Sunrise in the Zambezi valley. Low light pours across the plains, ignites the tops of the winterthorn glades and picks out the dark shape of an elephant bull. Its ears swing slowly as it feeds on the fallen seed pods under the trees.
Grant Cumings, my companion, is the consummate safari guide: confident, capable, thoroughly bush-wise. In short, just the kind of man you need when walking in elephant country. Elephants are his favourite animals, he tells me; and as for the Lower Zambezi, there is nowhere else he would rather be. “This is real, wild, in-your-face Africa,” he says. “Big skies, big trees, big elephants.”
Much of Zambia is like this. One- third of it is national parkland, and the accent is on small, owner-run camps offering walking safaris with Africa’s best guides. But 20 years ago, when Cumings and his dad used to come here to fish, the Lower Zambezi park didn’t exist. They were the ones who put it on the tourist map — chased out the poachers, cut the first vehicle tracks and built the first camp.
Chiawa, where I am staying, should feature in everybody’s top10 camps. Set right beside the river, it has nine shady tents in a mahogany grove, and there are no fences, which means the wildlife is free to come and go. At supper we receive an uninvited guest: out of the dark looms an elephant, lured by the winterthorn pods that lie scattered around. He stands behind us as we dine, close enough to touch, and the thought occurs that with one swipe of his trunk he could send us all to kingdom come: candles, cutlery and all. But, like all the bulls I meet in this land of giants, he turns out to be a thoroughly well-behaved old gentleman, and eventually wanders back into the night.
The river at Chiawa is over a mile wide, and the next day I get a closer look at it on a fishing trip. Our quarry is the African tiger, which Cumings describes as a cross between an Atlantic salmon and a piranha. “Pound for pound, it’s probably the best freshwater sport fish in the world,” he says.
We anchor in midstream and bait up with chunks of fresh ox heart. Out flies the line, and now comes the wait — but almost at once I feel a hit. It’s a tiger; 9lb of fighting fury with teeth like an alsatian. Until this moment I have never been an angler. Now I’m hooked.
Despite the late-September heat there is always a coolness on the water, and when we stop fishing, we drift downriver to watch the wildlife. By now, the sun is sinking into the haze of bushfire smoke that hangs over Zambia in this season of burning. Behind us, outlined against the glowing sky like participants in a shadow play, two bull elephants wade out into the river and begin to spar. I grab my camera, hoping to capture the moment, but I know that nothing will compare with being there, hearing their tusks click-clack as they grapple in the dying light.
ZAMBIA IS renowned for leopards, and especially in South Luangwa National Park. Here, just 70 minutes by air from Lusaka, sightings of Africa’s most elusive big cat are virtually guaranteed.
Sure enough, on my first night at Tena Tena safari camp, on the banks of the Luangwa, a female leopard appears as we dine under the stars. Intent on her own agenda, she strolls past us with scarcely a glance and melts away into the trees.
Of all the camps in this enchanted valley, Tena Tena is my favourite. Later, before falling asleep, I listen to the Luangwa’s late-night soundtrack: frogs, hippos, owls, hyenas, and the distant rumble of lions. When morning comes, even last night’s leopard is upstaged by the carmine bee-eaters that nest in their thousands along the riverbank. Every so often, an entire colony takes flight, drifting back to earth like a cloud of falling rose petals.
Today, it is boots-on time. I have signed up for a walking safari with Robin Pope, who owns Tena Tena, and for the next two nights we’ll be fly-camping in the bush. Luangwa is where foot safaris were reinvented back in the 1970s, and Pope, in his beaten-up, broad-brimmed hunter’s hat, is its most distinguished guide.
We leave at sunrise, skirting the dry bed of an oxbow lagoon. Along its bank, the sausage trees are in flower, their crimson goblets full of nectar, attracting monkeys and lovebirds. The Luangwa is serious big-game country, and it’s not long before we come across fresh buffalo tracks and follow the herd towards the river. They emerge from the woods in a cloud of dust and tumble down to drink. We watch, and still they come, until there must be 800 milling about at the water’s edge.
We hit camp an hour before mid-day. It is too hot to walk, so we rest until teatime, enjoy a leisurely Land Rover game-drive, and return after sundowners with the spotlight on, finding two more leopards and a pride of lions on a sandbank.
