We left London last night at 7.15pm and arrived in Lusaka at 6.15am today. By 8am we were seamlessly through immigration, reunited with our luggage, had taken money (kwechas) out of the ATM, paid our domestic departure tax, through domestic departures and on our flight to Mfuwe. We arrived in Mfuwe at 9.10am, and were collected by our guide; we were soon heading towards our first camp, Nkwali via village and bush. Brilliant, it was so effortless to leave London and wake up in the bush!
The weather was warm and continued to warm up - blue sky and white puffy clouds -bliss.
We were shown the camp and our lodge which looked out over the Luangwa river - you could hear the resident hippos grunting away.
We quickly unpacked before the 1130 lunch drum; lunch was followed by a swim and siesta before a 3.30pm afternoon tea and 4.00pm evening / night game drive.
The highlight of lunch was the arrival of an elephant munching his way through the vegetation in the lagoon in front of the dining area.
The evening drive reminded us of the different breeds of zebra ( no shadow brown stripe just crisp black and white stripes) and giraffe - Thornicrofts - which you don't see in other parts of Africa. This is an area where you also find the water dependent Puku ( today's photograph). Also very evident was the almost constant snorting and barking of male impalas - this is their rutting season -and they were either fighting off males or chaperoning females. Their minds were on one thing only! The highlight of the night drive was seeing lions walking along a dry river bed -they looked a bit thin and the youngster was very scrawny - either it was ill or only getting the scraps.
They rounded off a great day - and it was back to the river to cross, via the boat, back to lodge for dinner and bed.