Update from South Luangwga National Park, Zambia

Hi guys

Since our last post, we've made our way from Livingstone up to South Luangwa National Park. We stopped over for a night outside Lusaka after a short trip to Lake Kariba. It wasn't planned and ended up taking a lot longer than we thought it would - all for a beer on the side of the lake!

Getting to South Luangwa from Lusaka was a nightmare, honestly one of the worst days ever. Total distance was 513km of which the last 150km was dirt road. We planned on it taking about 7-8 hours in total to get here from Lusaka. It ended up taking 15 hours with last 100km taking us 7 hours! You do the math for our average speed....

The road was little more than a dirt/rock/mud track through villages, riverbeds and valleys. Much of it was done after dark which was a hassle when we came to villages with electric fences around them. The first one we saw we didn't think had power in it and Johan tried to move the wire which was spanned across the road (to keep elephants out). So with Johan's hair on end and the villagers all awake we made our way through their village and on with our journey. Only to come across another village - similar story although we didn't feel as safe going through that one. But the villagers were very accommodating and let us drive through. Other obstacles for the evening included, tracks not being used anymore, trees fallen across the track, bridges across the riverbeds which had collapsed, Johan falling into the river while checking the bridge condition and very very very bad roads.

We eventually got to the camp at 11pm after leaving Lusaka at 7:30, both exhausted and grumpy! The scary thing is that the route we took was the recommended route from our GPS mapping software. We weren't trying to be the Camel men we are today!  We'll try and upload a couple of short video clips soon.

Had a good day in the park today with two lion sightings, close encounter with elephants and lots and lots of hippos which wander through the campsite in the evenings.

More news and pics to follow soon.

Cheers

Rhett