Day 40: Mozhi Camp – Busanga Plains – Mozhi Camp

We get up just before 6:00 and go on a safari! We have prepared coffee and sandwiches, there are biscuits and nuts ready to hand and tea if necessary and of course drinking water. The lenses are cleaned as is the car window – neither of which lasts long.

What a great day, the northern Kafue National Park inspires us. Not spectacular but magical. Great scenery and an incredible abundance of animals. Antelopes as far as the eye can see.

We see old friends like kudu, wildebeest, impala, springbok, waterbuck. And new ones like pukus (lots!), roan antelope, bushbuck and Lichtenstein's antelope (that's what the guidebook says). The only thing we're missing is the sable antelope...

We also see various birds of prey like ospreys and a bateleur, gray crowned cranes and "plover", a type of stilt. Our new bird book is great!

And what else? Lots of warthogs, they're just having their piglets. Lots of hippos, unfortunately a few in the north that hardly have any water left and might not survive. Elephants, which we can still get excited about. Zebras, which are darker here and have broader stripes. And a lioness with a sly antelope. We discovered them thanks to the hint of a guide and a little cross-country tour.

Only the tsetse flies are annoying sometimes. You can recognize them by the fact that they fold their wings over each other when at rest, almost like a pair of scissors. They have the tenacity of horseflies, but are too fast to be killed. The bites are said to be pretty painful, but we seem to have been spared so far – touch wood. But we also spray quite a lot. The transmission of the notorious sleeping sickness is said to be pretty rare.

After 11 hours we are tired and especially our eyes are tired, we only drove 140 km :-)

Cooking or eating, showering, sitting by the fire writing this or loading tracks and cell phone pictures. Thanks to the Starlink WiFi we can even upload something! All of this accompanied by hippo calls and chirping sounds.

By the way: as soon as we got into bed yesterday the hyenas started howling, or whatever you want to call them.