Tena Tena, Day Two
We’re all doing a lot better in terms of sleep. We think we are pretty much over jet lag, but it is harder getting up at 0515 in the morning. I straggle to the campfire for breakfast, and all the happy conversation wakes me up. The moon is also just rising:
We have a great morning game drive, stopping wherever we want just to watch – herons and cranes fishing in the lagoons, baboons warming themselves, some with tiny tiny baboon babies. We see greater kudu, so shy, and we feel so blessed to see such amazing creatures. It’s just another great morning in the Luangwa valley.
AdventureMan spotted this, and called it Immature Impala Arrangement:
This elephant, fortunately across the canal, was seriously angry with us and eager to chase us. We left in a hurry:
I loved this quiet hippo, walking up the canal looking for the right spot to soak:
Mama Giraffe told him to stay put, and he did:
Back to camp for another nice lunch, and we think we are going to take a little snooze, but . . .
No napping today, we have visitors! A herd of elephant are breaking down and eating trees outside our tent.
At afternoon tea, where we all gather preceding the afternoon game drive, the elephants came into the camp, down between our tent and the last tent, blocking access to the game vehicles. Once they sauntered off a little ways, we took the path to the other side, got in our cars, only to discover the elephants blocking the drive we take to get out. We waited fifteen minutes or so until they finished with the acacia tree, then moved far enough inside the bush – maybe eight feet – that our drivers felt comfortable passing.
Down the road, we are once again blocked, this time by the (normally) shy giraffe.
We sit patiently, knowing eventually the giraffe will get tired, or scared, or annoyed and move on . . . but that doesn’t happen. After about a half an hour, we leave the road and drive around, giving the giraffe plenty of space. Look at those colors! The sun is setting! Giraffes, be shy! We need to go!
Sunset is spectacular, and we almost miss it because of the giraffe blocking the road.
The hippo are all active tonight, and I want to get one of those classic shots with the wide open jaw, but every time it happens, someone has asked me a question or I am listening to a joke and I miss it! By the time I get focused, the mouth is closed. It’s like a great cosmic joke, on me, so I figure I just need to be happy with what I have.
The sky is so clear, the first night without some cloud cover, and on the way back, we stop in a clear glade and Julius points to constellations we don’t see in our hemisphere. The big dipper is there, but down low, near the horizon, and the north star is not visible at all. We see the southern cross, and the scorpion, and the long length of the milky way, and I am reminded of being a little girl in Alaska, where the stars shone bright and clear in the dark sky. We get so used to the ambient light ever present in our cities, that we have no idea
what the stars look like without it. The moon has not yet risen, so the sky is very very black, and each star is clear and sparkly.
It is such a luxury, just leaning back and seeing this vast expanse of black with the sparkling stars. We also see a shooting star, and we can spot several satelites as they speed across the sky at enormous height and speed.
Dinner, back at the camp, is wonderful, an outdoor barbecue under the trees, steak, chicken, kabobs and nshima, the Zambian staple, like polenta, a corn based starch, accompanied by tomato relish, and it is very similar to comfort food served in the southern USA, grits, and also similar to a family dinner dish served with rice in Kuwait.
We all proceed very cautiously to our tents, and it is a good thing. Shortly after our arrival, we hear the howooooot of the hyena, and we can hear the munch munch of the hippo. Elephant come back, between our tent and the last, and crash and crunch. In spite of it all, we sleep soundly and awake all too soon to the day we will leave Tena Tena.
Tena Tena and a Trip to the Salt Pans
When that wake-up call comes, you really need to have everything ready. It’s cold, and while I like colder weather, I find it slows my thinking, especially early in the morning. By the time you load up in the car, you need to be sure you have drinking water with you, your spare camera battery charged, your camera in the backpack, heavier clothing for early in the drive, lighter cover ups for later, when it gets hot. You need sunscreen with you, and insect repellent, and anything else which makes you comfortable, like kleenex tissues, and lip balm (it gets very dry out on the game drives.)
It’s approaching mid-winter, so it is getting colder. If you could see us first thing in the morning, in all our layers, you would laugh, and you would wonder if we are in Africa or Alaska. We are all wrapped up in T-shirts, sweatshirts, sweaters, hats, scarves wrapped around our faces, blankets . . . it is early in the morning, we are in an open vehicle, and it gets COLD in June!
We are on our way out to the salt pans. The last time we did this, four years ago, one of our passengers got really really sick. It was awful. There was nothing we could do for him, except to pretend we didn’t hear him retching in the back, throwing up over the back of the truck. We all felt so sorry for him. We all knew, there but for the grace of God, it could any one of us.
Dawn coming up on the way to the salt pan:
This trip was totally different. We had an unexpected cloud cover much of the morning, which kept things cool. We kept passing villagers, men on bikes coming from the north with baskets of chickens to sell, to buy necessities to take back to their northern villages. Once, we saw an elephant, and warned some of the men on bikes that there was an elephant ahead. We found one man just mounting his bike; he had seen the elephant and had dropped his bike and run. These elephants are massive and if grumpy – or in ‘must’ – they can be lethal, and mean. If the man runs away, the elephant might stomp his basket full of chickens, or his bike, just out of meanness.
