The birds…

After Bilimungwe, I visited Kapamba in South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, from 29 July to 1 August. According to the website, it was supposed to be ‘A remote and romantic camp situated in a prime location on the Kapamba River, and one of only two Bushcamps to be open from April to January’.

I went there on my own, so I didn’t get much chance to be ‘romantic’ (!), but I did see a different kind of bird. The middle crossing at Kapamba was kingfisher heaven, so I spent many hours photographing birds fishing in the river. There was so little traffic that we only had to make way for three passing vehicles in three days…!

The Camp

The camp consisted of a main area, a plunge pool, an outside toilet and four thatched chalets with open frontages looking out on to the Kapamba river.

Jacob showed me to my room, which was quite large, with a double bed, bedside tables, a desk, a chest, a shelving unit and hanging space. I also had a ‘wet room’ with twin showers, a sink (with genuinely hot water!) and a towel rail. Outside, there was a wooden deck looking out on to the water with a couple of circular rattan chairs.

The furnishings were more modern and less rustic than at the other bush camps—but there was still no Wi-Fi…!

Daily Routine

The daily routine at Kapamba was similar to that at all the other bush camps.

• 0515 Breakfast in the main area (in the dark!)

• 0530 Morning game drive with Mischek (and sometimes Benson) in the Land Rover

• 1100-1200 Brunch in the main area

• 1530-1545 High tea in the main area

• 1545-1900 Afternoon game drive with Mischek

• 2000-2100 Dinner in the main area

There were only a couple of variations to the routine. The first came when I slept in the ‘tree house’. This was a wooden tower with a bed on a raised platform and a bathroom below it.

Getting to the tree house wasn’t easy or pleasant. First of all, nobody was around to take me there, then the guy wouldn’t wait five minutes for me to get ready for bed and finally, he warned me not to go to my room at night because of all the hippos. This is the only country in Africa where I’ve ever been annoyed by the staff.

And after all that, I couldn’t even see the stars because there was a wooden roof over my head!

It was so cold that I woke up at 0430. There was no security guard, so I had to walk the 20 yards back to my room in the dark…

The second variation came when they arranged a bush dinner for me and the other two guests, Joanne and Simon. It went pretty well (although I didn’t eat anything), but a few minutes beforehand, the staff were all watching a very loud video. That was pretty poor.

I hate to be too negative, but the customer service at Mfuwe and the bush camps was sometimes very disappointing. There was just no attention to detail. Here are a few examples:

• Drinks from the bar weren’t free of charge—and Jacob wouldn’t even give me a Coke a day in exchange for not having dinner!

• The paths weren’t lit, so I had to use my iPhone torch to find my way to and from my room.

• There were no lights on the main deck, so the staff had to get me two lanterns so I could see the breakfast buffet!

• The other guests saw a honey badger, but their driver drove straight past it! By the time he’d had time to reverse, it had gone. They weren’t happy.

• After one game drive, nobody greeted me with a hot towel.

• Before another game drive, nobody asked me what I wanted for my sundowner.

• One afternoon, a staff member offered me carrot cake. I said, “Give me a moment.” He then immediately offered me iced tea. I had to tell him again to give me a moment.

• There were ants in the washbasin every morning.

• One day, someone called, “Hello,” just as I was putting my jacket on at around 0518. I don’t know why.

All in all, they have a bit of work to do on the customer experience…

Food and Drink

I never go on safari for the food, but it was pretty average at Kapamba. I was offered a nice bacon pastry on one game drive, but that was the only thing worth mentioning in my diary. Apart from that, I also made a note of some of the more bizarre bottles of alcohol on offer, including Cape to Rio Pure Cane Spirit and Klipdrift—‘Gold in every drop since 1938’…!

Staff

Misheck was my driver every day, which worked out well. I didn’t have to share the vehicle with any other guests, and Misheck was a pretty useful spotter. He managed to find a giant eagle owl up in the trees at one point, and he was the first to see a couple of dogs on the far bank of the river.

