It’s a dog’s life…

After Kuyenda, I spent four nights at Bilimungwe in South Luangwa National Park, Zambia. According to the website, it’s ‘beautiful’, ‘warm and welcoming’, ‘blends seamlessly with its surroundings and offers unrivalled wildlife viewings’. That wasn’t entirely true, but it did allow me to meet Manda, The Dog Whisperer…!

The Camp

The camp consisted of a main area looking out on to a waterhole, a ‘star deck’ and four reed and thatch rooms on stilts. Mine was enormous! It had two double beds, two rattan chairs, a desk, a sink and mirror, a toilet, indoor and outdoor showers and a deck. The only disappointment was that I had to share it with a bat…!

Oh, and I should also mention that there was still no Wi-Fi. In fact, I listened to my last decent podcast while I was at Bilimungwe, so it was I had nothing to listen to except music after that…!

Daily Routine

The daily routine at Bilimungwe was fairly standard for a Mfuwe bush camp.

• 0515 Breakfast in the boma

• 0530 Morning game drive with Manda or Mischek (plus Ishmael or Benson) in the Land Rover

• 1100-1200 Brunch in the main area

• 1500-1530 High tea in the main area

• 1530-1900 Afternoon game drive with Manda or Mischek (plus Ishmael or Benson)

• 2015-2115 Dinner in the main area (which I skipped once…)

The only real exception to the pattern was that I went out a little earlier in the morning to try and catch the wild dogs. There was also a nice surprise one evening when the staff arranged for us to have sundowners in the river!

I’m not usually a fan of surprises in Africa, and I still remember the time when a guide kept telling me he could see a leopard so that I’d be ‘surprised’ when I saw the bush dinner laid out for me. Needless to say, I was furious…

However, sundowners in the river was a very good idea. The Luangwa river was very shallow near Bilimungwe, so all the guests needed to do was take our shoes and socks off and watch the sunset from canvas chairs while the staff served us gin and tonics and nibbles. What’s not to like…?!

Food and Drink

Staff at African safari lodges are always very hospitable, and it was no different at Bilimungwe. They were always trying to persuade me to have second helpings, and nobody could understand why I only wanted scrambled eggs on toast for breakfast and no dinner!

To be fair, the food was better than average for a Mfuwe bush camp. One day, I had a nice beef wrap with chutney for brunch, and someone presented me with a very tasty brownie when it wasn’t even teatime! However, dessert was normally a pretty unimaginative fruit salad consisting of apples, oranges and watermelons. I also had to make do with squash rather than fruit juice—oh, dear…

Staff

Manda was my guide to begin with. He showed me my room, found me an adaptor I could use to charge my camera and even arranged for me to go out on my own with no other guests in the vehicle. Considering that Kicheche Bush Camps in Kenya charge $415 a day for private game drives, that was a bargain!

Later on, Mischeck took over. His name was a variant of Meschach, and it turned out there were two other guys working for The Bushcamp Company called Shadrach and Abednego. Only in Africa…!

We also took Ishmael or Benson along on game drives. Benson worked for the National Park, and that was important. In theory, we weren’t allowed to go anywhere off-road, but having Benson meant we had a bit more discretion. There weren’t many rangers around, but if they did catch us going off-road, it would work out much better having one of their own guys in the vehicle!

I should also mention Morgan, who was the regular host at Bilimungwe. She was young and pretty enough to be a distraction, but I decided not to let her fall in love with me. At least not while I was there. After that, she could do what she liked!

Guests

The only guests I saw while I was in camp were Judy and Dan. They were an American couple I’d met at Mfuwe Lodge. We got along pretty well, and they reminded me of Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond.

Judy told me about her cochlear implant and catching Covid (twice!), and I told her a few traveller’s tales. In fact, when we had lunch together for the last time, she was nice enough to tell me how much she’d miss my stories.

Wildlife photography

I went to Zambia to see African wild dogs, but I hadn’t seen any at Chikunto, Mfuwe Lodge or Kuyenda. It was only at Bilimungwe that I finally had any sightings—and that was largely down to Manda, The Dog Whisperer.

I call him that because he knew his stuff, and he delivered—on our very first game drive! Manda parked on the sandy, eastern bank of the Kapamba River and made an African wild dog call to try and attract them. It was pretty convincing—and it worked! We saw eight of the Stock Colony pack on their way to hunt—having left the pregnant alpha female behind.