We couldn’t resist shooting this herd of impala, just their heads peeking up over the tall golden grass:
As we near the salt pans, we spot lion on the road ahead of us. We can see a mother and her cub.
Julius knows a way around, so we go around to the other side, where we can see four lion – and then six lions! They are all young males, females and cubs, and are resting.
Julius tells us not to be fooled by their sleepy expressions; the lions are actually taking in everything, the sounds we make, the way we smell, and the way we move. Did you know male lions are “tri lobal?”
Then the lions decide to hunt, they stand, stretch, and walk off into the tall grass – and we love the way they just disappear, their golden color matching nearly the color of the golden grass:
We spend about an hour just enjoying watching the lions, then head for the borehole hotspring for tea. The vista is both bleak and lush – where the water from the borehole has trickled, you can see green. The water is very hot, and you can smell the sulpher.
There is a funny story about the bore hole. A lodge was being built, Chichele, which wanted a borehole. The bore hole drillers asked the locals where was “chichele” (which means salty) and they didn’t know about the lodge; they sent the drillers to the old salt pan, also called “chichele.” They drilled a bore hole – out in the middle of nowhere – only to discover they had drilled in the wrong spot. They capped it, and today there is an oasis of green out in the middle of an otherwise fairly barren plain. It attracts a lot of wildlife – and those who prey on wildlife.
As we leave the hot spring, we spot more lions, maybe ten, a different pride. I say we, but it is really Julius, who sees the vultures circling and thinks there may be a kill in the area. We spot the lions, and then start the long drive back, stopping here and there along the way to take pictures or to learn about a whole lot of things we don’t know much about.
On our way back to Tena Tena, we pass through “The Colony” where the Yellow Billed Storks are nesting, hatching their young and teaching them how to fly. It is noisy, and hilarious; there is a lot going on. We particularly love the ‘flight school’ as young stork hesitate to take off, then practice their take offs and landings. Occasionally, one doesn’t make it, and there are Marabou Storks on the ground, who finish them off quickly.
We are late, and fortunately Claire has had sandwich plates made up for us so we won’t starve (LOL). We eat at the bar, and head for our cabins, but it is not an afternoon for resting – we have a visitor:
Most of the time, these little bushbuck are too shy for us to photograph, but here in the camp, there are a couple who have become used to the smells and noises of us intruders, and is oblivious to our cameras.
The afternoon drive starts off sedately along the Luangwa:
But we find beauty in the small things as we head toward sundown. These are Egyptian Geese settling in the lagoon nearby:
There are also elephant, an entire family, playing in the water:
Sunset is spectacular. I am drinking Campari and Bitter Lemon, and because we are heading back early, I drink the whole drink.
Julius and Davis serve up sundowners:
We had asked for a short night drive, but after ‘sundowners’ by the river, we find a pair of mating leopards, and the drive goes on a a lot longer than we intended. Mating leopards are exciting, they make a lot of noise, and are well worth a late drive, especially with a sky full of stars. NOTE TO SELF: No matter how tempting, limit your liquid intake at sundowners! Once the sky is dark, there is no safe bush to step behind and the roads are bumpy!
Julius helps us find the Southern Cross on the way back to camp, and shows us how to identify the Scorpion. The skies of the southern hemisphere are strange to us, but the stars are so bright and the night is so dark we just lie back and revel in the beauty of the heavens.
A very lively dinner, with the Swiss foursome, a new Scottish couple and us, eating ‘gammon’ which is ham, with pumpkin and mashed potatoes. Dessert is an amarula ice cream, which leads us all to the bar for shots of amarula liquer before he head for bed. It’s a lot harder organizing for the next early morning after a glass of wine and a shot of amarula, but we sleep like babies. We do hear lion roaring, but we just go right back to sleep.
Transfer from Nkwali Camp to Tena Tena Camp
Monday, 3 June transfer to Tena Tena
Fred takes us on a game drive to Tena Tena, and it is a great morning, with a lot of fun. First thing out, we come across another elephant family, and we love stopping to visit with the elephants.
We stopped to take photos of signs for Nkwali, and I really love this one because we are the shadows taking photos in the photo, LOL.
There were baboons out grooming on the bridge going into the park, and I took a photo of the restroom. It was primitive but totally clean – wouldn’t you prefer that to modern, but totally filthy? And . . . it beats going behind a bush. I always think about that lion lying under the tree; he sees me and I don’t see him.
We saw a cooperative waterbuck, with the target circle on his bottom:
And a family of frolicking zebra:
A great hippo – this one is for you, BL:
And another fish eagle, which make a great screech as they hunt:
We had a great stop for a family of giraffe feeding, then crossing the road to the flat plain across the road where they drink and continue on their journey. It’s one of the things we like best about the Robin Pope safaris; the guides respect our delight in spending time just observing the animals. We shoot photos, but we also love just watching, trying to figure out what is going on. The guides know so much, and Fred is good at helping us understand a lot of the smaller things.
We reach the river, where the bags are loaded into a small canoe, and
we are too. We wave goodbye to Fred, are poled across the Luangwa, and
meet our next guide, Julius, on the other side of the river, for a
drive to our next stop, Tena Tena Camp.
