Animals

After a good night sleep we headed for the South Luangwa National Park.

One of the first things we saw was a group of crocodiles feeding in a lagoon.

This is a dead baby hippo. We have been told that crocodiles do not usually attack hippos and so it is most likely that the baby was dead before the crocodiles began to eat it. There was a large group of them and they were grabbing and rolling the hippo in the water to try and tear chunks off.

We did see some more conventional animals. This beautiful creature is called a Puku.

They are similar to an impala, but not quite so finely boned.

Impala

I should say that Gorgeous Man got a fancy new camera lens for Christmas (early Christmas present so he could use it in Zambia) and a lot of the photos in this post were taken by him.

Because it was the wet season there were a lot of babies around.

Baby impala

There were also baby elephants

and baby vervet monkeys

and baby giraffes

These giraffes are Thornicroft giraffes. They only occur in this area and they are very, very pretty. These were my favourite animal of the trip.

The zebra were also a sub-species that was much more heavily striped than those found in South Africa.

We did see baby zebra, but they were really hard to photograph.

One of our favourite creatures is the warthog.

When they run their tails stick straight up and it is very comical.

Of all the animals we saw that day, the buffalo make me the most nervous. The other big animals tend to ignore the car, but buffalo will stop and stare you down.

One highlight of the park was taking a night drive in one of the lodge’s safari vehicles. You cannot self-drive at night and so must use a guide and their vehicle.

We were very lucky and saw this.

In non-Zambian trip related news. After 2 months of hanging out in Australia and bunking with various friends and relatives our passports have been returned to us with our entry visas for Papua New Guinea glued in. We hope to be heading up there sometime this week.

Guess I should hurry up and do a few more Zambian posts so that I can share our PNG journey as it happens…

There has been a bit of knitting, but the cord to the camera is packed somewhere, so those photos will have to wait. I’ve also started preparing blocks for some English paper-piecing (I bought a kit) in preparation for the journey and the expected 3 months waiting for our furniture (and my stash) to arrive…