SOUTH LUANGWA NATIONAL PARK

We drove via Chipata to South Luangwa, only making a quick stop to get some supplies and refill our diesel.
Chipata is completely changed from our previous visit with several gas stations, banks and supermarkets. The roads improved enormously from our previous visit and is now paved all the way to the park. The nearby villages seem to be thriving with most homes now built from brick vs. grass, lots of bikes and cars, and wells and schools in nearly every village.
We stayed at a camp on the banks of the Luangwa River, just a kilometer from the park gate. We had a great view of the river teeming with hippos and crocs. Unfortunately the camp had a big monkey management issue and was over-run with baboons and vervet monkeys. We bought a few slingshots from the market in the nearby town of Mafue and this seems to be the best monkey deterrent we’ve tried. Just a glimpse of the slingshot sends the monkeys running.
South Luangwa is our current favorite park of the trip. It’s just as beautiful as we remember and while it’s much busier than on our last trip, it doesn’t feel over-run (yet). The rangers are extremely friendly, the landscape varied, the roads good and poaching seems to be under control. And we saw lion and leopard every day (as well as lots of elephant, hyena and other game). Unfortunately the rhino is extinct in Zambia and cheetah are not in this park, but it has everything else.
A few highlights were:
• Learning that an innovative farming program called Comaco is largely responsible for bringing more stable farming practices and wealth to the community and helped convert >1300 poachers to farmers
• Leopard in a tree with a kill (impala) that we watched for ~30 minutes before it climbed down and disappeared into the bush. We came back in the afternoon and saw an older cub sleeping on the ground. John heard purring and we then realized the mom was in the tree having a nap. We enjoyed watching this for over an hour with only a few other self-drivers briefly stopping by to have a look.
• Lion resting after a kill. The ranger told us about a pride of lions that had been sighted so we went to try to find them. A local taxi driver had tried to take his girlfriend to see the lions and managed to get stuck in a very steep wash that you needed to cross. We had to pull them out, but then we went together in the Landrover and found 9 over-stuffed lions trying to sleep off their huge meal. We watched them for over half an hour before any other vehicles came.
• Leopard evading hyena. On a night drive we saw 2 hyenas harassing a young leopard (they apparently like to follow leopard then steal their kills, those lazy/clever creatures).Read more