Kafue National Park

The Busanga plains in the northern part of the park was a highlight for me. It’s absolutely beautiful, with amazing sunrises and sunsets. It should be a UNESCO world heritage site.

Mainly untouched, full of life, no tourists but us.

We stayed 3 nights at the Mawimbi Bush cam and had the camp for ourselves and an extraorinary guide and staff.
This park is huge. We unfortunately missed the Busanga plains that were too far away but we just saw 2 other tourist cars in 2 days.
Our best wildlife highlights there: sable antelope, hartebeest, Leopard and bushpig
The diversisty of game species was great. Elephants were there but more skittish than in the Luangwa valley.

We really fell in love with Kafue which is still relatively unknown : time to enjoy it very soon.

Road on the way was not so bad,and in the park, we saw a lot.
Camp site was also exiting, so close to wildlife and unexpectedly clean and comfortable.
Food was also nice, thanks to our nice guide who knows a lot about nature.

Potentially One of the Finest National Parks in Africa

I just spent 11 days in Kafue National Park and loved it. In fact I feel that with better overall management it could be and deserves to be one of the finest National Parks in Africa.

I saw lions,elephants,hippos, herds of red lechwe, oribi and bush pigs,sable and roan. I also saw a leopard. The birding was just fantastic.

I stayed at Mukambi Plains and Musekese Camp. I just loved the hosting and thought that the guiding was exceptional in both of them. The wilderness " exceptional".

The reason why I don't rate it even higher is because I feel that Kafue needs better overall management. I am happy that Paul Tudor Jones is really opening up a lodge and that hopefully African Parks will come in and manage it. This is a great park and I really admire the work that Tyrone Mckeith, Phillip Jeffrey, the Van Der Heides, and others are doing to support the local community and conservation.

I visited Kafue National park during the green season. I loved the remote feel of the park, but it would have been a more satisfying experience later in the dry season. The birding was very good, though, and made up for the absence of animals.

South Lwange experience couldn't have been improved. Amazing lodgings, wildlife, guides, service in camps, food, etc. Kafue is a bit behind on those matters. Better to go to Kafue in the north end of the park in Aug or Sept.

Disastrous Kafue

I am afraid to say, our trip to Kafue was a disaster in terms of game, very little to see. I think when the new North/ South road was built I think most of the game was eaten/killed, we saw more game in Pilandsberg game reserve.
It was a real pity, next te we will try South Luangue.

Utter remoteness in this vast park yet still close encounters ensued.

I travelled with my family to stay at the Busanga Plains camp, a fly camp of Mukambi. The six hour drive from the lodge to Busanga was a true African experience. Although we had little time to stop and digest the animals (we were on a schedule) and were subjected to the traditional African massage, we saw a vast array of mammals and birds and the drive's length just cemented how remote our camp was.
The bush camp was incredible, from the restaurant terrace several hundred red lechwe could be seen grazing and perhaps a dozen fish eagles screeching, truly a wonder. The tents provided everything we needed, obviously being a temporary camp it was nothing on the main lodge but it was fulfilled our needs perfectly. The food also was fantastic. Waking up first thing in the morning and sitting in the restaurant watching the lechwe in the low mist is a truly magical experience that I would recommend to any animal lover.
The drives were top notch; the Busanga lions are the most beautiful I have seen, with fantastic dark manes. We were lucky to get close to a fresh buffalo kill and watch them interact. We encountered great herds of Roan, wildebeest, zebra and a few bachelor elephants amongst others. For the purists, we did not encounter another vehicle on our trip, a true indication of our remoteness and allowed all these sightings to be personal. Our guide was excellent, very knowledgable and worked tirelessly to track down the species my siblings wanted for their tick-lists.
A great destination.

stunning location, remote, true africa!

I can say, I'm quite an experience Africa Traveller (many safaris over the last 15 years in Tanzania, Namibia, Botswana, Southafrica, Kenya). With the time my research for places with few tourists, an intact wildlife and a stunning scenery became always more sophisticated and so I decided this time for a safari in Zambia. The Kafue National Park, I stayed in the Busanga plains, have for sure been one of my most exciting safari experiences: in a park as big as the whole region of Tuscany there are merely a few camps (in the part where I stayed there where just 3 of them with a maximum of about 8 guests each). It is hard to meet another car out in the wild, not to speak about situations like in the serengeti, where you can find 25 car around a single lion...
I don't know whether it's ufficially permitted, however, the very experienced drivers go often offroad to take you closer to the animals - surely with few cars in this wast area this is not a problem. And it gives you uncredible photographic opurtunities. We came accross some lions hunting a hippo. We saw many elephants and also rare animals as the serval cat.
Of course also the "simple" luxury of the camp, the great food, the stunning location (elephants visit our tent many times, antilopes are grazing always in front of the camp in the great swamp area, added something to the feeling of "out of Africa". A highlight of course was the balloon flight.
The only real disturbing thing in the Kafue are the Tsetse flies. They where the first animal greeting us as soon as our plane landed and the pilot opened the window. That is when I got my first bite, many others followed. The area around the airstrip is worse, the guides know that and avoid it. But also in other places tsetse can be found (I never saw one in the camp). If I ever plan to return to Kafue I will prepare very well with even better safari cloths then those I already had and some really good repellent (but I'm not sure if it exists - autan and others do not help).