and then use their nice bathroom and veranda! We could hear hippos in the river from our camp and actually Paul and I had a rather close encounter with one of them – we were taking stuff back to the car at night and I noticed some eyes light up in my torch beam and then made out the rather large animal they were attached to (and these animals really are large – about the size of our car!). Remembering some advice we’d been given about hippos – don’t shine your torch directly at them, don’t come between them and the river – we quickly skirted as far round the back of it as possible, dumped the stuff in the car and ran back to the tent, all the time trying not to shine our lights at him but at the same time trying to keep an eye on where he was so we didn’t run into him! Much prefer hippos in rivers I’ve decided. While we were at Kafue we did a lovely sunset cruise on the river where we watched the sun go down from the middle of the river, and then a few drives around the park looking for animals. We watched some nice elephants just from the side of the road and saw lots of different types of antelope: puku, impala, hartebeest, red lechwe, waterbuck, kudu, zebra, but unfortunately no predators.

Our second trip was down to Livingstone to see the Victoria Falls, a slightly longer drive of about 7 hours south of Lusaka, over some interesting pot-holed roads at the end. We stayed at Maramba River Lodge just outside of Livingstone, close enough to the falls that we could hear them at night! It was a lovely camp, nice and quiet cos we’re out of season, with a lovely little pool and a great decking area by the bar looking out over the Maramba river where you could see crocs gliding past and hear hippos and a great chorus of tinkling frogs at night. The falls are in full flow this time of year, being just after the rains, so we got pretty wet going to see them! They give you raincoats at the start of the trail but really they don’t stand much chance against the spray – it’s like standing under a power shower in a waterproof and hoping to come out dry! It’s pretty magical though, there’s this great wall of white spray which just occasionally parts long enough for you to catch a glimpse of the immense wall of water tumbling over the edge behind it. After having had our shower we took a walk upstream in the sun to dry off. You can get right next to where the river plummets over the edge of the gorge – the health and safety regulations here are really rather lax!

We also went down into the gorge (armed with big sticks to scare off the baboons!) to what is called the boiling pot which is where the river makes a 90 degree turn before flowing on into Zimbabwe. It was lovely down there, it’s like a mini rainforest due to the amount of spray the area gets, we were wading through streams most of the way down! We also treated ourselves to ‘high tea’ at Livingstone’s poshest hotel the Royal Livingstone. It was quite the ridiculously gluttonous affair! You are presented with two tables piled with as many different types of scone, cake, muffin, tartlet you can imagine and then told to fill you plate with as many as it can take! Needless to say we were actually quite grateful to the cheeky vervet monkey that decided to come and relieve us of some of our treats by helping himself to a cake straight from our table! The hotel is beautifully situated, right on the banks of the river and you can see the spray from the falls from their lawns!