South Luangwa National Park

From Siavonga we returned to the main road and headed east towards Zimbabwe.  At the border town we took a dusty red road north back up towards the T4.  A few kilometers along we came to a river crossing by pontoon operated by the same company as the crossing from Botswana into Zambia.


Because we had a foreign registered vehicle, the cost was USD $20.00 or R 180.00 instead of the more reasonable local payment.  The hitch was that they wouldnt accept kwacha in payment, we had to pay in rand or USD.  Argh!  We hunted up enough USD and were quickly on the other side.

 We turned into a one lane road through sugar cane, banana and corn fields then this narrowed to a track through the forest and eventually deteriorated into a series of steep turns up the side of a mountain. 

The view should have been amazing but the air was hazy.  The bush was pretty and literally smouldered in many places by the track where trees had been cut down to stumps and the trunks were burning.  At first I was concerned about getting caught in a burn off.  It took a while to work out what was going on.  The trees werent being felled to make a field or clearing in the bush, or even to use the wood for shelter or cooking but to make charcoal to sell in big bags on the side of the road.

We finally emerged from the bush on the other side of the mountain range and through a small village where the children were really excited to see a car.  I cant imagine that road gets much traffic, it was fairly hairy for the Landy in places. 

Another day of driving on roads that turn into goat tracks... At one point we were waved down by a boy who was returning with his wife and new born baby to his village, on a bicycle with no pedals, on a road that required a 4WD to pass.  How could we refuse him a lift?  So the bicycle was strapped to the roof and they piled in the back.

After another full day of driving on dirt 'roads' we finally arrived at South Luangwa National Park.  It turned out the fees were going to be USD$80.00 or $70.00 or $65.00 and we expected them to be payable in USD.  After the Okavango Delta and Chobe I was a bit fatigued of game parks so we set up camp by the river and let the game come to us.  A small herd of elephants walked right through our camp not long after dark while we were walking over to the ablution block thankfully although one of the small ones mock-charged Duncan.  I woke at 5.30 the next morning to the sounds of elephants munching the tree outside the tent.  Upon investigation I found myself only one foot from the elephants trunk, which was delicately picking leaves off the tree we were parked under.  Croc Valley Camp is unfenced and they regularly have elephant, hippos, lions and other game wander through the camp.  Two weeks ago a leopard came to drink at the swimming pool.

Siavonga, Kariba Lake

They're resealing the road out of Livingstone and we took a series of detours onto tracks parallel to the T1.  These were ridiculously dusty.  You couldnt see the car in front of you at all - it was like following a cloud of smoke for about an hour.

We stopped in Choma for some diesel and enjoyed lunch in the shade at the Choma Museum and Gallery which had interesting exhibits on the region, and the lives of the tribal people displaced by the dam.

In addition to the usual livestock roaming the roads we came across several nursing sows.  We passed an articulated truck that had failed to take a turn, the cab was on its side, but the trailers were completely upside down, lying on top of the load they were supposed to be carrying.  In Monze, as we bumped over the judder bars in the centre of town we encountered a car towing a few tall trailer coming in the opposite direction.  Out of the top of the trailer poked two giraffe heads, their horns covered in green fabric of some kind.  We had to stop at many police checks where the police generally waved us on, though at one we had to show evidence of our 3rd party insurance (wave the yellow card), but I think they randomly check for other things too.  I saw the driver of a truck in front of us pass down his fire extinguisher to the inspector at one of the checks we were waved through.

Our original intention was to head to Lusaka, mainly to get some money, but we passed a Stanbic Bank on the T1 (at Mazabuka) and decided to head for the top of Lake Kariba instead.  This is one of the worlds largest artificial lakes - made by displacing the Tonga people in the 1950s and dam-ing the Zambezi.
We are now camped on its shores, listening to the frogs and crickets and hoping no hippos come to investigate our campsite.

Victoria Falls

Although Foleys, the land rover garage, is closed for two weeks while Nick is on holiday in the UK, we found someone to service the Landy just up the road from their workshop.  Des had many an interesting story and showed us the wreckage of the Hilux he's rebuilding after hitting an elephant on the road at night! 

More reasons not to drive at night.

He dropped us back at Jollyboys Hostel and we spent the morning lazing around at the pool.

