It's March 2004 and ...
It's Monday 1st and the Popes return
Well Robin and I are back after a month away. We had 10 days holiday and lots of days sourcing, buying, meeting with accountants and banks. Good to be home. Our approach to holidays now tends to be "short and often" rather than taking the long 4-6 weeks that we used to. Our holiday was booked last minute (3 days to go!) and we had intended to go to Mauritius for 10 days to a resort with a gym and personal trainer. I had decided it was time to get fit! Well we ended up 3 nights at a FAB resort in Mauritius and I never even found the gym. But we slept and slept. Then off to Reunion - a very small island that is a department of France. And I mean small - it is a quarter the size of the South Luangwa but I would guest 30 to 40 times the surface area. Incredible mountains and volcanoes. A stunning place. So instead of lifting weights and cycling on the spot we scrambled around mountain rivers, swam in huge pools with waterfalls, body surfed (well - bobbed in the sea ducking enormous waves) and I returned feeling much stronger!
February is the time that I have renew my flying licence and so on return to Lusaka I flew for a couple of hours before my flight test. The first day an hour of stalls and simulated forced landings and I was exhausted. I needed three hours sleep to recover. The next day I flew for 2 hours, including the flight test, and loved every minute. Amazing how fast it comes back. However, I do not yet recommend anyone flying with me for pleasure!! Mike Tango Charlie, my Cessna 210 which many of you have flown in, has finally been sold. I will be buying a Cessna 206 to replace her but sad to see MTC leave us. I am excited about the 206 and hope that I find it easier to fly. The 210 was rather like a sports car - fast, heavy, and unusually balanced. Not easy for a pilot like me who hardly ever flies!
Returning to the bush was wonderful. The river shot up 2 meters the night we arrived and the rain came and went all week, resulting in the most beautiful sunsets. Watching the pinks and purples bounce around a 30,000 foot cloud, that is streaking with lightening and all whilst sipping a cold beer as the boat drifts down the Luangwa is a great experience!!
The new bar is every exciting and with one month to go - it is flat out! We visited the saw pit to see the future bar of Nkwali being cut. It is a HUGE piece of wood and amazing to watch the guys slowly, very slowly, cut through it!.
You certainly would not get me spending my day in a hole under 2 tons of wood!
We also have visitors - both large and small. Moths of indescribable beauty are appearing daily. And the elephants are coming through the camp. (again - picture on the way). A family with 3 youngsters trapped us in the office for a while our first morning back. A great welcome home!
All the best and have a wonderful week
JO
It's Monday 8th and the Hairy Spider
Tomorrow Robin and I leave the Valley again as we head off to the UK for Simon and Shanie's wedding next Saturday. Shanie is going through all the classic bride nerves and excitement. Many people from Africa are travelling over for this momentous day - it will be a wonderful gathering. Kim left this weekend, Keyala and Jason are already there. A full report will follow!
The wood cutters at the pitsaw finally finished cutting the "new bar" and so Adam had the task of moving this HUGE piece of wood through the bush to the bar. This was done by winching and rolling on logs and oh yes, lots of huffing and puffing! Robin drove a cruiser up the steps in the bar for the final winch! (see pic). Meanwhile the thatchers are moving on a pace (see pic) and we are confident the new Nkwali bar will be ready for the opening at the end of the month. Phew.
This week we had 120 mls of rain (nearly 5 inches) and there is water everywhere. Our usual road out is flooded (see pic) and we are taking a different route. We are hoping the rain will start to abate now as although the river is not high the ground water is extensive and already the low lying villages are flooded.
But the rain is still bringing out the most amazing beasties and this week the cage housed another wonderful moth along side a baboon spider (see pics). The spider is huge, hairy and generally not what we want to find in our beds! It does bite and would be very painful. Robin knows this by experience - he was once sleeping around a camp fire in the bush and work up with something on his face. He brushed it off and the still unidentified "it" bit him on the upper lip. It was a huge hairy baboon spider. Just imagine - horrors! His lip swelled up enormously, like a rhino horn and the scar (a small blue patch - not really significant!) took 15 years to fade completely. As I say - not a spider we want in our beds!
Robin did a day trip in the boat up (see pic) to the camps and reports they are good shape! Hopefully camp building this year will be easy! Ha! He also counted 865 hippos between the bridge and Nsefu - some 30 km of river. That is a lot of hippo considering most of them are in the lagoons now. And a lot of counting - I certainly would not have had the patience to do that!
So, from the hot and wet Valley to the cold UK this week. All the best and have a great week.
JO
It's Monday 15th and the Wedding Party
It's Monday again, or so they tell me. Nkwali's first guests of the season have already come and gone. Thrilled with the peace and tranquility of Robin's House and inspired by the wet season's dawn chorus they added 160 species of birds to their list, and enjoyed wonderful game viewing including daytime cat sightings (lion and leopard).
As you all know Simon and Shanie firmly tied the knot this weekend. While many of the RPS family (old and new) celebrated with them in the UK, not to be outdone the remaining few had a wedding party in their honour. 'CONGRATULATIONS'.
