Home » Zambia » Day 10. Mon 26th April Piper Pan to Sunday Pan.

We wake again to the sound of lions, they sound very close.
We strike camp fairly quickly, finding a variety of interesting beasties taking advantage of the warmth underneath the tents, only one of which is a scorpion.
We are only a few hundred yards out of the camp when we come upon one of our lionesses lying right in the road. Several of the others are also wandering around, and we wait couteously for them to clear the way. Then we come upon two males, probably brothers. One of them stands only a few yards from the Land Rover and gives us a baleful glare, so we shut the windows just in case he's hungry.

Day 10. Mon 26th April Piper Pan to Sunday Pan.

DaveMidgley
2005-10-22 10:26:38

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We wake again to the sound of lions, they sound very close.
We strike camp fairly quickly, finding a variety of interesting beasties taking advantage of the warmth underneath the tents, only one of which is a scorpion.

We are only a few hundred yards out of the camp when we come upon one of our lionesses lying right in the road. Several of the others are also wandering around, and we wait couteously for them to clear the way. Then we come upon two males, probably brothers. One of them stands only a few yards from the Land Rover and gives us a baleful glare, so we shut the windows just in case he's hungry.

We watch them for a while and then resume our journey to Sunday Pan.
Springbok, oryx and ostrich are out in force as usual. We also see a secretary bird strutting along the road. These are fairly rare, so we are surprised to see yet another a couple of Ks up the road.

It is about 100Km to Sunday Pan, and we arrive around midday. We are pretty good at pitching tents now, and make camp quickly, have some lunch, and have a lazy afternoon. We all enjoy using our allocated cupful of water.
I volunteer to light the fire - I want to see if I can remember any of my boy scout training and do it with one match and without using a fire lighter. I spend some time making a neat wigwam of dry grass and twigs and eventually get a blaze going (I use about six matches, but steadfastly maintain that it was the second one which actually got going).

Ken cooks T-bone steak, to which we add baked beans and nshima (maize meal, also known as mealie meal, which forms a staple diet in many parts of Africa. It is pretty tasteless, but edible if covered in beans or relish of some sort).
After supper we head off for a night drive. No lions, but we do see a cat which Ken tentatively identifies as an African Wild Cat. This is the first time he has ever seen one, which is quite a turn up, there are not many species he hasn't seen. We also see yet another secretary bird perched in a tree and looking very disgruntled as I blind it with the spotlight.

We get back about 9, and hit the sack.