I recently spent about a week at a Flatdogs Camp, just out of South Luangua National Park in Zambia. It was amazing. I stayed in a safari tent which was, by my current standards, incredibly luxurious. I had my own tent and it was wonderful to have some privacy after spending so much time in dorm rooms. And then tent had a cot and came with toilet paper, soap and electricity!

But as amazingly good as the accommodation was, that was far from the best part. When people told me there were animals right in camp, they weren't kidding. There were baboons, vervet monkeys, and elephants in camp everyday. A couple of times I also saw bushbuck in camp. We were right on a river and there were hippos and crocodiles in the river and often impala on the far bank. It was truly amazing.

My first morning in camp I was awoken around 6:30 in the morning by the elephants. They had come directly into camp and were eating noisily from the trees. They stayed in camp for a while and then slowly crossed the river, lingered on the other side for a while and then disappeared into the bush.

I then spent most of the day just watching the river. At one point I was watching a group of at least 50 baboons spread out all along the opposite riverbank. They were walking along the shore and eventually reached an area where there was a group of hippos. The two groups pretty much ignored each other although I did notice that the baboons did stay pretty far away from the hippos as they passed by. I then noticed a group of impalas also on the far shore. I couldn't decide if I should watch the baboons, the hippos, or the impala... I decided to watch the baboons and hippos for a while and then decided to go back to watching the impala.

As I trailed my binoculars along the shore to find the group of impala I suddenly came upon an antelope that was definitely not an impala. The top of its front legs were blak and white, on its sides it had white stripes in the front and white spots on the back. (It was, as I guessed correctly, a bushbuck.) The poor antelope was trying to get a drink of water at the river, but was not having much luck. He would walk cautiously up to the riverbank and then scamper away. This happened a number of times. I figured that there must be some danger in the water and did at one point catch a glimpse of what was either a hippo or a crocodile. They both often have only there snouts out of the water and when they are really far away can look surprisingly alike. The bushbuck also had to content with the impala who knew he was not a danger, but who were not sure they liked having him around. The bushbuck managed only a very short drink before disappearing back into the bush.

That evening I was in y tent for a little while and then decided to go to dinner. I took about one step outside of my tent and then saw the elephant. Right outside the awning over my tent. I went back into my tent and watched, a little nervously, from there. No matter how hungry I was there was no way that I was going to get any closer to the elephant. Elephants are generally nice and harmless, but if they get angry at you for some reason, they can be deadly. I didn't want to risk startling one. The elephant outside my tent was soon joined by two of its family members. It was really dark, so I could barely the elephants. This was quite unfortunate since I was stuck in my tent for forty minutes before they went away and I was able to go get my dinner.

The next morning I had to get up ridiculously early in order to get ready for a 6am game drive. Everything went well until I went to go get my food in the food house (where food is kept so that the animals don't get it). Now, the elephants were right outside of the foodhouse, keeping me from my breakfast. Luckily I was able to get some fruit from the kitchen, but it was hardly a complete breakfast. The game drive itself (which included a game walk) was lots of fun. I learned to identify hippo tracks, saw a killer bee hive, and saw my first ever hyena on the walk. On the drive I saw impala, puku, kudu, hippo, crocodile, zebra, elephant, and bushbuck.

Soon after getting back to camp, it was time for lunch. The problem at lunch was, for a change, not the elephants. This time it was a baboon. A large baboon came up from behind my tent as I was eating. I tried to scare him off, but he was a big baboon and was not at all intimidated. He stole some of my crackers. Baboons are strong and have big teeth, so I let him have them. But when the vervet monkey stole my knife, I scared him away and was able to retrieve it.

In the late afternoon I went on my first ever night drive and it was fabulous. During the first half of the drive when it was light out we didn't see very much. One of the other drivers told our driver that some lions had been spotted, but rather far away. Our driver asked is if it was okay if he drove really quickly so that we could get to where the lions were. Our collective response was "Yes, please!!!!" And go fast our driver did. It is always so much fun going fast in the bush. We alas didn't see any lions, but we did see a lot of different landscapes in the park that I doubt we would have seen had we not been chasing after the lions and the landscapes are at least half the fun.

The sunset in the bush was colorful, beautiful, amazing -- it felt so great just to be there. At sunset we got out of our truck on a steep embankment overlooking the river. It was a truly beautiful landscape. Rocks and white sand. Very few trees, shrubs, or grasses. The banks and the sandbars had beautiful contours and there was a small, circular pool mostly cut of from the rest of the river where a couple hippos were wallowing.