It was a very good sighting, and although the light was poor after sunset, I did get one decent shot of a wild dog walking straight towards me (see top of article). We later saw them rolling around in the acetone from a tsetse fly trap to mask their scent while hunting. Manda said he’d never seen that before. Very clever.

We went back to the same spot the next morning, but there were no dogs this time—although we did spot a couple of spotted hyenas crossing the river. We eventually gave up and drove around. As we went through the woods, I had a flashback of driving the same route following the dogs the previous evening. That was cool.

The following morning, we saw a couple of dogs on the opposite bank of the river, but they disappeared almost immediately, and we couldn’t find them again.

On the morning of the 28th, Shadrick (no relation to Misheck!) eventually found another pack of 13 dogs by the river, but it took us an age to get there, so I only had time for a few shots before they disappeared into the bushes.

Misheck bet on going round the other side, but we lost them for a while until we rejoined the other vehicles. I got some good shots but lost a dog in the viewfinder when it was trotting towards me. It was just one of those things that happen when you switch from landscape to portrait, but it was still annoying! That was the shot I really wanted…

In the afternoon, Misheck found the African wild dogs again—and I missed an oncoming dog in portrait mode again! It was a good sighting, but the dogs spent far too much time in the shade.

And that was my last sighting of the wild dogs. The rest of the time, I had to make do with little bee-eaters and malachite kingfishers. I saw the bee-eaters on game drives but also back at camp. Most of the time, they were too far away to photograph, but I did get one good sequence of a bird on a wire (see below).

My other big ‘find’ came at the middle crossing of the Kapamba River. There were marker posts on either side of the ford, and two malachite kingfishers were regular visitors. They fished from the top of the poles, and I spent a LOT of time photographing them taking off and landing.

It was a great chance to try out the pre-release capture on my new Nikon Z8, but it wasn’t easy! The problem was that my 600mm lens was too long to get the top of the post and the surface of the water both in the frame. That meant I’d either end up missing the bird completely or losing focus.

All I could manage were one portrait and one take-off shot (see below).

After several unsuccessful attempts, I switched to my Sony ⍺1 with the 70-200mm lens. That was much easier, but it wasn’t until I went to Kapamba Bushcamp that I finally cracked it.

Verdict

Until I went to Bilimungwe, I was having serious doubts about my decision to go on safari in Zambia. I wasn’t getting the sightings I wanted, and it seemed like I’d never see any African wild dogs!

However, my luck turned when I met Manda, and he helped me get some decent sightings. They were still pretty rare, and I had to spend an awful lot of time photographing birds when there were no animals around, but I was very grateful.

I guess I learned the old lesson once again. You never can tell whether things are going well until you’re on the flight home. Mother Nature provides what she provides—and there’s no arguing with her.

Sometimes, she’ll serve up thousands of blue wildebeest in the Great Migration, and sometimes, she’ll make you work hard for every glimpse of an African wild dog! You never know…

Species

Animals

African bush elephant 

African wild dog

Banded mongoose 

Cape bushbuck 

Common warthog 

Common waterbuck 

Four-toed elephant shrew

Greater kudu 

Hippopotamus 

Impala

Puku

Scrub hare

Spotted hyena 

Thornycroft’s giraffe

Tree squirrel 

Vervet monkey 

Yellow baboon

Birds

African fish eagle 

African pied wagtail

African spoonbill 

Bateleur 

Black-winged stilt

Blue waxbill

Brown-hooded kingfisher 

Brown-throated sand-martin 

Cardinal woodpecker 

Emerald-spotted wood dove 

Fork-tailed drongo 

Great egret 

Greater blue-eared starling 

Grey go-away-bird

Grey heron 

Helmeted guineafowl 

Hooded vulture 

Lilac-breasted roller 

Lilian’s lovebird

Little bee-eater 

Malachite kingfisher 

Martial eagle

Meves’s starling

Meyer’s parrot 

Pel’s fishing owl

Ring-necked dove 

Sacred ibis

Saddle-billed stork

Square-tailed nightjar 

Southern ground hornbill 

Swainson’s spurfowl

Three-banded plover 

Tropical boubou

Trumpeter hornbill 

Variable sunbird

White-crowned lapwing 

White-fronted bee-eater 

Wire-tailed swallow   

If you’d like to order a framed print of one of my wildlife photographs, please visit the Prints page.

If you’d like to book a lesson or order an online photography course, please visit my Lessons and Courses pages.