The Olds Go Wild: Kafue, Camping and Keeping an Eye on the Amps
I should start with a caveat, because context matters here.
When my parents say "camping," what they mean is our much-loved family place near the Kruger National Park. Fully solar powered. A reverse osmosis water filter at the main area. A small shop that, on a bad day, is better stocked than my supermarket in Lusaka on a good one. Reliable gas. Reliable fuel. And yes - you can plug in the Nespresso machine.
The only genuinely hard part of that particular "bush experience" is that we don't get there often enough.
So, when my mom and dad announced that they and their friends - a cheerful battalion of retirees, all fully paid-up members of The Olds - were coming to Zambia to explore Kafue National Park, I felt two things simultaneously. Pride, because at an age when most people are downsizing their ambitions, my parents were upsizing theirs. And a very specific kind of dread, because I know Kafue, and I know Kruger, and I know that the only thing these two places really share is an abundance of impala.
Naturally, none of that stopped them. A meticulous trip was planned. Routes were mapped. A bulk supply of wine ordered. Distances were calculated. Buffers were, I was assured, built in.
What wasn't built in was Zambia.
The "Surely" Phase
There's a particular stage every newcomer goes through here, and my dad walked into it with the full confidence of a man who has never had a border post laugh in his face.
Surely the border can't take that long.
Surely Google Maps is wrong about 9.5 hours for 350km - that has to be a glitch.
Surely the police won't stop us more than once or twice.
Surely the roads are better than this.
Every single one of these was said out loud, in the car, with the particular tone of a man renegotiating with reality in real time. And every single one was, gently and then not so gently, disproven.
The border did take that long. Google Maps was, if anything, being generous. The police did stop them, repeatedly. And the roads did not improve, no matter how much everyone in the car willed them to.
I did try to warn him. I sent the honest version, not the Instagram version. But there is a particular kind of person - and my father is a proud member of this club - who hears "it might take nine hours" and internally translates it to "six, if we leave early." Zambia does not negotiate with optimism. It simply lets you find out.
Kafue, Eventually
And then, as it always seems to here, the arrival undid most of the complaining.
Because Kafue doesn't apologise for how hard it is to reach, and it doesn't need to. There's no reverse osmosis filter, no solar-powered plug points, no small shop with emergency chocolate. What there is, instead, is space. An almost unreasonable amount of it.
Kafue is the largest and oldest national park in Zambia - roughly the size of Wales, which takes a minute to actually fathom. No other vehicles. No other camps in sight. No fences pretending the wild is contained. Just miles of miombo woodland folding into open plains, the Kafue and Lufupa rivers cutting through it all, and a horizon that keeps going long after you expect it to give up.
That's the thing nobody quite manages to explain about Kafue beforehand, and the thing we kept trying to photograph and failing, because no photograph holds it. It's vast in a way that rearranges something in you. My mother, not a woman prone to overstatement, used the word "divine" - as in the spiritual, biblical sense, not the JHB coucal sense. Nobody argued with her.
There's also the particular silence of a place with no infrastructure holding it up - no generators humming in the background, no distant road noise, nothing except the occasional snorting hippo, and your own thoughts getting steadily louder. It is also, entirely without effort, one of the most awe-inducing places any of them had ever stood in.
My dad, who had spent the better part of two days muttering about road conditions and the watts and apps on his solar system, went suspiciously quiet somewhere around the second night, sitting by the fire staring out at a sky so thick with stars it looked like a printing error. I believe the technical term is "converted". Kafue worked its magic.
By the campfire, the story had already started doing what all good travel stories do - shedding the misery and keeping only the highlights. The nine-hour drive became "quite an adventure." The multiple checkpoints became "friendly chaps, actually." Nobody mentioned the Nespresso machine once, which for my father is as close to a religious experience as it gets.
Of course, the Olds being the Olds, there were detailed reviews. Camps were rated. Roads were discussed. Distances were analysed. Nobody has ever been on a trip with my father without a post-trip performance review.
The official findings from Mapunga, Kaingu, Musungwa and Hornbill Safari Lodge are being compiled - I expect there will be notes on everything from wildlife sightings to ablution comfort and the availability of ice.
Lessons learned (for the next group of Olds)
"How hard can it be" is not a route-planning strategy. It is, at best, a coping mechanism you adopt after the fact.
Google Maps time estimates in Zambia are not wrong. You are wrong for doubting them.
The police will stop you. Again, and again.
Pack twice the patience you think you'll need.
Nothing prepares you for Zambian roads.
Go anyway. Every single one of them would do it again tomorrow, and has already started planning the next one - with, I suspect, slightly more respectful expectations of Google Maps.
