Day 12 – 14: Kafue National Park

Distance:

469 km from Katoyana Camp in Liuwa Plains to Kasabushi Camp

153 km in Kafue NP

3 381 km trip to date

We left early for the long drive and were on the road for 11 hours (including the 50 km sand road from Katoyana to the Kalabo ferry). Road conditions were good from Kalabo to Kaoma (last town before Kafue) but the going was slow. Huge trucks from and to the Copper Belt province to the north. Lots of small villages with children, goats, even pigs on the road and lots of speed limits and humps. The road from Kaoma to Kafue was horrendous with massive potholes on the narrow tar strip and stretches of no tar and potholed gravel. We averaged 30-40 km/h on that stretch and 60-70 km/h on the remainder of the road.

Mongu town

Wildlife seen in the park:

roan antelope, sable antelope, puku, impala, elephant, defassa waterbuck, yellow baboon, bushbuck, Lichtenstein hartebeest, eland, kudu, warthog, buffalo, sharpe’s grysbok, steenbok, vervet monkey, crocodile, hippo.

Defassa waterbuck – parts of Zambia and further north into Ethiopia and Somalia – has no white ring

Bushbuck

Lichtenstein’s hartebeest

Sharpe’s grysbok

Impala

Eland

Yellow baboon – occurs from Atlantic to Indian Ocean across the mainly miombo woodland belt in Angola, Zambia, southern DR Congo and Tanzania, extending north-eastwards into southern Somalia.

Puku – occurs in Zambia and southern Tanzania

And then we had our first sighting of tree-climbing lions. Not as high up in the trees as seen in Tanzania, but this lion was climping up into the branches.

Up into the branches

We had our first encounter with tsetse flies. In Kasabushi Camp we had almost no tsetse flies, but as soon as we went on a game drive, the tsetses swarmed the vehicle and went for a ride with us (slow driving, so the wind did not blow them off). As soon as one opens a window to take a picture of some animal, these flies swarmed into the vehicle (20+ at a time) and they attacked us! They immediately landed on us, stinging through clothes and it burned like bee stings. And they are tough. They do not die easily.

Birds seen apart from the normal small birds: ground hornbill, vulture, and the very elusive African fin foot on the Kafue river.

Kasabushi Camp is one of the nicest camps we have ever camped at. A few large campsites directly on the banks of the Kafue river under shade trees. The ablutions are special. Piping hot waterfall showers from a donkey, flush toilets, outside hot and cold water for washing dishes – all built with attention to the smallest detail.

Kasabushi campsite right on the river

View from the campsite

View from the campsite

Ablutions

Kasabushi Camp offers sunset cruises on the Kafue river and we went with. Absolutely beautiful and relaxing going with Andy (the owner) who knows every rock and crook in this river.  Slow cruising that did not upset the hippos and birds in the river.

 

 

• Insects: NO mosquitos – weird, as there is so much water.
• Temperature: 32 – 35 degrees celcius during midday, but the evenings were very nice and cool. The shade trees in the camp helped a lot.

Where we are now…

We really enjoyed this Park. We saw almost no other vehicles on the park roads as the lodges start to close during this time of the year due to rains. The rains are late this year, so we had the park almost to ourselves. The location of Kasabushi and the quality of camping here is out of this world.