Once we had the Landy back and the day had cooled somewhat we drove out to Victoria Falls, right by the Zimbabwe border.  It is the dry season, so the falls are not dumping as much water as they do in the wet season, although the mist still reaches you on the footbridge.  They run fast enough to give you a sense of what a wall of water must pour over the edge once the Zambezi is full.  We enjoyed a few hours wandering about enjoying the views, the mist and the roar of the falling water.

Livingstone, Zambia

This morning we headed straight for the border.  Very straightforward on the Botswana side - fill out leaving forms, get passports stamped, discharge the carnet for the SADC.

You then drive to the riverfront and wonder what happens next as a small swarm of local 'businessmen' descend upon you wanting to help you through the border on the other side, bickering over who saw you first and who you should do business with.  The Zambian police had recently issued a notice advising the steps you need to go through at the Zambian border and that agents were not required.  Helpfully, a copy of this was posted at the Botswanan immigration and after I carefully noted it all down, we were handed a copy as we drove down to the river.  When I showed this to the 'businessmen' they declared they were not agents but runners, give them the paperwork and money and they would clear it all and get us through there fast.  That may be true but we had a lot of time and I'm not going to give money and passports to someone I dont know.

Somewhat confusingly, although importing and exporting Zambian kwacha is supposed to be illegal, and its also illegal to change money on the black market, you are expected to pay some of the fees in USD and some in kwacha at the border - but there are no ATMs and the one bank office I found was either closed for the day, or closed for good.  We were given kwatcha by a local money-changing businessman to pay for the insurance, motor vehicle levy and carbon tax then once we'd passed out of the border control area we gave him the equivalent in USD - and the rate he charged (after a bit of negotiation) was only 4300kw to the dollar which is a damn sight better than the 3000 offered by the sharks on the Botswanan side and pretty close to the 4500 offered by the bank in Livingstone when we finally got there.  We also discovered all the ATM machines in Livingstone are Visa only so had to take a credit card advance until we find a Stanbic Bank (which accepts Maestro) in Lusaka.

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For the benefit of anyone trying to figure it out (god only knows we only found conflicting information when we looked) here are the requirements as of 5 October 2009.

The first thing to note is that all payments are made on the Zambian side. 


1.  Immigration - we already had ours but the people ahead of us easily purchased their visa at the border USD $50.00 each, although we had already sorted ours out in Windhoek.

2. Ferry fees - the notice said these were payable at the office on the other side, but we were asked for them as the ferry was crossing.  It took a while for the ferry official to convince me, but his receipt book printed with the same name of the company as on the police notice did the trick.  USD $20.00

3.  Carbon Tax.  This is payable in the two windows to the left of the two immigration windows.  Unless you have a carnet (which we did) in which case you go through the office you're in down a corridor to the building behind, past the defunct bank to an office on the left.  These differ according to the spec of your vehicle.  The Landy is 2.5 litres and it cost us ZAK 150,000.00.

4.  3rd Party Insurance.  If you dont already have this, you can purchase it on the other side of the border gate at a caravan on the left.  Weirdly no one stops you walking through or checks your passport.  Then you can walk back in to continue the paperwork shuffle.  One month 3rd party insurance for the Landy cost ZAK 112.00.

5.  Road Transport Permit.  These are USD $20.00 within Zambia or $40.00 if you're going to Malawi.  It seems the fees are return if you're going to Malawi, that is they assume you'll be coming back so take the payment all in one go.  When the clerk realised we wouldnt be coming back through Zambia he charged us $20.00 and wrote a note on the receipt to show at the border when we exit Zambia.  You need to already have paid the carbon tax and have insurance before you can get your road permit.

6.  Council Office - Motor vehicle levy.  Pay this ZAK 20,000.00 at the building marked 'police'.

Then get back into your vehicle and join the queue for the exit gate.  Various people will come to check for different receipts before you can drive out, so keep them on hand.

You can extend the insurance and get a yellow Comesa card at the branch of the insurance company on the main road in Livingstone.  This means you dont have to take out a months insurance at every border crossing up the east side of Africa to the Sudan.

