ABERCROMBIE & KENT WINGS OVER ZAMBIA SAFARI
Abercrombie & Kent Wings over Zambia Safari - Luxury Travel Magazine
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The Real Africa | |||||
| By: Hilary Doling, Issue 36 – Spring 2008 | |||||
| (Abercrombie & Kent Wings over Zambia Safari – Zambia) | |||||
| A PRIDE OF NEWLY OPENED STAR-STUDDED LODGES MAKE ZAMBIA THE NEW LUXURY SAFARI DESTINATION FOR THOSE WHO LIKE TO BE AHEAD OF THE HERD. | |||||
| Chichele Presidential Lodge was once, well, the Zambian president’s private lodge and it is still a very pukka place (I really should have packed my pith helmet) complete with antiques, oil paintings, open fires, candelabras and... large bull elephants jammed into the corridor. Run that one past me again. Yes, a very large elephant has squeezed itself into the Chichele corridor like a cork into a bottle and is definitely impeding guests’ after-dinner, wine-sated, progress back to their rooms. “He’s been coming here since he was a baby and wandering around and he doesn’t realise he has grown. He still thinks he can fit, last week he knocked down a pillar”, says our guide from Abercrombie & Kent. I’m afraid that this time he’ll end up with a doorframe draped around him like a necklace and worst still, that he’ll walk in our direction afterwards. Because this is not aDisney Dumbo but rather a real, live, large, angry looking elephant and frankly if he wants my room, he can have it. Luckily the elephant decides against heading up towards the shiny ultra-polished floor of the lobby (Dumbo skating on ice?) and instead does a kind of limbo dance to squash himself under an archway and heads for the garden. Chichele Presidential Lodge is one of four new lodges recently re-furbished or newly opened by Sanctuary, the accommodation arm of upmarket operators Abercrombie & Kent. Together they bring a new standard of luxury to Zambia and make the country an attractive prospect for those who like to safari in style. Zambia has a great deal of charm precisely because it hasn’t previously had a sophisticated tourist infrastructure. Zambians like to call it ‘the real Africa’ and you can see why. Driving from the little Mfuwe airport out to South Luangwa National Park in our open vehicle, bouncing over the ruts in the road we pass tiny grass huts, women bending over cooking pots on open fires and children who are not yet too jaded to wave enthusiastically as we pass. Some of the adults wave too. It is a world of walking (with impossible loads balanced on your head) and bicycles. The only other vehicle we pass is a truck packed to bursting with early morning workers. We drive past second-hand clothes stalls (so that’s where all those aid parcels go), and a strip of brightly painted shop fronts with names like Uncle Mules Grocery and Two Beers Paradise and, my own personal favourite, Lucinda’s Ladies hair salon. I have seen the extravagant hairstyles sported by the women on the roadside; henna ropes of hair curled around their head and topsy pigtails for the younger girls, and I fancy a new style myself. One of the joys of Luangwa is its splendid isolation, only the certifiably insane would attempt to drive here and there is still a frontier feel left over from the days when early adventurers and conservationists like Norman Carr and Robin Pope first set up safari camps. The last stage of our journey brings this home as our heavy vehicle wobbles over sandbags and onto a basic wooden ferry and we are pulled across the Luangwa River by the muscle and will power of two Zambians wielding Fred Flintstone style clubs attached to a rope. As the sun sinks into the water an orchestra of hippopotamuses surface all around us bellowing like tubas. Puku Ridge Camp is luxury under canvas; the tents are the size of most people’s houses; with hippo-sized beds, designer furnishing and deep stand-alone tubs. Delicate puku deer (which give the camp its name), impala and elephants wander across the plain below. We are wined and dined well in the open lounge area as the animals roam below; maybe too well since our game drive starts just after dawn. We’ve all been on safari before, will we never learn. The air is clear and crisp as we bounce out of camp swathed in sand coloured blankets as protection against the morning chill. “You look like two termite mounds”, says our less than gallant male companion. Who cares, we’re warm. It is the first of many forays into the bush and it starts in dramatic style. Lions that have not long made a kill are being seriously harassed by a small herd