The Kafue - Jewel in the Crown

The Kafue River is not only stunning but also a great place to look for predators such as lion and leopard. It may be difficult for you to visualize the Kafue. In the Luangwa, for example, one may envisage a broad, sandy, winding river with elephants crossing and hippos snorting. In the Lower Zambezi you might conjure up images of the escarpment, ana trees and lots of elephant. But what about the Kafue?

A perceived lack of identity has long been the park’s downfall, but it has also meant that it retains an air of mystery, and perhaps the unknown. When you speak to safari goers, many have been to, or at least heard of, ‘the Kafue’, sometimes just ‘Kafue’,but when delving deeper we find that these people have either visited only one area, or only visited many years ago, at a time when things were very different to the Kafue we know today. More often than not the area referred to is the Busanga Plains, a vast shimmering wetland in the North-Western sector. It is indeed a world-class wildlife destination –a prominent jewel in the crown of the Kafue, if you like. However, the Kafue does not start and end at the Busanga Plains – there are many more ‘jewels’ to be found.

Kafue National Park is immense, and when taking into account an area of wilderness as vast as the size of a country, there will, of course, be a great variety of habitat types and an associated diversity of wildlife and birdlife; it is this variety that makes the Kafue so special.

The Kafue is often compared to better known and more visited areas, but it must be appreciated for what it is, in its own right. What can be found within the park’s boundaries is incomparable and unique. While in the Luangwa one may find large concentrations of hippo, the Kafue may present you with smaller, more widely-spread pods. In the Kafue we could see hartebeest and roan antelope, while in the Luangwa perhapsnot. No one park is the same – and importantly no particular area of the Kafue is the same. For instance, the Busanga Plains are as different to the Kafue River or Lake Itezhi-Tezhi as the Kafue is to the Lower Zambezi.

The ‘green’ season in the Kafue is a special time and exhibits an unrivalled vibrancy of colour.

Elephants often swim across the Kafue River in the dry season, a spectacle not restricted to the better-known wildlife areas of Africa.

characteristics. The areas around the central Kafue are rocky, with massive granite kopjes (outcrops), the river a series of rapids, channels and gullies, possibly best viewed from a canoe. The area around the Busanga Plains is vast, flat and wet – not a rock in sight or a flowing river. The Kafue River itself varies, and its wide stretches of open water are strewn with hippo and swimming elephants in the dry season. The Nanzhila Plains in the south, somewhat reminiscent of many of Africa’s better-known wildlife areas, serveas a phenomenal seasonally inundated grassland area –a true wilderness. The central northern Kafue is a world-class habitat for walking safaris, with a huge diversity of plant, bird and wildlife of its own. And the list goes on and on.

Currently, more people are choosing to visit the Kafue, often combining it with other destinations in Zambia such as Livingstone or one of Zambia’s other 20 national parks. Many travellers are also choosing to dedicate their time purely to the Kafue, enjoying the park in its entirety. Access is simple, with airstrips found throughout the park, and Proflight Zambia is offering a four-times-weekly flight service beginning in 2018. Alternatively, the central Kafue is easily reachedby road from Lusaka.

If you have previously been to the Kafue and feel as though you know it, we encourage you to take another look. Wildlife numbers are bouncing back, tsetse fly can easily be avoided, and top-quality camps and lodges are offering world-class wildlife experiences with top-class guiding.

The Kafue continues to transform and never fails to impress, so there is no time like the present to pay it a visit and experience the beauty of the Kafue National Park for yourself.