Kafue National Park

HIPPOS

The most exotic wildlife we've seen in our village is five-year-old Muso running down the path naked, so we were excited when we arrived at Kafue National Park and found hippo tracks the size of dinner plates on the bank of the river, only 25 ft from our campsite. However, what was novel in the daylight became frightening after sunset when the Kafue River became shrouded in darkness penetrated only by a glaring full moon. Hippos bellowed as we cooked dinner, the sound echoing over the dark water so that we could only nervously guess at their location. Around 23 hrs, we awoke to the sound of splashing and scraping along the bank, followed by lumbering footsteps and snorting. It was too nearby for comfort.

"Chris," I whispered as he peered through the mosquito screen, "What if it tramples our tent?"
He hesitated. "It won't."

"Hippos graze on land at night," I reminded him. "It's coming closer." Beyond our flimsy, nylon two-person tent lay a field of lush grass, kept green during the dry season by a sprinkler system.

We sat in the darkness, straining to track its movements by sound. Minutes passed slowly, but the hippo never strayed far. My heart leapt when it unexpectedly fell silent. I was sure it had heard us rustling and was creeping up, dangerously curious. But then it returned to foraging. We deliberated with growing dread. Should we wait for it to move away and then quietly slip out, and walk three minutes upstream to the lodge to wait out daybreak? Or where we safer remaining and being quiet? Chris dimmed his headlamp with his hands as I opened our Bradt guidebook. "Hippos are widely credited with killing more people than any other African mammal," I read softly. "Strongly territorial, herds of ten or more animals are presided over by a dominant male who will readily defend his patriarchy to the death." Close to hyperventilating now, we decided to wait for it to meander a safe distance away before we escaped to the lodge. We listened and waited as it slowly foraged its way downstream, our hope growing. Then it turned around. It was circling, not leaving. With resignation, we realized we were helpless, at the whim of an unpredictable 1,500 kg animal. After an hour, I began to calm down as I realized it hadn't strayed from the water's edge. My earlier adrenaline melted into exhaustion. "We can sleep in shifts," I offered drowsily to Chris. Two hours later it finally moved away.

BASIL

The following morning, we found out that was our first introduction to Basil, Mukambi Safari Lodge's resident hippo. A young male, he was violently chased away by another group but found a sort of refuge from harassment at Mukambi. He grazes on the grass in front of reception regularly and even enters the lodge. Once, a larger male hippo chased him right through the dining room in the midst of a meal, so the staff always watches him closely. When we were there, they hurried to block off the dining room and reception area with a wicker sofa when he came around. So Basil lay down and slept right there on the second floor of the stone patio overlooking the river like an overgrown house cat. For over two hours he was sprawled out as guests tip-toed behind the relative safety of the sofa and the glass-fronted doors of the lodge taking photographs.

LIONS

Kafue was the sixth National park I've been to in Southern Africa, the second in Zambia. I've been on many game drives and have seen it all. Except lions, which tend to be elusive. In Kafue, we were lucky enough to see two lionesses a total of three times. On a morning drive, we found a lioness in a dry riverbed, chasing away a pack of vultures. She pawed the sand where the carrion-eaters had been and plopped down to rest. Suddenly she rose, keeping her tawny square head at the same level of the long, sunburnt grasses, looking intently into the distance at a herd of puku. Lithely she stepped through the grasses, never losing concentration, not unlike a house cat stalking a mouse. 150 yards away, she stopped. The leader of the puku herd had spotted her and was staring at intently at her as she was at him as his unconcerned charges nibbled grass. Neither predator nor prey moved for several minutes, trapped in a staring contest. Our land cruiser moved on. More than likely, the lioness had lost her advantageous element of surprise and abandoned the hunt, preferring to pick up again in the cooler temperatures at dusk.

We saw her again at the same place in the late afternoon. She was on the opposite bank of the dry riverbed but crossed right in front of our land cruiser, undisturbed by the breathless humans eagerly snapping pictures of her.

Our second night camping, we heard a lion calling multiple times from the northwest. By the third time, it had undeniably gotten closer, but as their roars can carry a distance of over 8 km, he still could have been some distance from us. It was really amazing to sit around a campfire and hear lions and jackals though.

WARTHOGS

At the lodge's ground level, there's a storage area cut into the stone foundation containing bags of charcoal. And a resident family of three warthogs. To my extreme delight, they snort just like domestic pigs.

ET CETERA

In addition to watching vervet monkeys, puku, some amazing birds, and warthogs right in our campsite, we also went on two day game drives and one at night. Animals spotted: lions, bush baby, civet "cats", elephants, jackals, warthogs, vultures, puku, water bucks.

It was an amazing experience seeing this side of Africa that we don't get the chance to see in our daily lives.

Top to bottom and left to right: A male kudu. Definitely the ugliest antelope.

Puku in flight and puku mother and fawn.

Baboons.

A bush baby. One of the few nocturnal primates.

Elephants sniffing the air to smell our scent.

A tree hyrax that fell out of its tree and landed with a thud.

A pretty bird that looks like a lilac-breasted roller, except its green.