We’re all a little bit rustic these days. I certainly am…
Leap Year
After Mfuwe Lodge, I moved on to the bush camps, which were all in South Luangwa National Park, Zambia. They had names that were almost impossible to spell, pronounce or remember: Kuyenda, Bilimungwe, Kapamba and Zungulila! First up was Kuyenda, where I spent two nights from 23-25 July 2024.
The camps are all owned by The Bushcamp Company, which boasts of providing ‘an unrivalled wildlife experience in one of the last unspoilt wilderness regions of Africa’. There were certainly very few mod cons—and no Wi-Fi, which was a bit of a shock!
I was more interested in the wildlife than the thread count of the cotton sheets, so I was happy to give it a go. Unfortunately, the animals appeared to be on strike during my stay, so I had to make do with birds and the company of one of those extraordinary people I so often meet on safari...
The Camp
The main area
According to the website, Kuyenda is ‘a charming and rustic camp that offers a true taste of the bush and embodies the authentic charm of old Africa’. The main area looked a bit like a bandstand in Regents Park, and—yet again!—there wasn’t a free bar.
There were six rooms, described as ‘simple and spacious thatched rondavels’, each with an outdoor bathroom and shower. Even a London estate agent might struggle to get away with calling my room ‘spacious’, but it was certainly simple. Think shabby chic—without the chic!
My rondavel
I don’t mind staying in simple accommodation, but the effect was rather spoiled by a lack of attention to detail. Somebody forgot to give me a hot water bottle one evening, nobody cleaned the leaves out of the open-air bathroom, and the cold mornings made getting washed and dressed a very uncomfortable experience at the best of times.
In addition, Mfuwe insists on providing soap rather than hand-wash or shower gel. I couldn’t believe it. I haven’t used soap at home since I was growing up in the 1970s—when my mother used to buy Imperial Leather because she thought it sounded posh!
Daily Routine
Lunch is served
The daily routine was fairly standard:
0545 Breakfast in the main area
0600 Morning game drive with Prince (and other guests or Toby) in his Land Rover
1100-1200 Brunch in the main area
1530-1600 High tea in the main area
1600-2000 Afternoon game drive with Prince or Susio (either with other guests or on my own)
2015-2115 Dinner in the main area (which I skipped once…)
The food was forgettable (apart from the seed bread). When I arrived, we had ‘Buddha bowls’ of beef chunks, chicken goujons and various salad dishes, topped off with a choice of sauces. For dessert, there were slices of apple and cantaloupe and chunks of pineapple made to look like a porcupine…!
For lunch on the second day, it was make-your-own hamburgers and potato wedges with, as usual, fruit for dessert. Come on, guys…
The dinners were a little more impressive, but I don’t have dinner these days when I’m in the bush, so I missed out on bruschetta, fillet of beef and cheesecake.
The lack of Wi-Fi was annoying as I usually like to download the papers to read on my morning game drives. However, it gave me plenty of time to rate my pictures and hang out with the staff and the other guests in the main area.
Like almost all camps and lodges in Africa, Kuyenda was unfenced. That meant elephants were regular visitors, and it was fun taking pictures of them from the comfort of a lawn chair!
I didn’t end up taking many photos on my game drives, so I had plenty of time to kill, but, fortunately, so did Toby. I’d met him briefly at Mfuwe Lodge, but he’d been sent out to Kuyenda for a few nights as a host, and he was usually around to talk to.
It turned out that he was a volunteer, taking a three-month ‘sabbatical’ from his job working for the British National Security Advisor in Downing Street! That gave us plenty to discuss, and we had similar interests in strategy, military history and wildlife photography.
He was also a big fan of doing self-drive safari holidays, and he told me all about a recent trip to Mana Pools in Zimbabwe. He waxed lyrical about the light in the forest and the ability to go on walking safaris within only a few yards of the big cats.
When I said I might go there myself, he recommended a guide called Stretch Ferreira. I was so inspired by the idea that I ended up booking a two-week trip in September/October!
We also managed to do each other a couple of favours. Toby wasn’t allowed to go on game drives unless he was invited by one of the guests, so I did the honours, and we went out together one morning.
