On Walking Safari With The Bush Camp Company

With all this talk of walking safaris on this blog, I thought that you may like to get a taste of what what our guests actually see and hear on their trips out with the Bush Camp Company guides.

This is my video, filmed over a number of days with the guides around the Mfuwe region of the park and around Chamilandu.

To Chamilandu and back

Another week of filming, wildlife spotting, editing and adventuring, in the bag. Last weekend I spent an amazing few days at the remote bush camp of Chamilandu, shared with Gilly (Gilbert) the guide, who works out of the camp, Zillah the bush camp manager, and the handful of staff who cook the food and run the camp.

The view of the Luangwa River at camp Chamilandu

My days were spent filming Gilly as he guided in the surrounding bush, and joking about with Malenga (the youngest of the trainee guides) as he watched my back for approaching elephants whilst I had my eyes intently glued to the view-finder of my camera.

Gilly and David the scout, on walking safari from Chamilandu

My nights were spent laughing with the incredibly funny staff, feasting on the incredible food cooked by the bush-cooks, and sharing stories with Zillah, Gilly and the guests at our candle lit table in a clearing by the camp. I even managed to stay for one of my nights in one of the three luxury stilted chalets at the camp, awakening to a beautiful sun-rise over the Luangwa River from my four-poster bed.The morning view at Chamilandu camp, which unfortunately I don't get every morning

Guide Andrew and the young Malenga on the drive back from Chamilandu.

A little staff outing with hosts Kat and Lucy, Shelly (in sling), and old-timer Ian

I get to meet loads of new faces here as guests come and go, but some guests get particularly interested in my work here and often specifically invite me to join them on their game drives and walking safaris. Two such guests are Chris and Cindy Hornaman (yes you guessed it, they're American) who have stayed at the lodge many times before, and return regularly as part of Chris's work as a photographer (18 times Wildlife Photographer of the Year semi-finalist, and you can check out his website here). They invited me to join them on a special all day drive that they organised to the north of the park; it was a fantastic drive, and gave me a chance to film loads of great wildlife, including a 500 strong herd of buffalo and the endemic Cookson's wildebeest, both seldom seen in the south of the valley.

Our mid-day picnic on our all day drive to the north of the park

The last few buffaloes, after 400 or so stampeeded past us

Below is a short video I've been editing on the scavengers that set to work on a dead elephant that was found next to the river....I hope you enjoy!

Vultures feasting on an elephant carcass from Will Benson on Vimeo.

As is the circle of life in the natural world, when one animal dies, a host of other animals line up to feed themselves. This short clip shows the scavengers coming to feast on the carcass of an elephant that died next to the Luagwa River in Zambia's South Luangwa National Park.

Finding my feet

WOW! OK so I'm now at the end of week two in this beautiful place that is to be my home for the coming months. I'm finally getting my head around the many names of the staff (as well as the local wildlife), the best times to catch the best light to film in, a bit of the local language (Nyanja), and my daily routine of filming, digitizing footage, logging footage, and then finding time to squeeze in a cold beer, before climbing under my mosquito net for the night.

One of the senior guides here called Pattson, who often drives me out to film. He is slowly but surely teaching me every plant, bird, mammal and tree in the South Luangwa Valley - quite a task.

This is a hyena with a baby Buffalo that it stole from a pride of lions (who in turn stole it from a herd of Buffalo I guess!?). There's been loads of lion action in our area of the park this last week, and I've had loads of chance to film the lions with their kills. On one of our night-drives our vehicle got stuck in sand and following that we then we got a flat tyre about 100 meters from a family of lions. Changing a tyre by lantern light, knowing you're being watched from the shadows is an eerie experience!


Mongoose Manor! A few special people know I have a real soft spot for meerkats, but sadly Zambia doesn't have meerkats. However a family of mongoose (mongeese?!) has just moved into the lodge: They are adorable, and constantly run about the place in a big bundle, as if they were undertaking some sort of mongoose special mission.

This photo is just two of the many many elephants that seem adamant on blocking which ever road we try and use to get to the river.

This is the setting of my regular morning tea, before the game drive at 6 in the morning. A mug of rooibos looking out over the lagoon - no better way to start the day.

Often the guests I accompany on game drives have arranged to eat breakfast out in the bush - an occasion that strangely enough we call 'bush breakfast'. It's usually held in the clearing of a mahogany wood next to the river.

