This morning my alarm went off at 4:25am. Talk about brutally early. I did not want to get out of bed. Although I was getting up for a good reason—so that helped. Right on the dot of 5am, Dave and Dee were here to pick us up in the land cruiser. We piled in with our packed lunch, cameras, book and pillows and off we went to Kafue National Park. It was dark for a quite a while at the beginning and as we were driving we watched the most gorgeous sunrise I have ever seen. The colors were just brilliant red and fiery orange and the colors they made on the clouds were amazing. Unfortunately, we were heading straight west so we had to turn around and watch it and we couldn’t get any real good pictures because we were moving and the road was quite bumpy.
It was about a three hour drive by the time we reached the dirt roads to do the game viewing. The gate for Kafue Park was about 2 1/2 hours into the drive but then you had to go a ways before you got to the dirt roads that you could go off and look for game. The main tarmac road is a main highway though that leads to the Angola border so we could still look out and try to spot game.
The first things we saw of course were impala and then puku followed shortly. While still on the tarmac road we also saw some zebras. I won’t give too many details about the day because it mainly consisted of driving. We went on some really off-roadin’ roads and had to use the 4 wheel drive several times but we didn’t get stuck. The visibility was pretty difficult in most places because all the vegetation is so green and tall. Here’s a list of the things we saw in addition to the impala, puku and zebra: warthog, waterbuck, kudu, buffalo, hartebeest, a snake, a mongoose, ground hornbills, vultures, a couple hawk and eagle type birds, lilac breasted rollers, a kingfisher, and a croc swimming in the Kafue River. We were on quite the mission to find elephants and we could see evidence of them all over and we could also smell them but we were unsuccessful. I was also holding out hope for seeing some cats, and Dee really wanted to see some cheetahs. One time when the Birners went to Kafue they found 4 cheetahs just walking down the road. We didn’t see any cats unfortunately. It was still a really great day and got me reminiscing about all the Luangwa drives we used to go on. It also made me excited to hopefully get to Luangwa and go on some night drives.
We stayed in the park ‘til about 1:30 and then started the drive home, taking one last little detour to search for elephants one last time.
When we got back to Lusaka we stopped at Manda Hill for supper at Pizza Inn. It was the perfect way to end the day. Veggie Pizza and then a treat at Galito’s for a chocolate dipped ice cream cone.
By the time we got home we were pretty exhausted but it was a great day. And I think today was great?? I am even more excited for tomorrow when I can celebrate with my African brothers and sisters one of the greatest days of the year—when Jesus rose triumphantly from the grave declaring his victory over sin, death and Satan!
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