“When we as a family committed to building Nanzhila Lake Camp in early 2020 with the view to open up the whole of the Southern Kafue to our guests, we never knew what was in store for us!

Aside from the normal challenges building a bush camp out in the Kafue will present to you (weather, shortage of material, delays in getting equipment…the list goes on!), building Lake Camp in 2020 threw a number of new curveballs. Whilst the pandemic certainly meant we had more time on our hands for building, we often found ourselves wondering if the guests we were building this camp for, would ever come?

On top of it, our life camping and building in the Kafue was made more – interesting – when the resident herd of elephants took exception to our efforts! A response exacerbated no doubt by previous bad experiences with fishermen in Itezhi-tezhi. But one thing Cindy and I have learnt in the bush is that given time, a lot of these challenges will be overcome.

Lake Camp has been opened for a few months now and whilst we still have work to do on the finishing touches, the feedback so far from our guests has been really positive. The game viewing has been excellent and even the resident elephants are coming to tolerate us and who knows – maybe they realise we are here to help them?

But after all the challenges of the past 14 months, we are thrilled to announce that both 
Nanzhila Plains and Nanzhila Lake Camp are open – it’s been a long, hard road but we are there.

For those wanting to see a great transection of the Southern Kafue, you now can! Whether coming into the park from Livingstone or Lusaka, the diversity of habitat and species will surprise you and we would love to share our camps and family’s journey with you in the Southern Kafue.

Until next time,
Steve, Cindy, Sean and the rest of the Smith Family…”