In return, he gave me a spare tube of toothpaste (as mine had run out) and had a word with his boss to ensure I could go out on my own with Prince on my remaining game drives. That was better for all concerned. I could do what I wanted and spend as much time as I liked waiting for birds to take off. The other guests could go at their own pace and didn’t have to put up with all my shenanigans! Cheers, Toby…
Finally, I should mention someone else I met out there. Paula used to book my trips with Paul Goldstein, so I’d had quite a few email conversations with her over the years, but I’d never met her in person. I had no idea she was going to be there, so that was a nice surprise. It’s a small world after all…!
Wildlife photography
If you read my blog post on Mfuwe Lodge, you’ll pretty much know what I’m going to say about Kuyenda. Zambia has decent bird life, and I enjoyed flipping between 600mm and 840mm with my new NIKKOR lens and getting plenty of take-off shots using pre-release capture on my new Nikon Z8. However, it’s not a great location for wildlife photography—and I got bitten several times by tsetse flies!
I’d heard good things about South Luangwa National Park, so I was a bit disappointed, but it was a ‘learning experience’, shall we say. There were the usual hippos, elephants and Cape buffaloes, and I did see lions a couple of times, but they were either asleep or deep in the bushes.
In addition, it was mildly interesting to see the local sub-species of zebras, giraffes and baboons, plus the odd bushy-tailed or white-tailed mongoose and herds of puku. However, there was very little to get me excited, and I didn’t take a single five-star photo.
Most people go to Africa to see the Big Five or the Magnificent Seven (including cheetahs and wild dogs). That’s almost a daily occurrence in the traditional safari destinations. In Chobe National Park, Botswana, there’ll seldom be a single moment when you can’t see at least one animal or bird, and I once saw lions, leopards, elephants, rhinos and buffaloes in just a couple of hours in Kenya!
However, Zambia is very different. It’s fine for birds, including colourful species like the lilac-breasted roller and the white-fronted and little bee-eaters (see gallery above), but you don’t get many animals. In the two weeks I was there, I went on one game drive when I didn’t see a single animal and another when I didn’t take a single picture!
That’s not really good enough for wildlife photographers like me. Yes, I enjoyed the experience, and it was great to meet a few nice people such as Toby and Paula, but I wouldn’t go back there any time soon.
Verdict
Run, Forrest, Run!
Since I became a professional wildlife photographer back in 2013, I’ve been to Africa many times. I love the exotic variety of the wildlife and the excitement of seeing the big cats hunting—especially cheetahs.
I used to say that I’d been ‘lucky’ in getting so many great sightings, but after nearly 500 game drives and boat rides, it stops being luck! That’s just the way it is in most African countries.
In the last few months, I’ve been on safari in a couple of countries for the first time: South Africa and Zambia. Neither of them provided the number of sightings I was used to, but at least the Greater Kruger made up for that with chances to see lions, leopards and wild dogs.
Zambia didn’t offer quality or quantity, so I wouldn’t recommend it as a destination unless you’re a birder, you like Nature walks or you just want to get away from it all and drink sundowners by the river!
The choice is yours…
Species
Animals
African bush elephant
Bushbuck
Bushy-tailed mongoose
Cape buffalo
Common warthog
Crawshay’s zebra
Greater kudu
Hippopotamus
Impala
Lion
Nile crocodile
Puku
Slender mongoose
Spotted hyena
Thornicroft’s giraffe
White-tailed mongoose
Yellow baboon
Birds
African fish eagle
African hoopoe
African jacana
Blue waxbill
Brown-crowned tchagra
Brown-hooded kingfisher
Collared palm thrush
Dark-capped, dark-eyed or yellow-vented boubou
Egyptian goose
Giant eagle owl
Great egret
Grey crowned crane
Grey-headed kingfisher
Hadada ibis
Helmeted guineafowl
Jameson’s firefinch
Lilac-breasted roller
Little bee-eater
Martial eagle
Meves’s starling
Pied kingfisher
Purple-crested turaco
Rattling cisticola
Red-billed wood hoopoe
Ring-necked dove
Sacred ibis
Southern ground hornbill
Southern red-billed hornbill
Tropical boubou
White-browed robin-chat
White-browed sparrow-weaver
White-crowned lapwing
White-fronted bee-eater
White-helmeted shrike
Wire-tailed swallow
Yellow-billed stork
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.