2023-08-16: Safari Day 2 (Chamilandu)

The staff woke us up at 5:45am again this morning. It was a bit of a rougher night. There were animals around our cabin overnight. Something big was walking thourgh the leaves just outside our cabin around 1:00am. Patrick was pretty sure it was an elephant. Baboons were also fighting and making a racket at 4:00am.

We got dressed and headed to the main tent for some breakfast. The breakfast was the same as the previous day with porridge, cereal, fruit, and some toast. We enjoyed our breakfast and said our goodbyes to Peter and Davis. Then we loaded into the vehicle with Mishta and Harrison and headed out. They drove us for about 5 or 10 minutes and then pulled off the road. We all got out of the vehicle and prepared for a walking safari. We walked around for a couple of hours. We didn’t see a lot of animals aside from some impala and warthogs. But Misha gave us a lot of knowledge along the way. We looked at animal tracks, animal poop, and vegetation in the area. We found elephant poop that had been picked through. He said animals such as baboons will do that. Elephants process food through their digestive system very quickly so food doesn’t get broken down very well. There are a lot of fruits and seeds in elephant poop that have merely been a little softened. Baboons and other animals will pick through the poop to find these berries and seeds to eat. We also learned that imapalas looking for a mate will all poop in a central pile for some reason. Termites will break down this poop and we saw evidence of that. We found hippo trails as they tend to walk the same route to and from the water. These trails get eroded by the hippos and during rainy season, these trails can turn into tributaries that drain water to the river. Mishta wanted to find us an “English Breakfast” during the walk. So, we found a sausage tree and nother tree they call the “scrambled egg” tree. He asked what else is part of an english breakfast. Bacon! Mishta said we can use a warthog for that. It made us chuckle.

After walking for a couple of hours, we stopped and had a snack. They would never let us go hungry here! We had some juice or tea and a couple of cookies each. We enjoyed the view of our surroundings while we enjoyed the snack. Then we continued on our way. We found a couple of snail shells. One was a water snail that may have just been in hibernation. Then we saw the shell of a large land snail that was gorgeous. Unfortunately, it appeared that one had died as only the shell remained. We learned about termites and how a new termite mound is formed. In the rainy season, a bunch of termites form wings and leave the mound to go find a mate. If they aren’t eaten by birds or other animals and happen to find a suitable mate, they will find a place of their own, lose their wings, and start their own mound as the king and queen. Michael asked why several mounds are built around trees. Mishta informed us it’s the other way around. Baboons like to sit on termite mounds and eat berries or seeds. Seeds get dropped onto the termite mounds. Because the termites are digging dirt from well below the ground, the dirt in their mounds are very fertile and soft. This gives the seeds a great environment to sprout in. So, the trees actually grew from the termite mound. Plus the termites help the tree by eating the dead cells in it’s bark so it works well for both parties.

We eventually made our way back to the vehicle. We loaded in and started driving. We came across another Bushcamp safari vehicle. The guide was Mishta’s identical twin brother! They chatted for a minute. We were informed a leopard had been spotted in a tree just around the corner. Both jeeps headed for the tree, and sure enough, we were able to spot a leopard. We took a few photos and watched it for several minutes before continuing on. We thought we were heading back to camp but ended up pulling into a spot by the river where they had a few tables set up and another vehicle. It was Peter and Davis again! Another vehicle pulled in as we were unloading as well. They had a pizza oven set up and a table with all the pizza fixings. We were having individual pizzas for lunch. After enjoying a welcome glass of juice, we started to make our pizzas. We learned pretty quickly that you couldn’t make the dough too thin or they couldn’t get it into the pizza oven. A couple of people had to remake their pizzas. We enjoyed our lunch and another visit with Peter and Davis. There was another lady who joined us. She was just arriving at Chamilandu Camp. We didn’t catch her name, but she certainly doesn’t seem very friendly. After pizza, they brought out some ice cream for dessert.

After we finished lunch, we loaded into the vehicle again and headed back to camp. The new lady joined us but didn’t say anything on the way back to camp. We stopped for a moment to take a few pictures of a lilac-breasted roller that flew in front of us. Amanda loves that bird. We returned to camp and had a few hours to relax.

At 3:30pm we met in the main tent again. We had a quick drink and a snack of lemon loaf. We properly introduced ourselves to the new lady. Her name is Carrie and she’s a lawyer from San Francisco. She’s not as unfriendly as we originally thought, but not terribly outgoing. After we finished the snack, we all loaded into the vehicle and headed off on our game drive. We saw the regular impala, and warthogs. We came across a few more elephants and another lilac-breasted roller as well. We headed to where we saw the leopard earlier to see if she was still there. Unfortunately, she had moved on. At one point Amanda spotted a female lion off to one side. We pulled over and watched her for a while. Mishta informed us she was part of the pride we found yesterday, but wasn’t one of the lions we saw. Sometimes the pride will split into groups. He wasn’t sure why this one was all alone. While we were watching her, three elephants walked through the bushes on the other side of the road. They had detected the lion in the area. The lion got spooked and walked off right beside our vehicle. We probably could have reached out and touched her as she walked by. It was amazing! The elephants didn’t see her go so hung out for a few minutes before walking off. We continued on our way.

We stopped for our sundowner snack. They brought us some sausage rolls which we enjoyed while we watched the sun set. Michael was searching the area for bugs of course and found a couple of grasshoppers. Once it was getting dark, we loaded back into the vehicle and Harrison started his spothlight search for activity in the dark. We came across a hippo, a couple of elephants, a bunch of of impala, a genet, and a scrub hare.

We returned to the camp at about 7:15pm. We had a few minutes to drop our gear in our cabins before being escorted to the main tent for dinner. We enjoyed a dinner of a vegetable tart to start, followed by roast beef with potatoes and veggies, and a chocolate lava cake for dessert. As usualy, the food was very tasty. We talked about the political situation in Africa. Mishta feels Zambia is the only truly democratic government in Africa. There are others that claim to be democratic, but they haven’t had a full changeover of their governments yet, such as Botswana. Where Zambia has had 5 full government changeovers without any issues. We found out the Mishta also has two older sisters who are also identical twins. We talked about the camps and how they keep him busy in the off season. They have to close several of the camps during the summer due to the rain. It floods the roads so the camps are inaccessible. When they close the camps, they move him to Mfuwe Lodge which is open year round. He’s been with the company for over 20 years now. They are talking about relocating the main tent at Chamilandu because it’s too close to the river bank that is eroding away fairly quickly. They were going to try to do it later last year. The maintenance folks thought it would be easy to just pull up the support pillars and relocate them, but Mishta was here when the structure was built. He informed them that the posts are buried 5 meters down and have horizontal anchors at the bottom of them. That made them rethink thier plans fairly quickly. They’ll look at doing it before the camp opens next year. When Michael was done eating, he started to exploe the main tent for bugs and other creatures. He found a tree frog hanging out on one of the lights which he was quite enamored with.

After our pleasant dinner and conversation, it was time to get ready for bed.