Kafue

            Today was a long, fun day of exploring some African countryside.  Dave and Dee picked us up at 5 to head west over to the very large Kafue National Park.  It took a couple hours to get there.  Kafue has some little villages consisting of mud huts as well as a few lodges for the tourists.  Kafue is known for having elephants, cheetahs, leopards, lion, and buffalo, so our eyes were peeled for any of those.  We stayed on the main road for a while and then Dave adventurously followed a trail left by another truck.  We were definitely off-roading it.   We saw tons of impala, which was exciting for me at first until I realized that they were our equivalent of squirrels in America – they are everywhere.  They’re pretty much just like deer.  We also saw some other animals similar to the impala but with certain differences – puku, kudu, water bucks, and hartebeests.  The last three listed are much rarer and were more exciting to see.  The horns and coloring of the fur differ as well as the size.  We saw several herds of zebras; a few ran right in front of our car.  There were lots of bird sightings – I’m not a bird-watcher and can only tell you I saw some really vibrant turquoise birds and a pretty purple one.  You’ll have to look at Rachel’s blog for specific names.  We saw some warthogs (which prompted me to have the song from “The Lion King” that Pumba sings stuck in my head the rest of the day), a crocodile swimming in the Kafue River, a snake, and then finally some big game: buffalo.  That’s the only one of the Big Five (lion, elephant, buffalo, leopard, rhinoceros) that I’ve seen so far.  I’m not counting the elephants and lions I saw at Victoria Falls because those are basically tame.  The buffalo herd was huge – we’re guessing around 100 at least.  They were really close to the road and we got some good looks at them.  We were happy to have a few good sightings of a lot of different animals, but it was disappointing to drive away without seeing any elephants or cats.  We must have been really close to some elephants too; we saw fresh trails all over the place.  But that’s alright – there’s still a good amount of time left.   It was nice to see some more of Zambia, enjoy some good weather, and see some new animals.