Tena Tena is one of our favorite camps ever. It is sort of tented – if
tents are tall enough to walk around in, with a great veranda for
sitting and watching the wildlife passing within feet in the nearby
lagoon, with an outdoor bathroom with separate circular areas for
toilet and shower, all shaded by a tall tree whose branches entirely
cover the bathroom area. Between the two is a large dressing room with
shelves and a luggage rack.
Our tent:
Our washing up area:
Our shower area:
Our dressing area:
View looking out from our tent through our veranda:
Oh, and frogs. I couldn’t get my toilet to flush, so I took the top off to see if it was all hooked up, and FIVE frogs looked up at me, two sitting on that ball that goes up and down, two on the flushing mechanism and one in the little notch at the back of the toilet. I guess they love a cold, damp environment 😦
A short walk away from our tent is the gathering room with its large bar, and down about twenty paces further is the outdoor dining room, where
scrumptious lunches and dinners are served.
As we arrive, we are met by Claire and Nyale with cold “flannels”
to wipe our dusty faces and hands, and then shown to our cabins. We
have a few minutes to organize and then we head for lunch, where we
meet the other six guests in the camp. Tena Tena hosts ten guests
maximum, so it isn’t that hard to meet everyone. The wait staff excel in napkin folding; today we are eating fish 🙂
And “what will you eat in Africa?”
It’s a long, leisurely lunch, and then back to the cabin to unpack a little
and catch a quick snooze before the afternoon game run. We spot a huge elephant, tearing apart a tree, and a lion lazing on the beach, a couple bush babies, a genet and elephant shrew, and search for leopard, but never find him. Back at Tena Tena for late dinner, we can barely keep our eyes open, and excuse ourselves soon after dessert to lay our our clothes for the next day and hit the sack.
And! We see a Scope’s Owl!
To bed, we have a long day tomorrow, going to the Salt Pans!
Nkwali Camp, Day 2
We’ve booked three nights at each camp, so we get at least two full days at each, and additional drives or hikes for the transfer days – there is never a dull moment.
The drums, the drums, and we are ready and out the door in no time. Today, as we are walking down to catch the boat, my toe catches on a root and I almost fall into the river. Even though the Luangwa is shallow, it would still be humiliating, and I would have to go back and change clothes, and then (gulp) there are those crocodiles . . . . The path is rough and I am a little unbalanced by my backpack, and by the grace of God, the guide, Keyala, steels himself, I hit him and he doesn’t fall in the water when I hit. He holds steady. Thanks be to God! (By evening, there was a new set of stairs, and no roots.)
Our day starts with leopard. We are once again at a green lagoon, watching ducks and cranes, when Keyala says “look, there is a leopard!” and about two hundred yards back, he is at a pond, drinking, then quietly, slowly, turns and walks back into the forest. What a great way to start!
Sorry, the leopard is in the distance and you learn to shoot fast. It doesn’t always make for the sharpest shot, but by the time you get all the settings right and the focus set, the leopard is gone and you have a photo of the lagoon where the leopard was, who wants to see that?
We have a lively morning, full of birds and more elephant and giraffe:
These giraffe are young males, and they are fighting with their necks, sort of comical to watch, but they can seriously hurt one another. I think these ones are more playing at fighting:
This hippo has gotten tired of the fighting for a spot in the river and has found a lovely isolated spot in the lagoon. You can tell he is a weathered old soul by the scars on his body.
We also get a chance to photograph that glorious fish eagle in a tree – this is how you usually see them; the one I shot in the previous post on Nkwali was actually catching a fish. You don’t get that shot often:
Many stops later, we are driving along and we smell sausages. Keyala says it must be a nearby lodge, but there is no lodge near by. . . We turn a corner and there is a crew, with a fire, and camp chairs all set up, and we realize we are about to experience one of the infamous Nkwali BBQ cook-outs, oh what fun. We are overlooking another great lagoon, full of hippo, Cape Buffalo, baboons, and all kinds of wildlife. Robert, the stellar camp cook, is there asking us how we like our eggs, and with our eggs are sausage, bacon, corn fritters, fried onion, baked beans and toast from loaves of bread made in camp, big thick slices.
On our way back to camp, we will cross the river again:
And here is one of many of the crocodiles sunning on the river sand:
Just before we get back to camp, we see a Zambian local, fishing in the river. Look closely at the canoe – we used to see canoes like this in Alaska, too, dugouts. Imagine the hours it takes to hollow out a tree so that you can use it as a boat, and imagine that if you have very little, the man who has created for himself a boat can be a man with an enhanced opportunity to feed his family . . .
Once again, we arrive back at camp, and snooze a little until dinner. Bumping around in the Toyota trucks wears us out, and we are still jet lagging, some times we think we’ve beat it, and then when we least expect it, it beats us. I really need to wash my hair, it gets so dusty from the trails, but I really really need a nap and a nap almost always trumps washing hair.
As we head out on our last Nkwali game drive, there is an air of excitement. We find the noble-looking kudu, so shy, and he astonishes us by walking across the road so we can get a clear shot of those amazing curled antlers.