Chobe National Park

We wanted to drive from Maun, up through Chobe to Kasane, before crossing to Zambia but were unable to secure a booking for the only place it is permissible to camp in the park - it seems they are booked months ahead and although we checked twice, and had flexible dates, there were no cancellations.

So then we considered driving up the old cattle track through the Nxai Pan national park but considerable internet research indicated it was a bad idea so we plumped for the long way on the main road.  8 hours, many, many potholes and a roan antelope sighting later we made it to Kasane just as it got dark thankfully.   I've heard too many horror stories about elephants on the road to want to drive at night and we saw our fair share grazing along the highway as the afternoon wore on.  We spent today cruising about Chobe National Park along the riverfront of the Zambezi.

Game parks are funny.  Kruger and Etosha reminded me of the game Pacman - think of it from above - lots of cars driving randomly along a limited number of roads stopping, turning around and reversing in search of some game to view.   Chobe was a bit different in that many of the roads are deep sand and require 4WD to pass so apart from a few game drive vehicles from the local lodges in the afternoon we really only saw a couple of other cars. 

Chobe is packed with all sorts of wildlife.  Pretty much all the animals we've seen in the other parks but in huge numbers.   Pods of more than 30 hippos, troupes of 200 odd baboons, hundreds of buffalo and countless impala.  There were herds of elephants around every corner and the ransacked flora shows it.  Elephants spend 24/7 eating and much of the park had very little foliage left. 

One herd of about 20 elephants we were watching at the river got a fright from a passing boat and took off en mass.  Elephants move quite fast when they're in a hurry, but they're so graceful they somehow still manage to look like they're in slow motion - this group reminded me of that scene in Reservoir Dogs when all of the Mr Colours are walking together to the coffee shop to plan the heist...

More Okavango Delta

A boat trip back to the dry land as the sun rose and Mike took us out on a game drive.  We saw lots of red leche, elephant and all sort of birds but he highlight was when Mike pointed out some lion tracks and we followed them, then a blood trail to some dismembered bits of red leche and eventually tracked a male lion and two lionesses to where they had buried into some plam bushes and were fast asleep, sated presumably.  This makes it sound easy.  Mike is an excellent guide.

We returned to camp at 11 for another excellent brunch then had a few hours for siesta before a mokoro trip in the afternoon.  On the way up to our tent we came across an elephant a couple of metres from the track who had waded across to the island.  Cue detour to tent.

The mokoro trip was very tranquil.  The water is so clear, filtered by the reeds and the sand of the kalahari - even where it is deep you can see the white sand of the desert underneath.  We saw tiny painted frogs clinging to reeds and lots of birdlife which would otherwise have been scared away by the noise of an engine.  We tried a spot of catch-and-release fishing as the sun went down, but I could barely cast the line (a proper rod and reel is very different than a hand-line off a boat) and we were predictably unsuccessful.  It was fun trying!  After another several hours in the game vehicle this morning we caught our return scenic flight with Johannes back to Maun and returned to the Old Bridge.  We totally broke the budget on this trip to the lodge but it was very worth it.

Last night there was another big thunderstorm.  As the sky started to hint of getting light I heard a loud crack then an even louder thud by our heads.  A bough had broken off the tree above the Landy and skimmed the tent with its branches as it landed on the roof of the Landy.  Fortunately no harm done, but I cant imagine how our heads would have been squashed as we slept had we been parked ten centimetres further back.

Okavango Delta

We spent the first night at The Old Bridge backpackers in Maun. The campsite has water on both sides of it and the sound of the many different frogs at night was amazing. All different pitches and tones like a piece of baroque music. That night there was a heavy thunderstorm with torrential rain most of the night and we woke to wet feet in the tent. We went into town and booked a couple of nights at a Wilderness Safari lodge in the inner delta, then returned to the campsite to dry out our stuff.

After leaving the Landy in the secure carpark at Wilderness Safaris we crossed the road to the airport for our flight into the delta. We were personally introduced to our pilot, Johannes, which I thought was a nice touch - when you're in a tiny aeroplane, it helps the nerves to know the pilot. Actually the plane wasnt as small as I thought it would be - it was a Cessna, seating about 15 and the flight was low over the ground and pretty smooth.

Water flows from the highlands in Angola and instead of taking the route to the sea, it spills across the white sands of the Kalahari desert in Botswana.