Some photos from our trip to Kafue at the end of July, better late than never. This was a camping trip on a long weekend, pretty much car camping with critters walking through the camp occasionally. This is a place where you really need to keep the food locked in the car. The tent was right on the river.
The tent were semi permanent structures with post beds in them, so they were comfy.
aforementioned critter (warthog) roaming through the camp. After dark you had to be escorted by staff from the main lodge to your tent as there can be critters around, after we did the evening game drive we saw a jackal as we returned to our tent from the main lodge.
A boa tree, I wonder how old this one is, this one was near the camp. An another view of the river.
In case you're wondering the your camp site is on one side of the river, the game preserve is technically on both sides, but the big cats stay on the other side of the river... one hopes.
So for the evening game drive you take a boat across the river, which has hippos, and then they drive you in open jeeps. Before I describe the game drive, about the hippos: this lodge has a resident juvenile hippo named Basil, who was lying on their grotto when Kim and I arrived, I thought it was a statue at first. Apparently he just saunters right into the lodge's outdoor seating area and hangs out. He does that because his father is literally trying to kill him because Basil won't leave the area. Basil isn't there all the time, just when the old man is trying to harsh his mellow.
Now back to the game drive, we saw the usual stuff, lots and lots of Kudu:
And something buck...
And Elephants; these Elephants you have to keep your distance from as they remember the days of poaching and will attack vehicle, no joke.
And the best part: 2 Lionesses with a cub. This was really amazing and frankly a little unnerving. To describe the scene: You're in an open jeep, traveling over soft pock marked ground and the sun is going down. The Jeep you're in has stalled out earlier. The lions are about 15-20 feet away.
The last picture is the cub. The lions think the car and the people in are one unit, which is too big to attack. If someone makes a big sudden movement or a loud noise the lions will be able distinguish the individual people and snack time will occur.
On the last day Kim and I went on a self game drive before we went home, this was really pretty neat because it was just the two us out amongst the animals. So you stay in the car and get whatever pictures you can from the car, for example a zebra butt:
I forget what these are really called, but they are pretty big like elk size.
A pretty bird:
And elephants. Remember the elephants will charge vehicles if you get too close, so driving along a road where you could turn a corner and be face to face with elephant was something that kept me alert. These guys were a comfortable distance from the road.
This was a really fun outting. I'm hoping we can get better pictures next time.