You’d think there would come a time when we might think “Oh, it’s just another elephant family,” but for us, that time never comes. We always watch them with fascination, thinking how very smart they are, how far they range, how they communicate, and how they mourn the deaths of their group. Elephant are huge, and they have their own agenda, they are not there for our entertainment but for their own survival, so we watch them with great respect.
Keyala takes us across the river and we head up to the highest hill for sundowners, half-searching for lion and leopard on the way. The highest hill has a 180 degree view of the land all the way to the escarpment, and the sun sets at just about 90 degrees – right in front of us. Behind us, about the same time, the full moon rises. It is awesome.
This is Keyala and Keyfus. Keyfus (Kay-fus), on the left, is the same as Cephus in Greek, meaning rock – Saint Peter’s name. Keyala is our guide, and recently marketed for Robin Pope Safaris in Seattle. 🙂
On this high hill I spot a tree, Sterculia quinqueloba, a tree I have never seen before, and Keyala tells us the name. It is such an unusual tree:
Sunset from the high hill in the Chongwe Game Park:
Moonrise in the east, magical:
Dinner conversation is fast and furious back at camp, and we excuse ourselves to make sure we are packed up and ready for departure the next day for Tena Tena. We say a sad farewell to Chris, and Tina, and Keyala, who have taken such good care of us and gotten our Zambia safari off to such a great and happy start.
Lusaka, Zambia to Nkwali, South Luangwa Valley, Zambia
Lusaka to Nkwali
“The shuttle will leave promptly at one” the concierge scolded, as if we had been late for any shuttle before.
“We’ll be there!” we responded, and we were. We had our bags packed and ready, and were in the lobby by 12:45. The shuttle, this time a big bus, was just for us, and in spite of Friday afternoon traffic, made good time to the airport.
For all our efforts to be on time, we learned that our flight would be delayed another hour and a half. On one hand, we are always glad when airlines make needed repairs . . . we’d rather have a safe flight. On the other hand, the sun sets early, it is winter in Zambia, and it would be nearly dark when we arrived. It isn’t like the US, or Kuwait, or Qatar, or even Lusaka, where there are strong lights so you can land after dark. If it is dark in Mfuwe, your plane can’t land. We really, really don’t want to stay in Lusaka another night when we really want to be in the bush.
It was very nearly dark when we arrived, but we did arrive in time to land. We missed the sunset, but we got to see the villagers all en route to the nearest markets for Friday evening shopping, and got to camp just in time to set down our bags and have dinner. Earlier campers have left, and for the first night, the four of us have the entire camp to ourselves.
Here is a view that thrills me – the full moon, as seen from our shower:
Nkwali is a Robin Pope Camp, and we have been coming back regularly since our first trip about 12 years ago. We were last there four years ago with out son and his wife.
“What would you like to see?” our hostess Tina and camp manager Chris asked us.
“I’ve always loved giraffe,” one of our group replied, “Can you arrange for a giraffe?”
“Yes, we can arrange that,” he smiled.
Meanwhile, camp wildlife joined us for dinner:
Still jet lagging, we went to bed and AdventureMan was sound asleep quickly, just after hearing the “hahahahahahahaha” of the hippos. Just as I was falling asleep, I heard what I thought were the guards footsteps around our cabin, but they went on and on, and it sounded like he was sitting on our front porch. After about five minutes, I got up and peeked out the curtains. A hippo! A hippo, not ten feet away, munching on greenery just off our patio. It’s amazing how quietly a hippo walks – soundlessly, on those big round feet – but how noisily he munches. It was the munching I had mistaken for footsteps.
There are also monkeys, which are adorable, like tiny kittens, playful and scampering, but they like to come in the cabin. We are told that they don’t bother with anything except food, so not to keep food open in our cabins, but our neighbor had her medications knocked about, and a glass full of soda sent crashing to the floor by monkeys – while she was right there showering!
Morning came too quickly, the drums drumming at 0530 to wake us for a 0545 breakfast and 0600 departure for the bush.
It’s a beautiful day, we eat some hot porridge and load up for a morning in the bush.
Just leaving the camp, we saw hyena ahead of us on the road, and a warthog family, and then giraffe! One, off in the distance! Later in the day we would see more of these Thornicroft giraffe, endemic to this part of Zambia.
We drove up to the river cross barge, a private barge funded by the local camps to help get their guests across to the national park on the other side. The barge trip is an event in itself, hand pulled across the wide, but shallow Luangwa river. Shallow, but full of hippo, and full of crocodiles, too.
The best part of the morning was reaching a huge lagoon, full of exotic birds, and with a constant stream of animals coming to drink, parades of zebra, elephant, a fishing eagle, ibis, Egyptian duck and many others. We are a patient bunch, and we loved just finding a good position and watching the game pass through, getting a good shot when we could. By the time we headed back to the lodge for lunch, we were exhausted.
This isn’t the most crisp photo, but I love the length of that loooonnng trunk reaching out into the lagoon for water. Sometimes you only get one shot:
This is a fish eagle. The next shot, he has a fish in his claws, but it isn’t a very clear shot:
Nkwali Cape Buffalo
Then, just for our companion, we came across giraffe – lots of giraffe, but it’s not easy to get a good clear shot, because you are mostly shooting them against trees, head in the leaves, and you have to shoot fast or all you get are giraffe butts, walking away:
We leave the Land Cruiser on the National Park side of the river, and men from the camp poll us back. The river is so shallow that we almost get stuck on the sand bar.
