Our last full day at Flatdogs Lodge and an early morning, pre breakfast consultation on a program for the day. It’s decided. The morning will be spent visiting the Tribal Textiles co-operative in Mfuwe, outside the Park, and an evening game drive in the hope of spotting a leopard before we depart tomorrow morning.
Breakfast done, and on the road to the co-op, through villages and rural landscape.
On arrival we’re given a tour of the production line. All designs are created in-house, hand drawn on cotton fabric, painted with vegetable dies, and processed to fix the colours and render them proof against fading and running when laundered.
Then, inevitably, the co-op store! Hard to resist.
The road back to the Park, and evidence that creativity exists outside the co-op.
A touch more browsing in local shops . . . .
. . . and back to the Treehouse for a lunch break, Elephants, giraffes and warthogs all sharing the waterhole.
Off on our last safari in Zambia, an afternoon drive, looking for the elusive leopard. Plenty of other wildlife . . . my favourite, the Thornicroft’s giraffe – this particular species only found in this small pocket in Africa. Quietly grazing, and clearly content with her meal.
Meanwhile, African Crowned Cranes seek out their evening meal on the riverbank, while the Crowned Hornbill wait patiently for his dinner opportunity.
Then, just as the sun begins to sink below the horizon, our guide is distracted by loud cries of alarm from baboons. Surging forward in the jeep, he drives us to the spot, and there, deep in the undergrowth . . . .
four leopards! Our bush guide Robbie is very, very excited. He has only ever encountered a maximum number of three, and here are four! A male, a female and two cubs.
It appears they have just woken from their afternoon siesta, and being nocturnal predators, and getting ready for their night hunt. The cubs are more interested in playing with each other . . .
by which time, the noise of the baboons has attracted others on safari, and the leopards now have a keen audience.
Mother knows best, and the female rounds up her cubs for an evening of learning how to hunt.
They blend into the tall grass, as the sun finally sets over our last safari in Zambia.
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