Discounting the visit to Livingstone, this was my first opportunity to hit the road and see some of Zambia over Easter weekend. We crammed camping gear, cool boxes of food and beer and anything else we could think of into two cars as eight of us, mainly volunteers, headed north east out of Lusaka and to an area called the Mutinondo wilderness; supposedly around 8-9 hours away. The guidebook promised a place perfect for old African hands with woodlands, rivers and valleys to explore. However, as one car powered on and on towards Mutinondo we were beset by problems with not one, but two tyres, getting punctures. We had to retrace our steps closer and closer back to Lusaka in a desperate search to find a garage that was open and selling the right tyres. We found one in the end and headed back through some now familiar towns which we really did not want to see again anytime soon. With good humour we kept going, debated about whether to camp somewhere on the way as the dark descended on us and the potholes got larger, but finally arrived at camp sometime around 11pm, only seven hours after the others.
The reward was a great weekend of camping. The campsite was blended into the woodland and our group had our own fire/BBQ and raven proof food locker. Close-by there were toilets with a view and showers open to the sky. We went on a number of walks through the wilderness area, which is dominated by huge whaleback mountains (some looked suspiciously like dozing hippos in my view) that are domes of granite in shades of black, green and brown. We swam in the rivers, played under refreshing waterfalls, and went canoeing (more zig-zagging and hitting branches and spiders’ webs than going in a straight line). And we ate extremely well. I taught everyone the one card game that I know, spoons, which gradually got more competitive and a tiny bit violent as the game went on. The journey back to Lusaka could not have been smoother.
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