Lyndon and Ruth established Pinnon Lodge in the Kafue National Park, Zambia. Their story is interesting, so interesting Channel Four featured them in TV programme ‘Our Wildest Dreams’. We got to know this lovely couple and their adorable kids, Indiana and Ivy, through Dylan – they stay at his farm when doing a supplies trip to Lusaka. Lyndon’s and David’s […]
It could so easily have been ‘Locked Down in London’. We first started noticing reports about COVID19 in January 2020 , just prior to visiting the UK to celebrate David’s parents’ diamond (60th) wedding anniversary. In February the reports intensified, but not to the extent that unduly worried us, and we returned to Zambia in early March. The reports then […]
March 2020 has been a very challenging month for Big Bertha. We flew back to Zambia in early March, having celebrated David’s parents’ diamond wedding anniversary in the UK, and headed north east towards the waterfalls. The rains have been exceptional this year and the water table has risen, making the dirt roads very fragile. We ended up getting stuck […]
We were wondering whether we should make the 485km return trip to Livingstone from Lusaka to see the Victoria Falls. After all, we’d be visiting the Zimbabwean side later in the year. However, with a week to kill before flying back to the UK, we decided to go for it and boy, are we glad that we did! We visited […]
Chimfunshi, the world’s largest chimpanzee sanctuary, is not exactly on the tourist trail, being located smack bang in the middle of the Zambian copperbelt in the north of Zambia. We weren’t sure what to expect and almost didn’t bother visiting, it being 15km or so into the bush up a dirt track. But we are so glad we did. Meeting […]
It’s big for starters, about three times the size of the UK, but with a quarter of the UK’s population. However, the population is forecast to triple by 2050 (that’s thirty years from now!); clearly there are big challenges ahead for this country where the average salary is £118/month or around £4/day (this would be a lot less in the […]
We both wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We shall be spending our Christmas day at the Kansanshi hotel in the northern Zambian mining town of Solwezi. Our hosts, David and Veroncia, have made us feel very welcome and have very kindly let us park Big Bertha in their car park for the duration. […]
At our camp on the bank of the Zambezi river, close to the Zambia border post, we are reflecting on our 88 days in a country we have come to very much like; Namibia. We are definitely more than a little sad to be leaving. Namibia is a very easy and safe country to explore and we’ve made it our […]
(A shorter recreation of our post from 2019 which was mysteriously deleted…) Whilst staying with Nikolai and Aniela at their lovely home-cum-lodge on the Namibian Caprivi strip, Aniela suggested we take a river trip with Dan, their British neighbour. From Middlesbrough, Dan established Mashi River Safaris in 2010 having been in the area since 2007. Dan is a true no […]
After returning from the lush green countryside of Angola, where one can buy huge avocados and other delicious fruit and vegetables from the roadside vendors, we are now back in the arid north of Namibia. We plan to spend a few weeks here before crossing over to Zambia in December. Etosha, Namibia’s premier national park, is in the north and […]