You’d think we could just walk across, but there are territorial hippo and hungry crocodile, and we don’t want to tangle with either of them.
One of the funniest continuing jokes on the trip are the questions from people who have never traveled in Africa who with great concern ask “But what will you eat?” We took photos often, because we ate often, and well. This is our lunch the first day when we got back:
I always have a list of things I need to do. Like at these camps, women need to wash out their own underwear, it’s a cultural thing, men are doing the laundry but they won’t touch womens underclothes, so I always have some clothespins to hang things to dry. I also wanted to wash my hair, which gets dusty quickly out driving on the game drives. I have to do it in the afternoon, so it will dry (no hair dryers in the bush), and then I need to lay down, because I’m really sleepy, still jet lagging. When I wake up to the “tea-time” drums two hours later. I felt so good! I felt like it was the best sleep I had gotten since leaving Pensacola, and it made me feel good, and full of energy once again.
Here is what our cabin, and Nkwali Camp, look like:
This is our writing desk; there is one in each cabin:
This is where you can unpack while you stay here, and where I lay out my clothes the night before so I don’t have to think when we get up early the next morning. When you are getting up really early, and only have about 15 minutes to get ready, you need to be able to get dressed without thinking too much about it. (It’s kind of like going to kid’s camp, only this is grown-up camp, LOL)
I almost hate to show you too much, it’s all such a wonderful surprise, finding these lovely cabins in the wild, but some people are so afraid to give it a try, I wanted to reassure you that it is quite civilized:
This doesn’t look like a lot, but the screen is enough to keep the wild animals out of your room when the sun goes down:
We love this bathroom:
We really really love this, this huge shower, with dual heads, big enough for both of us to shower at the same time, in the hot afternoon.
This is the Nkwali dining area:
This is the pool area and lagoon adjoining the dining area:
This is the gathering area/bar, and also where the campfire is, and where we eat breakfast around the campfire:
It seems to me that Nkwali is pretty much the intake area, where they help us all understand how things work, then they send us off to the other camps, Nsefu and Tena Tena, or to the fly camps (outdoor camping), or the mobile tented safaris. Before you go, you have to know the protocols, so Nkwali sort of educates you.
Your day goes like this – drums, get up, get dressed, go eat, load up into the car, go look for game. Back to camp for lunch, take care of washing underwear or hair, take a nap, drums, wake up, drink tea and eat cake, go for a game drive, stop for sun-downers, see lions (if you are lucky), back to camp, meet up in the gathering area/bar for drinks, drums for dinner, eat dinner, lay out your clothes, fall into bed (repeat)
After tea, we took a boat, polling back across to the national park, where we left the car. We drive, admiring giraffe (many!) and elephant and hippo. We run into one elephant who seriously, seriously does not like us. He does several mock charges, but he doesn’t walk away, he keeps charging.
We had a beautiful sunset on the river, and then went seriously looking for lion.
At the same time the sun is setting in the west, the full moon is rising in the east, fabulous:
The most exciting part was coming across a group of three young lions, one with a battered and bleeding ear, who tolerated our photo-taking until they didn’t. Then, one got up with a roar, and started walking and roaring.
Have you ever heard a lion roar? It is very very impressive; very loud, very resonant, it shakes your bones with its power. Shortly, one of his brothers joined him. They walked away down the wadi (what we call dry river beds when we live in the Middle East) and we thought we had a great night. Little did we know we were also going to have a leopard walk right next to our vehicle, and each of us was working frantically to figure out night time settings, so totally unexpected that not one of us got a photo. It didn’t matter. The very closeness of the passage and his utter disregard for our presence, his focus, was amazing and memorable.
All this fresh air and fabulous meals – Now I am back on schedule and sleeping through the night. I can hear the hippo outside munching as I am drifting off – but I just smile to myself and go happily straight to sleep.
Lusaka, and the Taj Pamodzi
The first two times we stayed in Lusaka, we stayed at the Holiday Inn, or was it the Hilton? I can’t remember, all I remember is that it was very basic, and I don’t think it is there anymore. The first time we stayed there, it was alright, not great, but alright. It had a free shuttle to and from the airport, and a good dining room. Our first time, we had also arrived without luggage, and needed to pick up some things, quickly, to get us through until our luggage arrived.
The hotel recommended a taxi driver who drove us to two locations, the ShopRite and the Arcades. We found what we needed, basics, pants, socks, sweaters – it was winter, and it was cold. We had read the warnings about Lusaka, the high crime rate, the violent crime, so we didn’t venture far, and returned to our hotel when we were finished. I still have the sweater/sweatshirt I bought then, it was made in Cambodia and I still use it when we go to the bush.
The second time we were there, we were on the same floor with all the soccer teams (football if you are not American) in Zambia, a floor full of 11 – 18 year old males. It was very noisy, and they all hung out in the halls the way traveling kids do, so we had to negotiate through them to get to our room. It wasn’t an experience I wanted to repeat.
