The country offers an experience unsullied by commercial overtones and blessed by an absence of tourist coaches, writes Angus Begg
Today Africa’s wildlife destination of choice, there was a time, only a few decades ago, when Zambia was best known for not much more than abundant copper deposits, Kenneth Kaunda and, by Southern African standards, a remarkably peaceful recent past.
Still a friendly country, largely at peace with itself, the “real Africa” is how Zambia describes itself in its sometimes cheesy tourist brochures, and for those looking for wildlife and cultural experiences it couldn’t be more accurate. The country offers an experience unsullied by commercial overtones and blessed by an absence of package tours and coaches.
While virtually the entire tourism industry in Zimbabwe bar a few operations in Victoria Falls across the Zambezi river, has been devastated by the rural anarchy in that country, it has presented the Zambian side with unforeseen opportunities.
Ten years ago the Zambian side of the falls offered a very dated Mosi-o-Tunya Inter-Continental hotel and a couple of upmarket lodges. Today things have changed, most significantly with the opening a few months ago of two Sun International operations, a couple hundred metres up from the spray of Mosi-o-Tunya smoke that thunders by the Makololo people (exiles from Shaka Zulu’s empire) in the 1830s.
Ten kilometres outside the town of Livingstone, on the banks of the Zambezi on the site of the old Inter-Continental, is the upmarket, extravagantly colonial, five-star Royal Livingstone, and next door the three-star ethnically furnished Zambezi Sun.
Over a lager on the elegantly situated “sundowner” deck at the Royal Livingstone, right on the river, the general manager of the two hotels, South African Philip Couvaris, tells me that in order to get the operations up and running the company invested quite heavily in the Livingstone area, evidence of which I see at the airport passport and immigration counter, where a separate “blue” lane is reserved solely for guests of Sun International.
The Royal Livingstone itself has a classic, sumptuous feel, with the fittings and interior decor typical of other “recent” Sun International projects Zimbali, just north of Durban, comes to mind.
After four visits to this country and numerous trips around the continent I’ve yet to meet a people more suited to the tourism and hospitality industry, and when we arrive at Chaminuka Lodge outside Lusaka, there’s a feeling of subtle continuation. Owned and lived in by one Andrew Sardanis, a Cypriot-born, long-time resident of Zambia and apparently a close friend of Kaunda Chaminuka is everything that Lusaka isn’t, and this after my second visit.
Formerly the Sardanis family home, when the children moved on Andrew and his wife Denai turned their home into a guesthouse, although there is a distinct “small boutique hotel” feeling to this property. Their love of African art is exhibited throughout their Seventies-modern house, which is perched on top of the large and sloping, exquisitely landscaped lawn.
With a palate shaped by a Cypriot upbringing, Denai ensures that the cuisine leaving the kitchen is of the highest quality.
But there’s more to Chaminuka. The roughly 9 000ha around the house comprise a nature reserve on which Sardanis breeds species particularly endangered in Zambia. The likes of sable, roan and sitatunga share a relatively diverse landscape (woodland savanna and a large lake in front of the house) with more common species of plains game, while cheetah and hyenas are kept in separate enclosures.
It’s 5pm on an August afternoon, and with the lounge windows open and our chairs facing west, from our point of relative altitude atop the sloping lawn we look over the impressive sculptures towards Lusaka and a setting sun beyond.
The impish, obviously fabulously wealthy Zambian Cypriot tells of their quarterly cultural visits to New York, where they get to see their one son’s family and satisfy their craving for opera. And of how it’s cheaper to fly to London via Johannesburg with South African Airways than the British Airways-monopolised London-Lusaka route.
In the past, when the Zambian National Tourist Board has had the means to launch a media blitz (the phones of the board’s Johannesburg representative were cut over a year back because the bills were unpaid), it invited travel writers to visit “the real Africa”, and it was on my first visit to the South Luangwa National Park, just before the momentous election of 1991, that I saw it for myself.
I’ll never forget that first drive into the park: there was something, somewhere, all of the time.
Leopards, lions, hippos (certain sections of the Luangwa river are said to boast the highest concentration in Africa), elephants albeit with negligible tusks at the time and as night fell, out came civet, genet, porcupines, our spotlight revealing baboons sleeping in precarious positions on slender branches.
So primordial was the scene that I happily dubbed it the Garden of Eden.
Most lodges are outside the park, overlooking the Luangwa river and its resident hippos. Of the roughly seven lodges along this stretch of river, adjacent to the Mfuwe gate, Kapani is one of the better-known operations as it was home to Norman Carr, Zambia’s famous conservationist who was responsible for the creation of the park.
I must admit to having wondered at Carr’s choice of Spanish-style villas for his lodge, but 10 years ago a lodge in the Luangwa valley was just a very comfortable place to stay, offering homely food and surrounded by bounteous wildlife. Lodge design today is almost an industry in itself, with some architects even specialising in the field over the past six years as the trend spread north from South Africa.
As it is, the owners of the camp today they’ve been there for 10 years and his daughter is still involved have made the vital but minor adjustments, and Kapani remains a very special destination with a unique position on a lagoon off the river.
Where once the South Luangwa National Park was frequented mainly by English enthusiasts “in the know”, my recent visit also revealed relatively substantial numbers of American, Dutch, German and Italian visitors no doubt in search of “the real Africa”.
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