It’s always a pleasure to welcome back repeat guests and this trip makes the magic 5 for Mike White who first visited the Luangwa with me in 2016! He does a lot of landscape photography when he is not shooting wildlife and he brings his critical eye and his attention to detail with light to each trip. Preferring to shoot a few, carefully selected scenes, we enjoy time in the bush seeking that perfect arrangement of trees, wildlife and light.>
This time, he brought his elderly (but very active) mother with him, adding a new dimension to the trip. It was great to welcome a safari first-timer (not common for me as a photographic safari guide) and to see, once more, the huge excitement of safari when everything is totally new!
As before, we spent a week in the Nsefu Sector, based at Zikomo Safaris. This camp is based outside the park on the southern boundary and allows us to access the park early in the mornings. Below is a caption-based summary of our trip, and I hope you enjoy!
We had an extraordinary first morning, as is often the case with first-time safari-goers who have no expectations and just soak up everything that comes along. As well as giraffes, a large male lion and superb sightings of waterbirds in the large Lungs lagoon, we enjoyed this trio of elephant calves playing in the very early morning.
As the light improved, we included more of the gorgeous surroundings of the Nsefu Sector.
The moment we saw this scene, we knew that we had to do something with those wonderful stripes of shadow across the ground, caused by large trees in the late afternoon.
We set ourselves up for the last of the evening light, shooting into the sun to get the sunburst orange effect on our subjects. First kudu….
…and then elephants….
The second day was a cat day, finding a mating pair of lions from the Nsefu Pride in the centre of the Nsefu Sector….
…and a leopard who walked within 100m of the mating lions, without rousing their attention!
The impala were highly vigilant in that area!!
Heading back towards camp, I spotted a very pale impala which must have some melanin deformity. It’s clearly surviving well as it’s reached a decent age.
We decided to return to the lion pair in the afternoon but were repeatedly delayed along the way (!) by some lovely sightings….
The lions has tucked themselves into some thickets, making it hard to improve on the great photos that we’d got in the morning, so we moved on to see what else we could find.
I always love the post-sunset colours in that 15-20 minutes when the sun has dipped below the trees….
….it’s a time to keep an eye on the shutter speed as the light drops rapidly, but the colours can be stunning.
As always, we were out early the next morning to find a subject for sunrise….
…these giraffe stood obligingly and, in fact, I prefer the images where they were slightly concealed behind the trees to the standard silhouette images.
Shooting giraffes at sunrise…
That morning was otherwise a quiet one, so we spent time with whatever came along, creating interesting shots from ordinary scenes which is surely the essence of a photo safari.
A fig tree, full of fruit, was a hotspot for a troop of baboons….
The wild dogs of Nsefu are currently denning in the central section of the park. The den is hidden deep in thickets but the adults and last year’s pups are regularly found resting near the thickets and can be seen hunting all over the area at first and last light. We decided to spend some time with them one afternoon so headed to the den site about an hour before sunset. They were lounging around and only started to hunt, quite half-heartedly, as it was almost dark!
However, just as the dogs were starting to move, a martial eagle used the distraction of the moving dogs to stoop on a flock of guinea fowl. The game birds were just fast enough to get out of the way, but the eagle gave us a beautiful display.
Having spent little time with the wild dogs the previous evening, we decided to head up to their den site the following morning….however we found them hunting just as we entered the park, s we spent the morning trying to follow them as they charged through the thickets and chased antelope.
The pack is made up of a number of adults and then several yearlings from the previous year; the adults are the ones to watch for hunting success as the youngsters are not yet adept at crafting hunts on their own. We lost sight of the pack at one point and then found a small group of 3 youngsters….
….so we stayed with them for the rest of the morning until we lost them as well! Dogs are hard to follow when they start moving fast!
That morning was a great one as we also came across this large herd of giraffe, bunched up along a stream.
I enjoyed the simple framing of this roller among the Mopane leaves.
There is a lot of water in most areas of Eastern province this year, by contrast with the central and Western provinces, so many of the streams are still flowing, or at least have deep standing water. We decided to follow the Kauluzi stream inland one afternoon, hoping to find lions or buffalo near the water. We didn’t have much luck, except for the kudu below….
…..but by the time that we returned to the riverine area, the light was spectacular and we made beautiful images of “just impalas”.
We didn’t spend much time in the bush after dark with this group, as they preferred the daytime light and wanted to sleep early so that we could get up and leave camp before dawn in the mornings. But, heading home one evening, puku alarm calls led us to this beautiful girl. As always, it’s the angle and vehicle positioning which makes an image; here I was able to get the vehicle into a gully to allow us to look up at the leopard, making her look larger and rendering the background black.
We set out very early on our last morning, planning to reach the more northerly sections of the Nsefu Sector. It turned out to be a superb morning in that rich area, starting with a herd of elphants crossing the river as the sun broke over the treeline…
….continuing with lovely light and opportunities in the ebony forest…
While we were watching hippos in the bottom of the Croc River crossing, we heard lions calling very close by…and found this mating pair…
…while we were watching them, we heard a leopard call in the distance. We tried to find her, knowing that it was likely the well-known Olimba, but she couldn’t be found! Later in the morning we found the rest of the Nsefu pride in the north of the sector, and the pride male was chased into a thicket by a large herd of buffalo! The light was bright and the action in the distance so no good photos to share, but it was quite a morning!
It wasn’t going to be easy to follow that but we had a couple of targets for the afternoon, including getting shots of hovering pied kingfishers!
We succeeded in the pursuit of kingfishers and then ended the safari with this sunset. Simply a superb way to end the trip.
Heading back to camp, this sky and hippo combination was too good to resist. One final gift from the Luangwa.
And so ended another visit to the wonderful Nsefu Sector.
It is always a pleasure to welcome guests back for repeat visits, and in this case it was wonderful to show someone round their first safari experience as well! So much enthusiasm and enjoyment was shared by all of us. Thank you to Zikomo Safaris for hosting us and providing the launchpad for a memorable safari.
I’m home for a few days and then in start my second Exclusive Luangwa of the season starting at Nsefu Camp and then moving on to Lion Camp. If you would like to travel with me in 2023, please get in touch, even if there are not spaces on the tours you prefer. I still have space for some new tours in 2023 and I hope to welcome you onto one of them.
