It's beautiful up North

Zambia has numerous public holidays and this year with Heroes Day and Unit Day falling during the week it was a case of what shall we do. We settled for northern Zambia and lots of waterfalls. By ‘we’ I mean 12 of us, in 3 cars, covering 6 nationalities. Our final destination was Lake Tanganyika, some 800 miles from Mazabuka. Along the way we stopped at Multinondo Wilderness – one of my first trips around Zambia last year – and being in the middle of winter it was pretty chilly at night and even colder swimming in the streams close to our campsite. After a few days we continued north, trying to avoid potholes the width of the road and fairly deep too, and stayed in the town of Kasama. Here we visited some local rock art and walked around Chishimba Falls. During the trip they were probably my favourite falls as you get 3 waterfalls on one stretch of river and they got more impressive as we moved from the first to the last.

Next up was Lake Tanganyika – the second largest freshwater lake in the world and the second deepest – which shares its shores with Burundi, DRC, Tanzania and Zambia. At the Zambia port (!) of Mpulungu we packed almost all our camping belongings (there was plenty of them) onto a creaking wooden boat and set off for Isanga Bay (http://www.isangabay.com); along the during the journey the crew used buckets to remove water from the leaking hull. The reward was a picture perfect sandy beach and the promise of a relaxing time. After the chill of Multinondo to have to sprint across the sand because it was so hot was a pleasure. We spent an enjoyable few days playing volleyball and frisbee, kayaking, swimming and snorkelling. We walked to our second waterfall, Kalambo Falls, the second highest in Africa with a drop of 235 metres; impressively tall, narrow and a spectacular, scary view peering over the edge.

It was tough to leave our beach and there were a few debates about whether we really had to leave so soon. But we did and we retraced our steps along the same route, the cold weather returned which meant bathing at Kapishya hot springs after dark was a real delight. We toured through the grounds of the Shiwa Ng'andu estate (http://www.shiwangandu.com/) briefly glimpsing the very English country house built by Stewart Gore-Browne. The last stop was in Serenje, a fairly non-descript town with the attractive Kundalila waterfalls close-by. And that was the end of another great trip, well almost, as first we had to survive a scary taxi ride from Lusaka back to Mazabuka where once it started getting dark we discovered that the car had virtually no lights. We ditched the taxi as soon as we could and were rescued by a kind friend from Maz; all part of the adventure.