Guests

The only guests I saw in camp were an English couple, Joanne and Simon. We got on pretty well, but I only saw them at mealtimes, so I didn’t really get to know them. The only conversation I remember was when it turned out they didn’t know Joe Biden had pulled out of the US presidential race—so I had to tell them!

Wildlife photography

I was lucky enough to see a few more African wild dogs at Kapamba, and I finally managed to get the shot I wanted of a dog running straight towards the camera (see above). However, it was still pretty slim pickings.

For the first hour of my first game drive, I didn’t see a single animal, and the only place where we could find them was near Chindeni, where there were herds of impala and Cape buffalo.

In the absence of anything better, I had to keep going back to the middle crossing to photograph the malachite kingfishers. They were the only species I could always find—apart from tsetse flies, of course…!

I also saw a few other birds at the crossing, including pied kingfishers, brown-hooded kingfishers and white-fronted bee-eaters, but I only saw one lilac-breasted roller on all my game drives.

The only other sighting I really enjoyed came when we parked on the riverbank to stretch our legs. Misheck stayed with the vehicle, but I spotted a male puku a hundred yards away, so I followed him.

It was great to be out of the vehicle and free to approach from any angle and get as low as I liked. The puku raced around and posed for me before finally scrambling up the bank and galloping off. Cool!

I should also mention that I had a few problems with my equipment while I was at Kapamba:

• My files didn’t upload properly to Lightroom.

• My Z8 kept stopping mid-burst.

• My computer struggled to open Lightroom properly after I’d uploaded my files. I had to shut down and restart it a couple of times—which was worrying…

All in all, though, I was pretty happy with my new Nikon Z8 and 600mm lens. My hit rate for slow pans seemed to be a bit higher than when I used my Sony ⍺1 (maybe due to an extra half a stop of image stabili, and the only real problem was that the EVF kept blacking out when my shutter speed fell below 1/8 of a second. Who knows why…?

I didn’t take any five-star images at Kapamba, but that was mostly due to a lack of opportunity. However, I did have a bit of an epiphany when photographing the malachite kingfishers.

I suddenly realised I should’ve been focusing on the water rather than the top of the post. Yes, I could get take-off shots using pre-release capture, but the marker post was a man-made object that didn’t really belong in the frame, and I was missing out on the crucial moment when the bird flew out of the water.

I realised I was being reactive rather than proactive. I wasn’t visualising the perfect shot and working backwards from there. It was too late to do anything about it at Kapamba, but I was determined to put that right when I went to Zungulila…

Verdict

I arrived at Kapamba when I was already halfway through my trip, and things were finally looking up. As I’ve often said, my enjoyment of wildlife trips depends almost entirely on the quality of my pictures, so I was happy to get a few decent bird-in-flight shots of the malachite kingfishers against a nice, clean background.

It was also good to see the African wild dogs again, and I enjoyed taking pictures of the puku on the sand. My only remaining goal was to capture the kingfishers catching fish in the water—but that would have to wait until I went to Zungunila…

Species

Animals

African bush elephant 

African wild dog 

Bushbuck 

Cape buffalo 

Common warthog 

Common waterbuck 

Crawshay’s zebra

Elephant shrew

Greater kudu 

Hippopotamus 

Impala

Puku 

Roan antelope 

Slender mongoose

Thornicroft’s giraffe 

Tree squirrel 

Vervet monkey

Yellow baboon

Birds

African fish eagle 

African harrier-hawk

African openbill 

African pied wagtail 

Blue waxbill

Brown snake eagle

Brown-hooded kingfisher 

Emerald-spotted wood dove

Fork-tailed drongo 

Giant eagle owl

Grey-headed sparrow-weaver

Hadada ibis

Hamerkop

Helmeted guineafowl 

Lilac-breasted roller 

Little bee-eater 

Malachite kingfisher

Meves’s starling

Pied kingfisher 

Ring-necked dove

Sacred ibis

Saddle-billed stork

Southern ground hornbill

Three-banded lapwing

Trumpeter hornbill 

Water thick-knee

White-browed sparrow-weaver

White-crowned lapwing 

White-fronted bee-eater 

Wire-tailed swallow

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   

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