of elephants. The elephants have babies so our guide thinks they are protecting their young. Nevertheless the attack is unprovoked and none of us have ever seen anything like it. This puts paid once and for all to the notion that lions are kings of the jungle; clearly they are scared of the elephants and skulk under a bush trying to snatch the odd bite of buffalo while avoiding ellie tusks. Finally they give up and head for the hills pursued by a trumpeting elephant – all they’ll get this morning is indigestion. Over the coming days we see the lion pride several times and I’m pleased to report they do finally finish their breakfast. We also see squabbling baboons (the biker boys of Africa), dainty deer of many varieties, fantastic birdlife, civet, leopard, hippos heaped on the river bank like giant black boulders, buffalo and even giraffe foreplay. The ‘will-he won’t he?’ dance going on for so long that finally we feel as bored as the female giraffe looks. “I don’t think the old boy knows what he’s doing”, says our guide Keenan as we give up and drive off. We stay in the Luangwa National Park for five days – first at Puku then at Chichele – a long time to be in one area. Our original intention had been to visit the new riverside Zambezi Kulefu Camp in the remote lower Zambezi to go canoeing and catch tigerfish but floods had delayed opening*. The advantage of staying in one area however is that you begin to know and recognise some of the animals and get snatches of their lives. It is like a bush soap opera and each day we look forward to the next instalment. One morning we go on a walking safari – nothing gives you a new respect for the bush like being on foot: suddenly all the animals look very large indeed. We see a herd of buffalo, wild dogs like dingos in designer spotted coats, and our rogue elephant from Chichele (to whom we give a wide berth). We also sneak through the undergrowth to look at a bathing hippo; it is so rotund and has such a benign expression I feel as if I’m spying on one of those fat ladies on a seaside postcard. Most of all we learn more than I ever thought to know about animal poo as we examine various piles of dung at close quarters. During our stay we also get to watch several of what Keenan calls ABWAS – Another Bloody Wonderful African Sunset, accompanied by far too many gin and tonics and on one memorable occasion watch a sun half the size of the sky drop into the rift valley while we toast its progress from a high ridge with lethal sunset-red chilli vodka personally prepared by Puku’s dedicated General Manager. Abercrombie & Kent pride itself on what they call xxx Moments and this was one of many. Another was a surprise lunch with white table clothes and champagne set up under shady trees while zebras graze in the foreground. At the end of our week we fly to Livingstone and stay at the stylish Sussi & Chuma Camp in the Mosi oa Tunya (Smoke that Thunders) National Park with its designer decor and stilted villas connected by high walkways. It is a chance to view the magnificent Victoria Falls in all their after-rainy season glory. We wear oversized plastic macs (courtesy of Sussi & Chuma) and walk through rainbows to get soaked at the edge of the falls as several million litres of water per second plunge 100 metres down into the gorge below, as if ‘pouring forth from the hand of the Almighty’ wrote David Livingstone in 1865. The local Batoka tribe originally built their village a little way removed from the falls because it was such a magnificent place that “only the gods should live on the edge”. I have to agree. On the last evening we motor our boat out a safe distance from the edge of the falls, behind us a flotilla of larger pleasure craft and floating gin palaces have also dropped anchor to farewell the day; since we’re in prime position I imagine we’ll feature in a lot of their photos, silhouetted against the sky. We pop the champagne and settle down to watch the show. Suddenly what must be literally thousands of migrating quilea birds swarm like bees, so thick they look like storm clouds, we’ve never seen anything quite like it; it is an unexpected bonus. Then comes the main event, the sun drops into Victoria Falls like a copper penny into a slot and the whole of the Zambezi River turns lion-kill red. Yes, you’ve guessed, it’s an ABWAS -Another Bloody Wonderful African Sunset. | |||||
| Details: | |||||
| Abercrombie & Kent Wings over Zambia journey staying at Puku Ridge and Sussi & Chuma | |||||
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