After sunset we continued with our drive. One of the guides took out a super powerful flashlight/spotlight and began sweeping it back and forth in front of our vehicle. At first we saw only antelope -- but it was very cool to see how their eyes glowed when caught in a beam of light. We saw hippos walking out of the river in search of food, elphants eating, a massive herd of buffolo (a mass of glowing eyes which seemed to be endless), and a giraffe. The highlights though were the animals that one does not normally see in the day. We saw: three elephant shrews scurring across the road in front of our truck, a hyena (a much better look than I had gotten during the day), two big spotted genets (related to weasles), a honey badger, and...AND...right before we left the park, a leopard!!! (Leopards are among the most difficult to spot animals. This was the first leopard I have seen and I meant that I have now seen all of the "Big Five" which are elephant, rhino, buffolo, lion, and leopard.) The leopard was lying down, licking a somewhat long (but not deep) wound. It shifted, got up, walked a few feet, laid back down. It as a truly beatuiful creature.

The next day I spend the entire day watching the river (except for during lunch, when I had to move to save my food from the baboons). I saw tons and tons of hippos, elephants, crocodiles, many birds, impala, baboons, and even a few giraffe. It was rather amazing to spend one whole day just watching what happened on the river. It is a really different perspective from driving around trying to see as much as possible. In some ways it was really boring -- a lot of the time nothing was happenting. In other ways, however, it was a lot more interesting than driving around. I have seen many, many impala and watching a group for five minutes as one generally does on a game drive is just really not very interesting anymore. But watching a whole group for an extended period of time is -- I got to see a bit of how they moved and behaved. All in all, it was a really good way to spend a day.

The following day, my last full one near the park, I had another close encounter with some elephants. I was talking with some other guys that had just arrived when elephants came into the camp. First the elephants were not particularly close to us, but they came closer and soon there were four of us huddled under the canopy of one of the tents with the elephants right outside. There were, I believe, three adults and two juveniles. It was really cool -- they were just outside of the tent and we got really good views. In the daylight with other people around it was not even scary. Except when one of the juveniles looked like he wanted to come under the canopy with us. The elephants were calm and didn't mind us being around, but we thought that might change if one of the juveniles came up to us and I think we were all aware that we were pretty much surrounded and really had no where to run to. Happily, the juvenile decided not to join us under the canopy and when the elephants left it was time for lunch. Of course there was another elephant right by the food house, so I had to wait to eat, but that was seeming pretty much normal at that point.

My last evening near the park I went on another nightdrive. The highlight was getting a really good look at a hyena. It laid down to go to sleep in the road right in front of us. Quite surprisingly, the hyena was incredibly cute. It had was yellow-fawny colored with spots, had big round ears, and put its head on its front legs to rest, just like a dog. And its footpads looked exactly like those of a dog. When our guide started our truck again the hyena got up and walked away toward soem impala. The impala moved away quickly, but seemed to know that they were not really in danger and didn't run away. The gait of the hyena was rather odd -- it looked as if he was limping.

There was one other incident on the night drive worth noting. We passed another truck that said there had been a leopard sighting. Naturally we drove over to the place that was mentioned and were the fourth vehicle to pull up right in front of...a lone impala. It did not take a genius to figure out what was going on. Our vehicle turned of its headlight and it was pitch black. I couldn't see a thing. Then, all of a sudden, spotlights had been turned on and there where the impala had been was a leopard, suddenly frozen, seemingly in midstride, by the spotlights. He had obviously been stalking the impala which was still pretty close by. Circumstances having been altered by the safari vehicles, hoever, he thought twice about pursuing his potential dinner and went back the way he had come.

It was cool to see the leopard moving about rather than just lying down which is how people usually see them. But. And it is a big But. The whole incident just seemed really wrong to me. Having so many vehicles around made things feel more like a zoo than and game park. And something just seemed not quite right about so many people pulling up only a few feet away from an impala in hopes that it would get eaten. I like going on game drives to observe wildlife, but in this case I really felt that all the vehicles being there with their spotlights really altered what was happening. And everyone was really aware that we altered what happened and no effort was made to let nature take its course. I felt really sorry for the leopard. It may have gone hungry that night because of us.