Lower Zambezi River, Zambia

Africa wilderness trips are not a great place for backpackers on a budget because safaris and staying out in the jungle are typically paired with luxury accommodation. Luckily, we found a resort on the Lower Zambezi River that offered both 5 star accommodation and 0 star camping! In order to reach the camp, we took a mini bus from Lusaka to the Zimbabwe border and then jumped on a speed boat.

The ride to the resort was basically a river safari since we stopped to view hippos, birds, dugout canoes and a big elephant! We reserved a basic camping tent for the week but because there weren’t many people at the resort we were upgraded to a luxury tented cabin.

The river was filled with wildlife; we had monkeys, ginnea faul and big 5 foot ‘lizards’ strolling around camp. It was the beginning of rainy season but it didn’t affect us much other than making for some amazing skylines and sunsets. There were lots of available activities including canoe, boat safaris and sunset cruises. We managed to see more hippos than we could count, tons of elephants, a few crocodiles and lots of birds!

We spent most of our time hanging out by the pool, catching up on our blog, reading, and playing scrabble. We also went for walks to nearby villages and were greeted by lots of young children who were eager to say hello to us. Besides the fact that we couldn’t actually go into the water because of the tiger fish and crocs, it was fun have our meals overlooking the wildlife do its thing. The most hilarious thing we saw was a hippo walking along the river side and then plop/slide down a 10foot drop to the water!