Sunday 24 December 2017. Photos.
Highlights: Border crossing, elephants and baboons near the campsite

Today we farewelled Malawi with five less tour members and welcomed Zambia for our Christmas stay. The long truck drive today was made much easier by everyone being able to stretch out in their own seat. Kapala have decked out the truck with some Christmas decorations to make it more festive.

The border crossing went must easier into Zambia compared to into Malawi, there were no officials asking for money to overlook issues with Yellow Fever certificates this time. I am however fast running out of space in my passport. Most countries here seem to think they should do something for their $50-75 USD visa payment for putting a full page visa into our passports. I’m now left with 1.5 pages with four countries to go. I can remove a Brazilian visa easily enough to create one additional page but it’s going to be tight.

During the day we realised people have been putting cheese in the water cooler, extremely gross and unsafe as the ice melts and the bacteria of the cheese gets out. The smell in the truck was terrible. I ended up emptying out the cooler and cleaning it twice. Drinks only people in the water cooler. We arrived at the campsite after 11 hours driving around 5 pm watching the elephants just outside the camp grounds, this is very much a nature camp.

The campsite was right next to the South Laungwa National Park right on a river. We could see crocodiles and som hippos from were we put up our tents. Baboons freely walked around the campsite and we were warned to not put food in our tents and to carefully zip them up.

I enjoy some cold drinks sitting with Tera, Roz and Arran on some deck chairs overlooking the river as the sun went down. Very cool. Both Bill, my tent mate, and myself debated putting up the rain cover over our tent and had finally decided no (it was hot and humid) when three loud claps of thunder reversed that decision. A few hours later when the rain came I was happy with the reversed decision. It rained the entire night which I think helped keep the baboons away as they sheltered. This is camping in the semi wild 🙂