What are you dressed for, Halloween?

On Saturday night, my roomates and I threw a Halloween bash. This is early in the night. Costumes were Zambian themed, so I dressed as a Safetech Security Guard. From left to right, Nancy, one of my roomates is a Policewoman, Meredith and Leah are Soccer players, and Sarah is the Zamchick.

Incidentally, October 28th is also Nancy's birthday, so here is my other roomate, Jenny, holding the cake as Nancy does her best to blow out ALL the candles. Just kidding, she is still much younger than I.

Parking was a problem as the party went late into the night. Here you see the cars lined up outside of our gate. They stretched all the way to the end of the block. This is the 2nd annual Halloween bash held at the house, and as successful as this party was, I'm sure we will have another one next year.

Heating up...

Jenny snapped this picture of the dogs yesterday. This is what they do while we are at work. It's getting so hot now that all they want to do is relax in the shade.

Zambian Independence Day

Tuesday, October 24th was Zambian Independence Day, so a group of us, 13 in total, decided to venture to South Luangwa National Park for a safari. This trip was much different than the one I took back in March because we drove from Lusaka and camped outside the park at Flatdogs instead of flying and staying at an an all-inclusive lodge. Driving was loads of fun because we took a short cut through the countryside that allowed me to break in the Land Rover.

On Satudrday morning at 6:30 AM, 9 of us left in 2 trucks (3 more people traveled from other places and 1 more person flew). We drove 400 km from Lusaka to Petauke, which took about 5 hours. At Petauke, we decided to take the less traveled, but 130 km shorter, route through the countryside.

We turned off at Petauke onto this dirt road that started out rather smooth.

We passed through small villages along the way.

Then the road turned into more of a path.

The Land Rover handled it with ease.

We would occasionally stop to rest and admire the countryside.

As we got closer to the park, we started to see animals. These Elephants were chilling out along the side of the road.

We came upon this open field with Impala and Water Buck grazing.

After 10 hours of driving, 5 hours on the pavement (400 km) and 5 hours off road (200 km), we finally arrived at Flatdogs. We were all exhausted and still had to set-up the camp and cook dinner.



We slept in on Sunday morning and relaxed during the day. Our first game drive was Sunday night. We didn't see very much (the usual Impala, Water Buck, and Monkeys) until the last 30 minutes of the drive when we saw 3 lions.

As excited as I was to see the lions, I was much more excited to see this Leopard. She is far away in this picture, but she came up to the road and walked directly in front of the truck to within 10 feet. Amazing.

A few of us went back Monday morning. While we didn't see any more cats during the day, we did see some Crocodiles...

Elephants...

and Cape Buffalo.

We relaxed Monday afternoon and evening in the campsite...

Enjoyed sunset on the last night and woke up early Tuesday morning for the journey back to Lusaka. We took the traditional route back to Lusaka through Chipata, which took about the same amout of time as the shorter route, but was much easier to drive. It was an amazing trip. Zambia is a beautiful country and it was nice to travel the countryside in the Land Rover. The trip was great fun and I am hopeful that I will get to do it more often.