Safari in South Luangwa with family from the US!

Okay, I have to admit that our very first safari adventure in 2012 was a bit "meh". While it was amazing to see the animals in the wild we happened to go at the end of rainy season which is not prime time for animal. Our kids were at the stage of life where driving around a game park for a couple of hours at a time was not highly energizing - especially since Abigail had just gone on a school trip to the same park a few months earlier. Over the years my experiences viewing wildlife in Africa has grown on me and so I was quite excited that we had saved our trip to South Luangwa in Zambia for the dry season and our visit from Dan and Ruth - John's brother and his wife. Having the elephants traipse through our camp one afternoon was just one of the many highlights of our adventure.

My safari in Kenya was thrilling because of the opportunities to view the cats. South Luangwa was equally exciting in that regard, plus had the beauty of the Luangwa River which made driving around the park in the best light of day a pleasure in itself.

 Our first cat highlight was seeing a leopard guarding her fresh kill in a tree:

The next morning we went back to see that she had managed to bring her two cubs back to the kill area and she was finishing up munching on the antelope - we could hear her crunching the bones and got to see a hyena come scrambling when mama dropped a morsel.

Cub in a tree.

Besides the leopard event, we had a lovely time hanging out with about 9 lions one evening at sunset. 

We saw plenty of hippos, zebras, crocodiles, antelope, cape buffalo, a wide variety of birds, etc. in addition to the cats and elephants which were all fun to see. Besides the animals, the light at dawn and dusk was just amazing in the park. So thankful for the opportunity to spend a couple of days out in nature viewing all of the amazing things in God's creation.