The Tanzania / Zambia border crossing was the most chaotic and bureaucratic so far but after some persistence & running around on the Zambian side we eventually made it in. The first stage of our journey here was to head to South Luwanga National Park, through the sparsley populated and little travelled north eastern corner of the country.

We had an interesting run in with a man in the village of Muyombe near the Malawi border who claimed to be an immigration official. He was demanding to see our passports despite the fact that we had no intention of crossing the border. In a rather bizarre exchange we agreed he would write down our details with him holding one corner of the passport and me the other!

We had a few days staying around South Luwanga and one full day in the park. The game viewing was quite good, especially the elephant who seemed a bit twitchy so we had to be cautious approaching and driving past them. We bumped into an English couple also in a Foley's equipped Landy which we had to tow start in the park as it broke down. We drove with them as far as we dared into the northern section of the park, which is pretty inaccessible at this time of year.

With a few days at the fantastic Pioneer Camp in Lusaka we stocked up, enjoyed the T-bone steaks and had a few drinks with the English owner.

After Lusaka we crossed the border to Zimbabwe at Kariba, which apart from a bit of a grilling from the police was a straight forward affair.

We had 3 wonderful nights in the wild Mana Pools National Park, camping right on the banks of the Zambezi river. The camp site was completely unfenced and we had elephant wandering through and hippo grazing around us during the night. At this time of year much of the game moves off the flood plain by the river inland a bit, so the wildlife wasn't so spectacular but it was more than compensated for by the fact that there were virtually no other people in the park and we had so much freedom. We got into a regular routine of heading out of the camp early in the morning and eating our breakfast on the roof of the Landy in the open plains spotting wildlife as we supped our coffee!

Eventually we had to leave and stayed overnight again in Kariba where we had a good knees up with the locals. We then spent a few days driving south tracking the lake along quite decent gravel roads to Vic Falls. We wild camped along the way and one morning awoke to see fresh leopard or lion tracks around our vehicle, parts of the country still feel quite wild.

We are now back on the Zambia side of the Zambezi in Livingstone to await the arrival of friends Jan & Paul who will be travelling with us for the next three weeks......