Rainbow in the car park
The rain came in flood and a rescue team had to be sent off to pull vehicles out of the mud. However this just added to the excitement of the evening - anyway it was Adam's job to unstuck them.
Newly installed satellite system has made communication much more user friendly; even the neighbours make trunk calls. What is it about the trees in the camp that are so much tastier than all the other trees in the whole park? We are now having daily visits from our family of 9 elephants. This is what makes us love living and working here - where else are you sitting in an office at the computer and 9 elephant walk within a meter or two of your window.
Question:
What weights 18 grams, has a fluffy tail, big ears and is currently living in Jo's biscuit tin?
Answer:
Next week .
Bye for now and have a fantastic week.
Kerri
It's Monday 22nd March and Nkwali comes to life
Back from the UK after attending Simon and Shanie's wedding which was fantastic - they both had a wonderful day. Shanie looked amazing and it was great to have so many of their friends from the bush over to help them celebrate.
Also returning after his trip to the States and England is Keyala. He is currently writing up a full report and we will also be posting this for you all to read about his exploits. He had a wonderful time, highlights being seeing the sea for the first time, in San Fransisco of all places, seeing snow for the first time in Minnesota and visiting the natural history museum in Oxford.
Emily has also arrived back at Nkwali and will be catering here for the coming season - great to have her back and she and Keyala are running around getting the camp ready for the first visitors on 27th March. The Nkwali team arrived in camp this morning and are already busy painting, polishing and washing. Lovely to see so many familiar faces. Thankfully the bar is almost ready - just finishing off the new deck and sorting out the lighting and it will be ready to receive. We had a bit of a moment when the back wall of the bathroom in chalet 6 collapsed but is now being rebuild - white ants had managed to get inside and eat away most of the supporting gonkwe. Hopefully it is a one off and we will not find the rest collapsing when we start to paint them - otherwise the first guests may find the bathrooms are more open air than they had bargained for!
Great sundowners on Thursday - all of the returnees and those left behind to man the fort, headed off to Chichele salt pan. This area is not far from Nkwali - out the back in the GMA and is a beautiful spot. An underground spring feeds a small lagoon and the surrounding area is cathedral mopani and at this time of year, a carpet of flowers nestles under the impressive trees. A few bottles of red wine and some mosi's made for a perfect evening.
Answer to last week's question- a woodland doormouse - this frightened little animal was found in Jo's bath, exhausted from trying to climb out. Debs popped it into a biscuit tin for a day to recover before setting it free in the bush.
We have not had any serious rain this week and the river is beginning to drop again - this is always a difficult time of year as the river can drop so we can not get up to Tena Tena or Nsefu by boat but the roads are still too bad to access by vehicle. Therefore the mission this week will be to start taking building supplies up to the camps so that they can begin the process of getting everything ready for the season before the river drops too much more. I am hoping to sneak out of the office and go up river as it is such a lovely trip and not often that we are able to do it.
Now that there are more of us here, I am sure that some of us will get into the park this week and be able to report on the game activity. As we have not managed to venture out lately we have had to settle for what we see in camp - elephants, nightly hippo visits and various birds as well as listening to the distant lions, leopards and hyenas - it's a tough life.
Stay well and have a great week
Kim
It's Monday 29th March and babies at Nkwali
We are back in business at Nkwali.. Although not officially open until the 1st April, we had an agent to stay this week and so had everything ready for him to arrive. We also had guests in Robin's House this weekend and the guests had some super gamedrives. Daudi managed to spot day time leopard, they also saw another leopard on the way into camp on the way back from their night drive. The next days they were lucky enough to see quite a large herd of buffalo - quite unusual for this time of year.
A good start to the game viewing season - in addition to all of the "normal" animals, such as zebra and antelope, lots of elephant and of course the wonderful birdlife that is around during the green season.
Emily, Robin and Jo were heading back after sundowners with the guests when they had a lovely view of four lions - three lionesses and a young male just by Mbangula Lagoon.
At another time two lovely female lions were spotted by Kerri when out on a drive in the park with some trainee guides. Exams are at the end of May so revision is definately underway with wannabee guides checking out their birds, trees and insects at every opportunity. One quite rare bird and therefore difficult for the inexperienced to identify, was seen by Kerri and the trainees just by the main gate - a thickbilled cuckoo, a very nice sighting.
Yesterday I headed off with friends for a picnic in the park. A beautiful sunny day, if a little warm. We found a spot under a shady grove of trees and had a wonderful afternoon. On the drive home we saw lots of elephant, including a tuskless mother and tiny baby. Then round a corner we had a bit of a road block - an old Kakuli (buffalo bull) was standing in the middle of the road and was not too keen to move - eventually he ambled off and we could contine home.
A funny moment in Robin's House this week - one of the guests picked up her clothes from a chair in the bedroom only to find a baby squirrel asleep in the middle of the pile - the guests screamed, the squirrel was catapulted across the room and firmly ejected from his comfy spot.
Another baby in situ is a tiny scrub hare which was found wandering alone in the bush outside camp - it is now being fed milk from a syringe in the hope that it will strengthen enough to be release back into the bush when it gets a little bigger - very cute and cuddly!!
Stay well and have a great week
Kim
