Still ‘Old’ Africa

SOUTH LUANGWA NATIONAL PARK, Zambia —  The leopard had killed an aardvark roughly its own weight and pulled the carcass up a sausage tree. There it was safe from the hyenas gathered at the tree’s base, and from the pride of 22 lions whose territory the leopard shared.

The night after the kill, the leopard lay sprawled across a limb of that tree, the aardvark devoured. There was no need for the leopard to hunt that night, and no reason to stir when our Land Cruiser paused to admire him. I have spent about a year, over the past six, exploring Africa’s game parks, and my private moments with leopards, free from the clatter and lights of other safari vehicles, were rather special.

The BBC also stopped by that evening, and left unimpressed. Its crew had been filming leopards here for two years. There are about 300 leopards in this park, and the sight of one groggy cat raised little interest.

For his part, the lion pride’s dominant male was off mating, while the pride’s other females tended the cubs. And so the zebra, the giraffe, the baboon, the waterbuck, the wildebeest, the bushbuck, the impala, the lechwe, the puku and the kudu--all of whom inhabit the park in such abundance--passed the night in peace.

Indeed, but for the splashing of elephants crossing the river, and the munching of hippos out for an evening graze, this was a quiet August night in South Luangwa National Park, Zambia.

Back at camp, Robin and Jo Pope’s staff were spreading out the chutneys and chicken, and opening the South African wines. Each of Nkwali Camp’s 12, $210-a-night beds were occupied that evening--a rarity in a country where safari camps operate at 30% capacity. This night was near the end of my five weeks in Zambia in 1996, and like most Zambia pilgrims, I was daily struck by the near absence of other travelers.

As Norman Carr complained: “All our neighbors are booming in tourism, but we’re barely holding our own.” An injustice, he maintained, since “our product here is every bit as good as our neighbors’.”

Carr, 85, counts 60 years of promoting Zambian safaris. In 1949, he persuaded South Luangwa’s Chief Nsefu to open a tribally owned safari camp. It was the first tourist camp in then Northern Rhodesia, the first tribally owned tourist camp in all of Africa, “and the chief thought it was a crazy idea,” Carr added.

Nonetheless, the camp earned $200 in its first year, “which was great wealth in those days, and which all went into the chief’s pocket.”

Then, in the 1950s, Carr surveyed the frontiers of newly established Kafue National Park, the second-largest game park in Africa, and built five tourist camps in that vast wilderness.

The crowds never came to Kafue, nor to almost anywhere in Zambia. Even 3,600-square-mile South Luangwa National Park will today see only 5,000 international travelers over its six-month May to October high season, and South Luangwa is Zambia’s most popular park.

Though only 13 degrees south of the equator, the park mimics a proper English woodland. Tidy groves of ebony and mahogany wander along the Luangwa River, and vast miombo forests turn yellow and purple from winter’s frost. Rain is regular, rivers are plentiful, and at 2,000 feet above sea level, the dry winter season is temperate. Indeed, from April to July, the valley’s average nighttime low is 38.

It is a singularly agreeable venue for watching animals. And there is considerable wildlife to watch: 25% of the world’s hippos wallow in Zambia’s rivers, and along stretches of the Luangwa River there are more than 100 per mile. In 1995, the British Broadcasting Co. chose South Luangwa for its documentary on hippos, and in 1997 will be returning to film the park’s equally ubiquitous crocodiles. So choked with hippos and crocs is the Luangwa that no rafting company will float it.

South Luangwa’s inarguable allure, however, fell victim to external forces. The bankruptcy of Zambia Airways left in-country transit to an oft-changing cast of local entrepreneurs. Flights within the country are still occasional, costly and often complex, while equipment and fuel delays not infrequently leave travelers stewing in some bare-bones airport.

And while the rates at Zambia’s $200- to $250-a-night (including all meals) luxury safari camps compare favorably to their more costly counterparts in Botswana and Zimbabwe, the neglect of its state-owned and more economical tourist camps, and the country’s sparse and unpleasant road system, have combined to discourage more budget-minded travelers.

And so, that quiet August evening on the Luangwa last year was shared by maybe 70 international travelers scattered over half a dozen camps--hardly the kind of numbers calculated to excite Zambian economists.

For any romantic possessed by Old Africa, however, it’s a different story. And throughout this still-wild country, an eclectic band of expatriates and quixotic residents is rekindling that romance.

Foremost among them are the Popes. Robin Pope, 44, is a native Zambian who left Carr’s employ in 1985 to build Tena Tena Camp in South Luangwa’s Nsefu Sector, a lonely park annex 20 miles from the more trafficked portion of South Luangwa. Tena’s open-air, thatched-roof dining area sits perched directly atop the Luangwa River and a herd of 40 hippos. Less than a mile away, four hyena pups flop about the mouth of their den. Crocodiles grab puku antelope from the camp’s riverbank.

The signature of the quintessential African camp is the presence of such raw wild at the foot of utmost civility, and at Tena that virtue is writ large. Smartly sauced continental fare is presented on camp china; the thatched-roof, two-person guest tents span 200 square feet; and the staff, nearly delirious over their lot in life, assure that no guest’s needs go unmet.

There are no phone or power lines at Tena Tena, and the Popes needed a year-round home with a bit of infrastructure. From necessity was thus born Nkwali Camp, built across the Luangwa River from the park’s main gate on a 99-year lease from the local chief.

Nkwali is a Tena clone, though lacking the latter’s boundless isolation. Alone along a stretch of the Luangwa, where elephants cross each morning, Nkwali is one of four camps that feed the main roads of the park itself. A day’s expedition into Nkwali’s slice of South Luangwa is thus likely to yield a vehicle or two’s competition--gridlock, by Zambian standards.

