Office Africa September 2014

Dear All!

August has been so busy that we now find ourselves in September! Sorry to send this newsletter a little late and to keep you hanging!

So let’s get right in shall we?

The star of the months is undisputedly Malaika, the female leopard with her two cubs. She is so relax with the vehicles and has delighted our guests with many day and night time sightings.

The Mwamba-Kaingo pride has also been much more present in our area this past weeks, feeding on their preferred prey: buffalo.

In our last newsletter we had announced that one of the female had introduced 2 cubs to the pride in early July. Unfortunately one of the cubs was lost but the second one is thriving despite some close encounters with a croc only a few days ago! She (it’s a little female) has lots of big brothers and sisters to protect her!

The males have been seen many times as well, and the pride seems to be eyeing the territory of the Nsefu pride across the river as they have been seen crossing the river a couple of times. More recently however the whole pride was up in Lion Plains area, on yet another buffalo kill, and rewarded our guests with an excellent sighting of the lions drinking.

As you can see on those picture, the lion with the spotty skin is still around, his condition is stable. He has been treated by the Zambian Carnivore Program for MANGE disease. And they are still monitoring his condition.

The Hollywood pride has of course been around as well, feeding on a number of smaller prey such as impalas and pukus – they will definitely need to look at bigger-sized preys as the proud is getting bigger! Indeed we had heard news of two new cubs but they had not been seen yet – until a few nights ago (Sep 5) when one of our game drives came across the mother introducing the two tiny cubs to the rest of the pride. Always such a special moment!

There has been some other very exciting sightings during the past weeks and a couple of “first” even for our most experienced guides!

On August 15th, Meyam and his guests witnessed a very large group of giraffes (14 of them!) crossing the river! Meyam had heard of other guides seeing giraffe cross the water, but he had never seen it himself in over a dozen years of guiding! Now the sighting was also interesting because at first the giraffes seem to change their mind and turned around, but then the older male did manage to convince the rest of the tower that the grass must be greener on the other side as the whole group turned around again, and crossed over in quick strides.

Oops… no let’s turn around…

This time it’s a go!

More recently, on August 26^th, our veteran and senior guide Pat Njobvu saw a tiny ball of fur he had only heard of before – a Tree Hyrax (or Dassie). Pat came back really excited from his first sighting ever and his pictures came out pretty good too!

Another memorable moment was when a huge herd of buffaloes crossed the Lion Plains, heading towards the little water left at the Fish Eagle lagoon. Meyam having seen the buffaloes, positioned his vehicle in the perfect spot to face the herd drinking.

And on the fun side, we thought these few pictures of an elephant playing in the mud were quite hysterical, and worth sharing!

We like showing you lots of pictures of the animals found in South Luangwa National Park. But there is a lot more to the park! Once you look beyond the many animals and birds, you start to see what makes this park so rich and diverse – you start to see the TREES.

There are some truly amazing trees here in the Valley, huge baobabs, ebony trees, mahogany and fig trees, old leadwood and mopane trees…

Here are some pictures from many of our talented photographer guests who have been lured to capture the beauty of our wonderful trees in spite of the stunning game about.

An update on Travel News. Proflight has announced that a new flight will start for next safari season, from July 2015, between Lusaka and Kafue National Park (Chunga airstrip). The flight will take place 3 times a week, on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.

Last month we published the dates of the photographic workshop we have in the books for next season. C4 Images and Safaris has finalized their dates for June and August 2015. Click on the log below for more information on these trips.

We’ll end this newsletter with a renewed appeal for your support. More and more websites are now available for reviews on African holidays and safari experiences. You are most likely familiar with Trip Advisor (which we always welcome you to add your review there first), but here are a few links to other websites where reviews or trip reports can be added, and you might actually quite enjoy the great stories and photography found on the likes of Safarious and Safaritalk. Just click on the logos to access the websites.