Tuesday 27th August
We had a nice chat with the Johnsons again – a really lovely family, they all came to have a look at the Mog and kindly gave us a map of Zambia and some supplies that they weren’t going to use before leaving in a couple of days.
They also kindly took a postcard to pos in UK for Sue’s mum so that she will get some fresh news quickly.
We set off a little late today, headed for Lochinvar National Park, we weren’t 100% sure of the route as the GPS wanted to take us further north down some tracks not marked on any of our maps, whereas the advice we’d got from people who had done the trip before was to stick to the road further south out of Monze. In the end we did something like 60km on some pretty poor gravel roads which slowly got smaller and smaller until we were on a small sand track winding from tiny village to tiny village before it opened out again onto a more major gravel road to the park. Just outside the park entrance is a bar called “Hunters
Den” – this should have been a warning....
The park entrance is under reconstruction with a new roof being built over the entrance gate. It looked a little low, we edged forward in 1st with Sue watching from the front, suddenly she waved me to stop, we were against one of the “rafters”, but could clear it by edging a little to the right, but now another one caught on the solar panels and would damage one of our rooflights if we moved any further forward. Sue had to hang off the right hand steps to keep that side of the truck a couple of mm lower whilst I slowly reversed out of trouble. Only at this stage did the lady manning the gate reveal that there was another way in – through a gap in the fencing!!! We were in!
The next obstacle came about 500m down the rough gravel track (just over a hill) – a tractor and trailer parked in the middle of the track with no-one around. Odd. Then we noticed that it was missing a rear wheel – we’d seen a bakkie heading into town with a tractor wheel in the back – evidently from here. We had 2 choices – wait for the bakkie to get back with a hopefully repaired tyre or squeeze around the tractor. There was a ditch on both sides – only thing to do was gently ease the front left of the truck into the ditch, try not to topple, and squeeze past. It worked, but we forgot to take any photos (Sue got out so as not to distract me with any squeals during the operation – she occasionally makes little noises when things get a bit hairy!).
From here to the park offices didn’t take too long, we paid about 60USD and headed off to Chunga Lagoon where there is reputedly good birding. On the way there was absolutely no game – worrying, however we did spot a very large eagle(?) on the road ahead at one point, it flew off but we found it again in a tree – Sue is still trying to identify it from her books (Osprey, Snake Eagle.....?). The park looks dreadful – there has been lots of burning going on for some reason, several local trucks were coming away from the lagoon heavily
laden with sacks of smelly fish. The lagoon itself suddenly came into view – a beautiful sight with Fish Eagles , herons and lechwe around. We headed off down a track next to the lagoon and found a spot to park for lunch and coffee until the heat of the sun got too much and we retreated to a clump of acacia trees where there used to be a luxury campsite (all facilities in the park seem to have been either left to go to ruin or destroyed). A small French group with their Zimbabwean guides were already camped there in the shade, so we joined them. Two “wildlife wardens” with rifles walked through a little later, one of them evidently high on something.....
Lochinvar doesn’t have any big cats (in fact it seems to have little of anything left), so it’s ok to walk around, we took the opportunity of the coolness of the late afternoon to walk around the shore a little – unfortunately there don’t appear to be many birds here at the moment either! After sunset the French group kindly invited us for G&Ts with them, we sat around for a good hour or so chatting before retiring to make our supper under the stars.
We had a nice chat with the Johnsons again – a really lovely family, they all came to have a look at the Mog and kindly gave us a map of Zambia and some supplies that they weren’t going to use before leaving in a couple of days.
They also kindly took a postcard to pos in UK for Sue’s mum so that she will get some fresh news quickly.
We set off a little late today, headed for Lochinvar National Park, we weren’t 100% sure of the route as the GPS wanted to take us further north down some tracks not marked on any of our maps, whereas the advice we’d got from people who had done the trip before was to stick to the road further south out of Monze. In the end we did something like 60km on some pretty poor gravel roads which slowly got smaller and smaller until we were on a small sand track winding from tiny village to tiny village before it opened out again onto a more major gravel road to the park. Just outside the park entrance is a bar called “Hunters
Den” – this should have been a warning....
The park entrance is under reconstruction with a new roof being built over the entrance gate. It looked a little low, we edged forward in 1st with Sue watching from the front, suddenly she waved me to stop, we were against one of the “rafters”, but could clear it by edging a little to the right, but now another one caught on the solar panels and would damage one of our rooflights if we moved any further forward. Sue had to hang off the right hand steps to keep that side of the truck a couple of mm lower whilst I slowly reversed out of trouble. Only at this stage did the lady manning the gate reveal that there was another way in – through a gap in the fencing!!! We were in!
The next obstacle came about 500m down the rough gravel track (just over a hill) – a tractor and trailer parked in the middle of the track with no-one around. Odd. Then we noticed that it was missing a rear wheel – we’d seen a bakkie heading into town with a tractor wheel in the back – evidently from here. We had 2 choices – wait for the bakkie to get back with a hopefully repaired tyre or squeeze around the tractor. There was a ditch on both sides – only thing to do was gently ease the front left of the truck into the ditch, try not to topple, and squeeze past. It worked, but we forgot to take any photos (Sue got out so as not to distract me with any squeals during the operation – she occasionally makes little noises when things get a bit hairy!).
From here to the park offices didn’t take too long, we paid about 60USD and headed off to Chunga Lagoon where there is reputedly good birding. On the way there was absolutely no game – worrying, however we did spot a very large eagle(?) on the road ahead at one point, it flew off but we found it again in a tree – Sue is still trying to identify it from her books (Osprey, Snake Eagle.....?). The park looks dreadful – there has been lots of burning going on for some reason, several local trucks were coming away from the lagoon heavily
laden with sacks of smelly fish. The lagoon itself suddenly came into view – a beautiful sight with Fish Eagles , herons and lechwe around. We headed off down a track next to the lagoon and found a spot to park for lunch and coffee until the heat of the sun got too much and we retreated to a clump of acacia trees where there used to be a luxury campsite (all facilities in the park seem to have been either left to go to ruin or destroyed). A small French group with their Zimbabwean guides were already camped there in the shade, so we joined them. Two “wildlife wardens” with rifles walked through a little later, one of them evidently high on something.....
Lochinvar doesn’t have any big cats (in fact it seems to have little of anything left), so it’s ok to walk around, we took the opportunity of the coolness of the late afternoon to walk around the shore a little – unfortunately there don’t appear to be many birds here at the moment either! After sunset the French group kindly invited us for G&Ts with them, we sat around for a good hour or so chatting before retiring to make our supper under the stars.