We had seen the Taj Pamodzi, it was nearby, so when we were meeting up with our son and his wife we reserved there. The hotel is nice enough, the rooms are basic, but the hotel is quiet and clean, and the best we can tell, about as good as it gets in Lusaka. (We can see a new Radisson being built near the shopping center The Arcades, so it might be a good bet to try in the future.)
The room we stayed in this time was almost identical. We had arranged for a transfer; the driver was waiting for us. That’s good. On the way to the hotel, we were NOT stopped this time by armed thugs wanting a donation. That is great. There were still a lot of people on the streets vending, but they were not aggressive.
When we arrived at the hotel, check in was smooth and we arranged to meet up for dinner. I snoozed a little, AdventureMan explored, then he, too, snoozed a little. There was a magnificent sunset.
We met our companions for dinner and had a great time, service was superb and the food was pretty good.
We got a good night’s sleep. The next day we spotted a large mosque nearby, but we couldn’t hear the call to prayer. In the morning’s paper there is a large article about churches in Zambia, and that Zambia has been declared “a Christian nation.” I wonder how well religious tolerance is working out here. When we have visited Zambia before, we have been so impressed with the culture of mutual respect they cultivate, this nation of multiple tribal affiliations and languages. Is that mutual respect and tolerance stretched to include religious respect and tolerance?
Here is the view from our room:
One of the very cool things we noticed is that there has definitely been an upgrade in the electrical system; they now have hairdryers that work AND this great receptacle system so that just about anyone can plug in their electronic device that needs charging:
I don’t know if all the rooms are like this, but one very odd feature is that as you walk into the room, you are a step higher than the rest of the room. The bathroom is on this upper level, and then you step down into the bedroom. We didn’t have a problem with it, but if you are jet lagging, and up in the middle of the night, and disoriented and sleepy, you could forget that step and take a tumble.
Here, There and Out of My Mind
I’ll start with the ending, it’s all come to a crashing halt. I feel like a child who has been taken to a day in the park, all the rides, all the sugary foods and now they say I have to come home?
Yes. I will tell you about the trip, with lots of photos, so you won’t think I am just being a bore, you can look at the photos and imagine yourself there with us. At the end of the trip, it all goes downhill, the lovely African adventure has ended.
Leaving our last camp, we fly in a very small airplane back from the lower Zambezi to Lusaka. We drive to the airstrip, the pilot checks our names against his list, we climb aboard and take off. That’s the airstrip. The last time we were there, we don’t think it was paved.
It is the best flight we have all day – two charming pilots, five passengers, it is a great flight. Lusaka isn’t so bad; we have a competent ticket agent who manages to book our bags all the way to Pensacola, so we don’t have to scurry around picking up bags, then coming back in to check them in, because we booked our travel to Johannesburg separately from out travel from JoBurg to Lusaka, it’s complicated but it all has to do with alliances. Not my alliances, airline alliances.
BTW, Lusaka International airport is sweet. Quiet. One tiny little restaurant in the departure area where we found good grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. Some shops, not greatly stocked.
Lusaka airport – you walk to the plane, walk up the stairs, the old fashioned way:
Johannesburg transit is horrible. It always is. We have flown in from Frankfurt several times, from Dubai several times, and from Windhoek and Gaborone and Lusaka – transiting Johannesburg is, for some reason, irrationally annoying. No matter how crowded the transit area is, or how isolated, the computers are always slow, or . . . the operators. No matter what airline we deal with, that transit area, the one downstairs where you have to check in for your next flight, it is horrible. It takes so much longer than it needs to.
Upstairs, we hit the shops, junky Out of Africa with it’s schlock, some of the others. I made a big mistake; I was buying little fun things for our son and his wife, little coffee things and such at Taste of Africa, and I bought them some biltong; what we call jerky. They had ostrich and eland and several exotic kinds, so I bought several.
Loading up for the 17 hour (yes, you read that right, it is Delta’s longest non-stop flight) flight from Johannesburg to Atlanta was an unusual experience. Think Amsterdam on steroids. We are all sitting, and are rousted out of the waiting room and told to line up in two lines, with men in one line and women in the other. They look at our bags and ask us questions. This is the third time today my bags have been checked; I don’t mind, but it is a little unusual. Then we line up again once we are back in the waiting room; it is nearly time to board.
There is one of those wild-eyed women going down the line asking loudly “Is this the line for PRIORITY boarding? Are you all PRIORITY passengers?” and clearly she thinks she has a pretty high priority. But when the airline boards the Diamonds and the Platinums, she is still waiting back with the golds and silvers, so I guess she didn’t have as much priority as she thought she had.
It’s one of those big, huge flights with every seat taken. It’s sort of like being in a high school cafeteria, tempers flare as overhead baggage bins fill up, parents with children beg people to change places so they can fly together, while the privileged politely decline; they paid extra for those aisle seats. It’s all pretty horrible, but we have books and somehow we even catch a couple hours sleep. The flight attendants are like harried waitresses, hauling those drink carts and meal carts up and down the aisles, trying to get people to stay in their seats (who can stay in their seat for SEVENTEEN hours??) I discovered that if you are reading books, iPad batteries keep their charge longer than if you are playing Sudoku. I’m reading a great book, Wolf Hall, and it holds my interest.
