Epic Hikes of the World ( PDFDrive )

three-day hiking safari in South Luangwa National Park. Zambia’s flagship wildlife
destination is also the home of the walking safari, devised by near-legendary
ecotourism pioneer and conservationist Norman Carr more than 50 years ago. Its
mosaic of grasslands, lagoons and riverine woodland is a haven for creatures great
and small, including four of the Big Five (rhino were sadly poached out across
Zambia by 1998, though they’ve since been reintroduced). But what makes it a
treat for wildlife watchers is the chance to roam its vastness on foot alongside some
of Africa’s finest guides.
The dawn chill was evaporating as we set out from Luwi Camp on the first leg of
our stroll between a quartet of bushcamps, roughly tracing the Luwi River to its
confluence with the larger Luangwa. I say ‘roughly’ – we weren’t following a set
trail, but instead relying on the expertise and experience of Abraham and our
armed ranger, Johns. The emphasis was very much on quality, not quantity;
distances are modest, measured in animal encounters, not miles or metres.
Within our first couple of hundred steps I was absorbing titbits of Abraham’s
bush lore. The trunk of a young tree was bent double, half-snapped from the
attentions of an itchy elephant; while along the path another bush showed signs of
spoor – dried mud scraped on its side, marking a buffalo’s transit. Past that hyenamarked
grass we found the scavengers’ droppings, flecked white with bone. Add a
visit to a hippo midden, a teetering pile of dung at the water-horses’ al-fresco
toilet, and the morning was a veritable poop patrol, topped off when Abraham
broke open a football-sized elephant dropping to extract a marula nut. ‘They’re
very sweet – good for jam,’ said Abraham, ‘and a lot easier to open once an
elephant’s had a go at digesting them.’
We paused frequently: to laugh at warthogs, always comical, squealing and
scattering before us; to examine the empty husks of lizard eggs, their incubation
mound dotted with millipede tracks; to watch a snake eagle tearing at a monitor
lizard in a branch above us. The gentle rustle of our footsteps was occasionally
drowned by the whir as flocks of queleas and Lilian’s lovebirds took flight from a
seed-laden patch of dust. And at this delightfully stop-start pace, by late morning
we reached the dried-out bed of a tributary of the Luangwa River.
We sat out the dry, breathless African noon in the shade of a buffalo-thorn; bird
calls had receded, the vivid carmine bee-eaters nowhere to be seen. The sandy
riverbed was a virtual walk of fame where the stars of the park had pressed their
prints – the dinner-plate pads of elephants, the cloven hoofs of giraffes and the
tiny paw prints of elephant shrews framed within lion pugmarks – but the animals
themselves were elsewhere.