Your Boma Away from Homa - Kafue National Park, Zambia

The Great North Road leads us out of the capital, Lusaka, and past people selling Meyer's Parrots in tiny cages on the side of the road. Zambia has been ravaged by unchecked poaching and illegal wildlife trade over the years, but that seems to be changing.

What its neighbour Zimbabwe has lost, Zambia has gained; its infamous roads are being rebuilt, the land farmed and the parks restocked with wildlife. Almost a quarter of Zambia's 752 614 square kilometres of deciduous savannah and isolated mountain ranges is devoted to National Parks. These have been much neglected over the years but that too seems set to change.

Kafue National Park

We are headed for Zambia's oldest and largest park. The 22 400 square
kilometre Kafue National Park was proclaimed in 1950. The size of Wales,
it is the second largest National Park in the world. A thousand metres above
sea level, riparian forest and miombo woodland are interspersed with plains and wetlands watered by the Lunga, Lufupa and Kafue Rivers. The park remained undeveloped, however, until recently.