Arriving in Atlanta, it’s all my fault, AdventureMan and I are shuttled into the agricultural inspection area, where it is pretty much us and all the Africans bringing back turnips and sugar cane and rice and meats and special foods. I didn’t know that the dried meat was a problem, but evidently ostrich meat is some of the very most threatening, and other countries have serious diseases that we have so far managed to escape. They are actually very kind to me, although they do confiscate all my jerkies. The inspector tells us they get all kinds of stuff (there was a huge barrel of confiscated agricultural products) including rats, and monkey brains.
Sadly, many of the people in there with us don’t really understand, and I know many of them went to a lot of trouble to bring a home specialty for some family member, only to have it confiscated. Many didn’t understand enough English and the inspectors didn’t know their languages.
We got off easy enough; all they cared about was confiscating the illegal meat.
Found a place with decent coffee and croissants, found a place to wash our faces and brush our teeth, so we boarded the Pensacola flight fresher than we got off the flight from JoBurg.
Our son met us at the airport and got us all home; we grabbed a quick lunch at the nearby Marina Oyster Barn (our comfort-food restaurant of choice) and then showered and tumbled into bed. We woke up again as our son and his wife and the darling little happy toddler came by for dinner. After dinner, we said good night and good bye to our guests, knowing we were all going to bed but that we would be awake in the middle of the night and they would probably leave to go to their home. As it turned out, we were all awake around 3:30 in the oh-dark-hundred, so we were able to hear them off.
We’ve been up since, trying to take care of business and to stay awake. I started with trying to get through (get rid of) over a thousand e-mail – two weeks is a LONG time. AdventureMan fell asleep in my office around 7:30 so I woke him up and made him go to aqua-aerobics with me, we hit the grocery store, and poor AdventureMan, his computer has bit the dust so he had to buy a new computer today. He picked up the mail in the afternoon, I paid the outstanding bills. Anything, anything to stay awake, to try to get us back on schedule, Pensacola time.
We caught the last episode of Game of Thrones, Season two, which helped us make it an extra hour last night, and AdventureMan has some things we missed lined up for tonight – HBO’s Girls, VEEP, and the first episode from the new season of True Blood, also he thinks Southland is starting up again, and we really like that.
I think I’m going out of my mind. Jet lag makes me a little crazy. Normally, I am all unpacked by now, but I couldn’t even stand to look at my suitcase today. I bought salmon for tonight’s dinner, but I don’t think I can cook it. I haven’t felt energetic since . . . 3:30 this morning, LOL. When I get tired, I can get weepy, or irrational, or a little unbalanced. What I yearn for is to take a nap, a nice, long, snoozy nap . . .
Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . . . ………..
Jet Lag, iPads and Small Things
The first leg(s) of our travel are completed; today we head for our destination, the Robin Pope Camps in the upper Luangwa in the eastern part of Zambia. We took the relatively new Delta flight 200 from Atlanta to Johannesburg, leaving out of the new airport terminal in Atlanta for international flights. More on that later when I am back to my computer and can more easily insert photos the size I want them.
Fifteen hours is a long flight. There are a couple ways of doing long travel; one is to break up the journey, like go through Paris and spend a couple days, then fly on to your African destination. I say Paris, because it would be our destination of choice, but you can as easily connect through London or Frankfurt, and a few other places. Many people like doing that, and one of these days, we might, too.
During our years in the Gulf, we developed a pattern of just gutting it through, getting on a very long flight and just getting there, dealing with all the consequences once we reached our destination. For me, going west, it is a piece of cake. For some reason, when I fly east, my body rhythms are jangly for two or three weeks, my sleep patterns erratic, and all you can do is gut it through. We have learned that getting on schedule at your arrival destination helps, getting sunshine and exercise helps, but nothing keeps you from those long lonely hours awake in the middle of the night.
It has hit each one of us differently. I got almost no sleep for two nights, then got a good eight hours (broken) last night. AdventureMan is getting lots of sleep and having very little trouble adjusting.
I am getting used to using the iPad. Just before leaving, I discovered a Sudoko program, and very shortly learned a couple things – electronic Sudoku is just different from paper Sudoku, it is harder to quit. You also can find you’ve lost hours to playing and it gives you a splitting headache – unlike paper Sudoku. It also eats up your time, and although the battery is supposed to have ten hours, either it runs out faster when you are playing Sudoko, or it FEELS like it runs out faster because the time passes so quickly. All I know is that I suddenly became aware that ten hours is not all that much, and I am constantly looking for re-charging places; it has become a priority.
At the last minute, I also pitched my books, and downloaded books to the iPad. I find I am enjoying reading on the iPad (I never thought I would), but once again I am constantly concerned with how fast the time is going (it doesn’t seem to use as much battery time when I am reading) and when and where will I be able to recharge? I am wondering if the camps in the bush have made allowances for their customers increased reliance on electronics – iPads, cameras that have batteries that need recharging, etc.) and I am also wishing I had brought a book with me – it’s just easier.
