Call of the wild: baby beasts and

I't almost started in disaster. My Proflight Zambia plane from Cape Town was landing in Livingstone and going on to Lusaka. This I did not realise, and I sat blissfully ignorant in my seat, headphones on, while the flight attendants, and all the other passengers, waited for me to get off - the only person disembarking. They eventually tapped me on the shoulder and turfed me out. Just in time.

- By Lorraine Kearney

Bags collected I was off to The David Livingstone, my lodgings on the banks of the Zambezi River. Confession time: the Zambezi, at any point from start to Mana Pools, is one of my favourite places in the world.

So I was as happy as a clam when my cruise on the Lady Livingstone set off that afternoon. Nothing like jumping in immediately, almost as you hit the airport.

River cruise

We dawdled along the river towards Mosi-oa-Tunya, as the Victoria Falls are known in the local languages of Leya and Lozi.

I sipped on a Mosi, as one must in these parts, and watched elephants, hippos, crocs and plenty of beautiful birds.

Later that night, I was struck down with an unwelcome virus and I took to my bed for two days. It was not an auspicious start to my month-long wander through the massive Kaza region, the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, the largest conservation area in the world. It stretches from Angola and Namibia in a wide band all the way through Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

It's a marvellous project that is opening up ancient animal migration routes, boosting conservation through community participation, and working to mitigate human-wildlife conflict.

The Botswana leg

My next stop was delayed a day, but eventually I set off for Chobe in Botswana, across the Kazangula Bridge. It has knocked several hours off the journey, and the one-stop border crossing has made it all even easier.

Although the bridge was only opened in 2021 to replace the Kazungula ferry, there are several potholes forming already and banks of tar growing ever-larger as the huge, overloaded trucks barrel along in temperatures so high you could fry an egg on the pavement.