But there are compensations. Here, for example, is where South Luangwa’s cats become commonplace, and where Thornicroft’s giraffe, found nowhere else in Africa, nibble on winterthorns.

Each season, seemingly, the Popes poke a little farther into the Zambian bush. They now, for example, lead two annual off-season expeditions to the plains of Zambia’s wild Western Province, which still hosts an annual migration of 35,000 wildebeests.

In Zambia, one can do such things. Witness British expatriates Ben Parker and Will Ruck Keene, the Popes’ counterparts along the Zambezi--David Livingstone’s “River of God.”

Four hundred miles from its Zambian headwaters, the Zambezi fractures at Victoria Falls. Vic Falls is a compulsory stop on any southern African safari, though most traffic is routed to the noisy Zimbabwean side, which today is more Disney than Livingstone.

Parker and Ruck Keene’s mission was to offer a bit of Old Africa on the provincial Zambian shore. To this end, they acquired an isolated swath of Zambian shoreline 12 lonely, dirt-road miles from the border, and there in 1990 built Tongabezi Lodge.

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There are eight cottages making up Tongabezi, all neatly set on manicured lawns sloping down to a private stretch of the Zambezi. In 1995, Tongabezi held a Europe-wide competition for a new chef--won by a Scotsman who daily blesses 16 guests with the bounty of Tongabezi’s expansive gardens. The lodge runs its own school for its ebullient staff. It is a self-contained outpost of Mayfair propriety that serves tea promptly, and whose staff resumes include Zambia’s top ornithologist and its most accomplished canoe guide, both of whom tended my needs over five days of canoeing through this improbable empire.

The clientele here tends toward occasional royalty and jaded gentry, who pay the lodge’s $260-per-night fare cheerfully. By and large, it’s an end-of-safari hermitage where the well-heeled come to recline and ponder Africa.

Which frankly seems a waste. At the lodge’s foot, the Zambezi River braids into narrow, languid channels hung with palms, water berry trees and weaverbird nests. With far fewer hippos and crocs than in the Luangwa, it’s a fine spot to launch a canoe, from which the paddler will inevitably encounter elephants, waterbuck, baboons and a good sampling of the 330 species of birds recorded here.

About two miles downstream is a palm and sand island called Sindabezi, where Parker and Ruck Keene have built a Crusoe-esque four-hut hideaway. The Zambezi is a cocoon here, blanketing Sindebezi’s lonely tenants in virgin Africa.

It is hardly so quiet at the third leg of Tongabezi’s empire, almost 10 miles downstream. Here the Zambezi tumbles over a mile-wide, 330-foot-deep gorge. Dangling on the edge of this thunder and spray is Livingstone Island, and here Parker and Ruck Keene have planted another camp.

Most visitors to southern Africa see Victoria Falls. Few sleep on it, and Parker and Ruck Keene’s exclusive concession on the only foothold atop Victoria Falls is perhaps the ultimate proof of the panache behind the entire Tongabezi enterprise, which grows still. Tongabezi has an air force--a six-seater Cherokee to ferry guests throughout Zambia and Zimbabwe. Its new tented camp on the elephant-rich lower Zambezi opened in September 1996.

Zambia is an abundant country, with but 9 million people scattered over its 290,000 square miles of woodlands and river valleys. There is space here for romance to spread.

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GUIDEBOOK

Parking in Zambia

Getting there: The most convenient gateway to Zambia is through Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe. The cleanest connections from Los Angeles are nonstop to Frankfurt on Lufthansa, United, Air New Zealand or LTU; then take Air Zimbabwe nonstop from Frankfurt to Harare. Or fly L.A.-Harare on Air France with change of planes in Paris, and one stop en route to Harare. Round-trip fares begin at about $3,460 including tax.

From Harare, Tropic Air (telephone 011-263-4-304800, fax 011-263-4-302693) flies three days weekly to Mfuwe, Zambia, the gateway to South Luangwa National Park, during the May-Oct. tourist season.If you don’t want to cobble together a Zambian safari piece-by-piece, Bushbuck Safaris (48 High St., Hungerford, Berkshire RG17 ONE, United Kingdom; tel. 011-44-1488-684702, fax 011-44-1488-684868, e-mail [email protected]) is one of the tour companies adept at providing a complete itinerary.

Necessities: a valid passport and a Zambian visa are necessary. There are no special security concerns in the country, save for the normal range of urban crime in the capital city of Lusaka, which this itinerary avoids. Normal third-world medical precautions, such as malarial prophylaxes, are needed.

Where to stay: For reservations at Tena Tena camp in the remote Nsefu sector of South Luangwa National Park ($260 per person, per night) and at Nkwali camp in the cat-rich Mfuwe sector ($210 per person, per night), book through Robin Pope Safaris, P.O. Box 80, Mfuwe, Zambia; tel. 011-260-62-45090, fax 011-260-62-45051, e-mail [email protected]. The Popes’ six-bed camp at South Luangwa’s remote Zebra Pans is $250 a person per night.

All of the lodge and camp rates quoted here include all meals, transfers and guides.

In Livingstone, the Zambian city at Victoria Falls, Tongabezi rates at the main lodge are $260 per person per night for standard riverfront rooms, and $315 per person for the lodge’s four luxury houses. Nights at Sindabezi Island and Livingstone Island camps run $260 per person. Contact Tongabezi, Private Bag 31, Livingstone, Zambia; tel. 011-260-3-323235, fax 011-260-3-323224, e-mail [email protected].

For more information: Contact the Zambia National Tourist Board, 800 2nd Ave., New York, NY 10017; tel. (212) 972-7200, fax 212/972-7360.