On the other hand, I have also discovered that on the iPad I have a little program called “notes” where I can make . . . notes! I can do it on a daily basis and it keeps them separate, and it is much faster than writing notes in a little notebook.
The internet at the Taj Pamodzi in Lusaka is much more reliable and much faster than the last time I was here. I hope it is also more secure.
Small things. We are hearing a voice singing outside, we heard the call to prayer from the mosque this morning and felt oh, so nostalgic for our times living near the mosques of Qatar and Kuwait. The singing voices are coming from a nearby school; we can’t understand the words, but it sounds joyful. We have a newspaper, it is much wider and thicker than our Pensacola News Journal, and I think I remember our newspapers also were wider and thicker once. The first few pages were full of people being arrested for corruption, and it makes me happy for Zambia, not happy that they have corruption, but happy that their police are free to arrest highly placed corrupt officials who are stealing from the Zambian people and their heritage, and also that they are free to name the names.
I have lived in countries where offenders are not named, so as not to bring shame on the innocent families, but I believe that when the offender is named, it is a deterrent to corruption. And for what? Is a shiny Mercedes worth the shame, and the jail time? Even though corrupt people in high places steal on an unimaginable scale, the things they buy with them are . . . just things. When you place your value in things, you lead an unsatisfied life. No thing can fill the void that lack of integrity leaves.
Where is Zambia?
Zambia is in the central part of southern Africa:
It is a beautiful and varied country, with many peoples speaking many different dialects. It is an amazing country in that they have all managed to learn to get along with one another. They learn each other’s languages in the schools, they have instilled a culture of respect for the differences as well as a focus on the similarities they share. Our Zambian friends work hard, and they are very proud of Zambia. When you visit, you can’t help but respect and admire their pride.
I found a photo of Zambia’s flag on Wikipedia, and an explanation for the graphics and colors:
The colors used in the flag of Zambia are rich in symbolism. Green stands for the nation’s lush flora, red for the nation’s struggle for freedom, black for the Zambian people, and orange for the land’s natural resources and mineral wealth. Additionally, the eagle flying above the colored stripes is intended to represent the people’s ability to rise above the nation’s problems.
We traveled often to Zambia from our homes on the Arabian Gulf, but this will be a very different trip, crossing 8 time zones and flying a very very long time to get there. It will take us longer to get to Zambia, via South Africa, than it used to take us to get to Qatar or Kuwait. We’ll have two nights, one in Johannesburg and one in Lusaka, before we start out on our safaris.
It’s a different world. You know it as soon as you get there. It smells different. You smell wood-burning fires and dust. Out in the South Luangwa, where we are going, you hear the hippos saying ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaaaaaaaah in the nearby rivers and ponds, and sometimes you will hear elephants fighting, and it is very loud with lots of crashes. You hear soft birds, and when you hear English, it is spoken with a different lilt, so you have to listen more carefully, pay better attention, so you will understand what is being said.
It’s a different world, too, in that sometimes your bags don’t catch up with you. Sometimes bags are just never seen again! We are carrying our nightclothes and a change of clothes with us to help us deal with unforeseen challenges.
Did I mention we are very excited?
I am thinking we need an eagle flying above our stripes to symbolize American belief that we can rise above our nation’s problems . . . 🙂
Packing For a Purpose
Part of what we love about the Robin Pope Safari Camps is that we also get to go into the village and see how the schools are doing. There is a consortium of safari camp service providers who donate a portion of their profits every year to providing for and maintaining schools, finding sponsors for children who have no parents, finding help for teachers in obtaining much needed supplies.
Many of the children of the village are truly being raised by the village, as fathers and mothers succumb to the dreaded wasting disease, to malaria, to yellow fever and to problems attending poor nutrition and inadequate access to health care. The camps bring in a volunteer doctor, when they can, who works with the villages six months to a year or so. Children are looked after by aunts and uncles, or grandparents, or a neighbor – who may not have much to spare, with her own children to look after.
So, with a prayer, we headed for Staples to pick up school supplies. What a deal! Pocket dictionaries! Boxes of 60 pens! It is so exciting, I bought too much, and now we are hoping they won’t weigh our suitcases too accurately. We’ve jammed a lot in . . .
I should have checked the website again before I shopped, or I wouldn’t have bought so many pencils, but they DO still need erasers, and I bought a lot of those. And I try to stick in something they might have some fun with – sticky notes. foam shapes. glue sticks. This year I am including some threads and counted cross stitch fabrics, hoping maybe someone will develop an interest in needlework 🙂
We are getting so excited we can hardly stand it. AdventureMan is trying lots of new techniques and camera equipment, hoping to get some stellar shots. I am taking my new Lumix, the FZ40/45, a lightweight camera with a 24X optical zoom. He gets great artistic shots (water drops dripping off a wide-open hippo mouth as he opens his jaw unbelievably wide) and I get great documentary shots – the rooms, the bathroom fixtures (LOLL, yes, I can’t help it, I love creative design!) and textiles, as well as the wildlife and the environment.
We had just enough room in our suitcases for all the school supplies. Now we will have room for that last stop at Tribal Textiles . . . 🙂
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