Day 63 Kabwe Campsite

 Post-breakfast game drive around the park. we walked to the “big Tree” and up a 16 meter scaffold hide with massive steps,  the tree is a 400 year old “Wooden Banana” – I am sure we misheard the name but it was a pretty large tree.

We should have got up earlier as we saw nothing all morning until we were almost back to our camp when a herd of 10 elephants crossed the track in front of us and we saw the elusive Situnga antelope in the distance.    

On the way back to camp we tried to drive down the opposite side of the river to where we are camped but got attacked by swarms of tetse flies, found the road completely blocked by trees that the elephants had knocked down and then tried to knock another tree down ourselves by backing into it – unfortunately elephants don’t have indicator lights that get broken if ram’ed into trees but Landrovers do ! 

Headed back out at 4 pm to watch the bats again as we had been so impressed last night.  By the time we arrived at Fibwe the sky was very dark and from the top of the hide we could see lightening in the distance.  The game scout had been informed that guests from the lodge were coming to view the bats so we waited by the car for them to arrive.   At this point the heavens opened but we were still determined to go and see the bats but having turned up four of the other guests had more sense and returned to their lodge and two went for cover in the hide.  We headed off with the scout to the bat viewing area but within minutes of arriving Jane wimped out – having fork lighting in every direction was just too much. We did get to see a few bats, clearly torrential rain was no deterrent for them.  The drive back to camp was extremely interesting.  The rain was lashing down and the road was under 6 inches of water in places the car was sliding around – Ian maintains there were only 3 occasions when it skidded completely sideways!!  The thunder storm was raging with continuous thunder and horizontal and vertical fork lightening.   We were both quite glad to get back to camp and the camp attendants were definitely relieved to see us return.  We spent the rest of the evening watching the storm from our dry vantage point in camp.  Unfortunately the tent was not quite so dry when we got into it!