Kafue National Park
This park located in the south of Zambia is one of the largest parks in Africa and the largest in Zambia. Kafue National Park is an undiscovered gem bisected by the beautiful Kafue River and is classic wildlife country.
Kafue is also easy to access via the excellent tarred road from Lusaka which bisects the Park dividing it into Northern and Southern Sectors. There is also an improving network of charter flights into airstrips around the park.
The northern sector of the park including the Busanga plains, an area of Serengeti type grasslands and Okavango type wetlands now has a mixture of luxury lodges and reasonably priced owner run bushcamps. The animals in this region are slightly more used to vehicles and therefore less skittish than further South. It is possible to create a superb safari circuit visiting the central and Northern areas of Kafue using a mixture of 4x4 and light aircraft transfers. The variety of activities which include, day and night game drives, guided walks, boat rides on the Kafue river and fishing in virgin waters make a 9 or 10 day safari circuit stopping for a few days in three or four camps perfect. Ease of access also makes the area suitable for shorter fly in safaris.
The small number of lodges located in this huge game reserve mean that you will see few if any other vehicles on your game drives.
The south of the park is even more remote but a few adventurous operators have now opened small owner run camps in this region making a safari circuit of the central region and the South of the park a possibilty.
The Southern Kafue has some riverside lodges as well as a camp in the fascinating Lake Itezi Tezhi region, an area, which resembles Lake Kariba with its fossilised trees rising out of the lake. There is also a lodge on the Nanzhila Plains in the extreme south. The game in Southern Kafue has not been well protected in the past and is not used to safari vehicles so it can be skittish, but improved protection has resulted in steadily increasing numbers. This area of the park is one of the best places to see some of the rarer large antelope such as roan and sable and is also good for cheetah and wild dog.
The wildlife In Kafue National Park is very varied with a good chance of seeing Lion, Leopard, Cheetah, Elephant, buffalo, hippo crocodile and twenty different species of antelope including Sable, Roan and Red Lechwe which are rare elsewhere and is a birders paradise. This park also has one of the largest populations of Wild dog in Africa. Giraffe and Ostrich have never existed in Kafue and the parks large black rhino population were poached to extinction in the 1980's although there are plans to start to reintroduce them in the future.
Kafue National park will combine very well as part of a fascinating and varied safari circuit with South Luangwa National Park, Lower Zambezi National Park and Victoria Falls.
The best time to visit Kafue National Park is from May to October for the rest of the year the park is virtually inaccessible.