Link to Africa Geographic Online

The bush at night is not a quiet place. Certainly it isn't at Kutandala in Zambia's North Luangwa National Park. I think I was asleep but maybe not quite, when I heard a soft crackling, like a far-away brush fire. Befuddled, I sat up and the sound went away. I put my head down and back it came. I sat up and away it went. Now thoroughly alert, I repeated the lie-down-sit-up routine several times before concluding that the sound was actually coming from my headboard. The torch beam revealed all: termites busily eating the reeds from which the rough headboard had been fashioned and at the same time 'cementing' them to my mozzie net.

I watched in fascination until distracted by another small sound, a scuffling this time, and coming from outside. Well, 'inside' and 'outside' are relative terms at Kutandala as the walls of the chalets are built from local reeds, about eye height, that don't quite reach the beginning of the thatch roof. The front of the room is open to a private verandah overlooking the Mwaleshi River, the only concession to security being heavy mat curtains that are rolled down at sunset. Off the bedroom is a bathroom enclosure, covered by the skies and with a floor of zen-raked golden river sand. A far cry from the sometimes almost suffocating luxury of the grand lodges of East and southern Africa, yet wonderful in its simplicity, there is a feeling of privacy and space you seldom find anywhere else.

It didn't take long to find the source of the outside distraction - an elephant shrew peering up at me from the leaf litter. For a moment he challenged the flashlight and then lost his nerve, bounding off silently down his carefully tended escape path. But maybe it wasn't me that had frightened him, for immediately there came a crashing on the other side of the hut. From the bathroom I caught the tail end of three loping hyaenas. A moment later, I saw their moonlit silhouettes in the river as they splashed in the shallows. As I drifted back into sleep I could hear their eerie whoops way upstream.

The real business of Kutandala, however, is donning boots and heading off into the wilderness. Rod Tafter, who owns and runs the lodge with his wife Maelisa (aka Guz), is a superb guide - confident in his knowledge of the bush and its inhabitants, yet at the same time cautious and respectful. He grew up in the bush and has been guiding since he was 17.
It's hot work plodding through the Zambian veld, but there is no need to rush because distance is not the objective. We stop to talk about the trees, to examine tracks - we come across the spoor of the hyaenas that entertained me and later spy eight of them at the carcass of a young buffalo. We take refuge behind a huge sausage tree as a herd of elephants amble by (although perhaps we were in greater danger from the tree's mighty fruit - one of these 20-kilogram monsters barrelling down on you would cause more than a nasty headache). And, one hot clear morning, Rod leads us to a high bank where, against the ruddy cut of a wide reach in the river, binoculars pick out a seething mass of brilliant red mixed with blues and turquoise. The migrant carmine bee-eaters are back and are setting about the excavation of their nesting holes with great industry. Rod is reluctant to get too close for fear of disturbing their routine.

So many memories and experiences: some of just relaxing in the camp or browsing through books in Kutandala's open-to-the-bush library under a massive Natal mahogany, of trying to capture the moods of sunset in watercolours and failing miserably, and of superb meals prepared by Guz. From other reviews and notes in the visitors' book, I am clearly not alone in wondering how she does it. No doubt the training she received at Ballymaloe in Ireland helps, but it requires more than that when your nearest supermarket is a good day's drive away. And then there is the river, the shallow, crocodile- and hippo-free Mwaleshi, where as the sun sinks low you can sip your pre-prandial fortifier from the comfort of a semi-submerged deck chair, your weary feet massaged by the swirling water.

'What a wonderful stay - quite one of (possibly the) best bush experiences I have ever had… Rod and Maelisa have a place that is truly unique.' I wrote this in their guest book and meant every word.