The "roads" traveled

A few of the sights along the route from Mongu to Matemanene, our field camp in Liuwa Plain.

Along the Mongu to Kalabo road, you'll see hundreds of people walking in either direction. For most, walking is the only form of transportation available. Many have bicycles, which are mostly pushed along the Mongu road due to difficult terrain, or perhaps due to the load of water, parafin, grain, and fish they've strapped to the bike's frame. This fellow was out in the midday heat, shielding himself from the rays.

The Zambezi River bisects the flood plain between Mongu and Kalabo. Here we are waiting for the pontoon to empty its eastbound vehicles, soon to board and head across the river toward Kalabo. The pontoon only runs during the latter half of the dry season, when the Mongu to Kalabo route is dry enough for vehicles. The huts near the pontoon are mostly fishermen, but some of them have set up small shops offering hot soda, salty snacks, and talk time for Zambia's pay-as-you-go cell phones.

Back in the day, there was a Grand Idea to connect Mongu to eastern Angola by paved road. I'm not entirely confident I know the reason behind the proposed road, but I heard more than once that it was to service the diamond traffic between mines in Angola and Lusaka, Zambia. Angola has a fairly ugly blood diamond history, and apparently the idea was to ship diamonds to Lusaka to make them easier to buy and sell, but also perhaps to try to wash away some of the Angolan blood diamond reputation along the long route. This section of road was an anomoly. Paved from Kalabo to the beginning of the Zambezi flood plain, it was a stretch of 17 or so miles of isolated asphalt. Indeed, it was quite strange. The road was complete with kilometer markers and pullouts for naps, bathroom breaks, whatever. The road continued on as a paved surface to the Luanginga River in Kalabo, despite there being no gas station in Kalabo, and not many vehicles either. In the other direction, the pavement terminated at a collection of huts, where the four wheel adventure begins.

The end of the pavement in Kalabo, and one of the few regular vehicles in town. Behind the white truck is the Luanginga River pontoon. The Zambezi pontoon is equipped with two motors that zip you across the big river. This pontoon is equipped with one rope, which breaks from time to time, that you use to pull the pontoon across. Boarding the pontoon was generally easy, unless it was done at night, which made for more than one exciting evening... On the other side of this river and across a few miles of sandy four wheel drive trail is the boundary of Liuwa Plain.
Matemanene, our field camp in Liuwa Plain, has a large radio tower placed smack in the middle of the camps' woodland. I climbed the tower to use our telemetry receiver to pick up signals from collared animals throughout the park. It eventually dawned on me to bring my camera with me and snap off a few photos of the landscape immediately surrounding our camp. The water in the background is the Munde Stream, and during the heavy rains it presented a huge obstacle to getting in and out of camp. In dry conditions, you could drive from the Munde to our tents in five minutes. In wet conditions, it took us a couple hours to try to find a reasonable crossing in which we wouldn't sink our vehicles in the swampy stream.. And again, these crossings were made all the more interesting at night!