The Kafue River Camp

The campsite will comprise ablution blocks with hot showers, a self-catering kitchen with braai cooking facilities, and a large sitting/dining-room ‘citenge’ overlooking the river.

The campsite is intended to cater for 14 guests at a time.

2010 started with a rush and a bang. Final preparations for guests were finished in the nick of time by the beginning of March. Our first client and local fishing guru Ian McCarter and three of his friends led the season and came out with a couple of nice fish on jig baits (soft plastics) and the odd Salmo and Rapala. With the water level being quite high, much of the fishing has been restricted to the edge of banks and structure. Especially good locations are along the grass banks where the water has subsided into the grassy dambos. In these places, the prey fish and minnows hide among the grasses and make for good fishing spots. We have had other guests in the lodge, all of whom had good quality fishing results, taking a large number of purple faced large mouths, brown spot large mouths, yellow bellies, and some beautiful humpback large mouths. Silver barbel and small mouth bream have been especially good on bait fishing (worms).
Not only has the fishing been suburb with decent sized fish coming out, but game in the area (even though flooded) is plentiful. Lions have been moving in and out of camp at regular intervals, hippos regularly crop the lawn in the evenings, and the odd leopard has been giving it’s call as the sun sets. The best animal sighting to-date was a pride of wild dogs on the eastern side of the Lubungu pontoon by Ian McCarter on his way to camp.
With a start to the season such as this, one can only feel that it is going to be another exciting year.

JUSTIN – we have just returned from the Kafue camp and had fantastic views of a pair of Western Banded Snake Eagles displaying high over the camp.

These spectacular birds seem to be establishing a territory across the river from the camp as the male would circle a thousand feet in the air while giving his characteristic mating call, and then diving down to his waiting bride.

Also, on the land side, we had two visitors of a couple of hippo right next to the tents which came out of the river within 10 yards of the citenge deck as we sat savouring our sundowner beers.

In addition, we had some of the greatest serenading of lion roaring across the river and a leopard giving its characteristic sawing call.