As our flight to Mfuwe wasn't until 1600 we had most of the day to ourselves.
First on the agenda was breakfast - our route to breakfast was underground via a small escalator and up the other side to lovely large open restaurant. I didn't think the escalator was working so we walked down the static escalator - but it was only static until I broke the beam at the bottom - I looked round and saw John, who was behind me, trying to come down the up escalator - this resulted in him, in desperation, jumping the last two steps. We didn't make the same mistake going back!
We then relaxed by the pool - a long swim, a lovely coffee and a relaxing massage filled the time until we were collected for the airport.
The only glitch with the flight was a delay of 30 minutes due to a technical fault on the plane - always worrying when you don't know what it is!
We arrived in Mfuwe where at 6pm it was still a hot and steamy 36 degrees - phew. It was greener than I expected apparently thanks to some heavy rain in October - but the Luangwa River had but a mere trickle in it and was very different from our trip of April 2013.
We were collected and taken to Nkwali with 3 of our fellow travellers - Catherine - a South African travel journalist living in Australia and an English couple Martin and Catherine from Devon.
The final member of our group was already at Nkwali, an older Swiss lady - Regula. Our guide was a long standing experienced member of the Robin Pope team, Jacob.
We all chatted over dinner but could sense a storm in the air which luckily held off until we arrived back under cover of the main area, as we arrived the torrential rain tap was turned on.
When it slowed and we finally returned to our lodge the bathroom was flooded in part requiring a flip flop trip to the loo and stepping over some muddy debris from the thatched roof.
By chance it was the lodge we stayed in on our last visit - just as good and we had a lovely nights sleep before our early wake up call.
(Today's photo is of a newly born impala - the rains mean the mums start to drop their babies as the grass grows - needless to say we saw several wobbly legged newborns.)