This week the 'fishing party' has flown into to the lagoon; this is a huge, many thousand strong flock of yellow billed stalks, pelicans, saddle billed stalks, ibis and heron, who have all flown to the lagoon which runs past the lodge to catch the fish in the ever-decreasing pools of what remains from the drying river bed. Over two days I shot a couple of hours of footage of these fascinating birds swooping past, scooping fish out of the water, and generally squabbling and squawking with one another. One problem I've found is that spending my time filming the wildlife around here means I don't get much time to photograph it, so I apologise that I don't have pics to show lots of what I write about.

As well as myself, there are a number of other interns and volunteers from the UK working at the lodge. The youngest, Rosie, is due to fly back tomorrow after two months here as a host (basically schmoozing guests and serving afternoon tea), and on Saturday afternoon a group of 12 of us took a picnic down to the river to say goodbye. It turns out Rosie is a trained opera singer, and after a few G & Ts she she treated us to an amazing rendition of an Italian piece of music out on the open plain by the river bank - really beautiful.

On top of the game drives that I've been filming so far, on Sunday I set out on foot with one of the walking safaris. The Bushcamp Company's tag line for their walking safaris is, 'from a vehicle you see Africa, but on foot you hear, smell, feel Africa'. This really is true, and the 3 hour walk through the bush gives you a completely different perspective to the landscape; as well as spotting the animals that I've become used to seeing on my game drives, being on foot allowed me to track the animals from their spoor and prints, and to pick up on the tiny details of the surroundings, easily missed in a noisy vehicle.

The above photo was taken on one of the night drives. The beam is used to pick up the tell-tale reflective eyes of the nocturnal predators of the Park.

Slinking off into the darkness; this is what the night drives in South Luangwa are renowned for - catching a glimpse of a huge leopard as it creeps through the bush at night.

Well that's all for another week. I'm off to one of the remote camps tomorrow which is a few hours drive from the main lodge. Hopefully I'll return next week with more pictures and tales to tell...

Into the Zambian bush

So here I am, my new home - the Zambian bush! Following a 1hr hair-raising flight in a bumpy prop' plane (which smelt strangely of the Imperial War Museum, presumably a hint at the age of the plane) from Lusaka to the near non-existent town of Mfuwe, I was met by my beaming driver, Kelvin, to take me the 45 min ride the lodge.

The drive along the red dirt track through the tiny villages was amazing. The smell was just incredible; warm dusty air and the wood smoke from the villages and the charred shrubs burnt back as part of the yearly 'slash n' burn' cycle. Before we even made it to the lodge we saw a group of about 4 lions lounging by the road in the increasing midday heat - I could tell I was going to be happy here.

To make this blog slightly more digestible I'm going to stick to a plan of each week uploading ten of the best photos of my past 7 days and then tell you all a bit about what's been going on - hopefully that way I can share the best of the filming and tracking action our here, as well as giving me a nice and easy guide to stick to (the heat, about 30 degrees, makes my thoughts a little slow you see!

The action so far: Week 1

The amazing sunset I was blessed with on my first night's game drive. The dust kicked up from the parched mid dry-season landscape gives the sunsets out here the most amazing orange glow. Just out of shot was another juvenile giraffe and a tiny baby. This was taken just a few minutes before the adults attempted to cross the river before meeting a croc and deciding to go back the other way.

A hyena making off with the remains of an impala. The kill was actually made by a leopard we had seen only moments earlier, but as is the way with hyena, they must have bullied the lone leopard out of its meal.

Three beautiful lions taking in the sun on the banks of the Luangwa River. We had hoped to drive along this track and down on to the sand, but with these amazing animals blocking our way we had to simply admire them from our vehicle and then head back the other way.

And of course my bush edit suite...this is just part of my double en-suite room, pretty amazing for the African bush!

Self portrait on our morning game drive. We set off from the lodge in one of the game viewing vehicles around 6:30 every morning, just after the sun has come up and the game is beginning to awake. The morning drive lasts for about 3 hours (with a little break for tea, coffee and snacks around 8) and provides amazing light to film the wildlife just as it goes about its morning business.


This is the beautiful dawn sky that greets me everyday, just as the bush begins to stir for another day.


Our evening game drive is from 4 to 8, and even though the light is only good for filming for the first few hours, it's still a beautiful drive, topped off without fail with an amazing pink and orange sunset. The joy of filming with a luxury safari company is that of course every sunset is accompanied by a sun-downer, so most evenings I can be found sinking a couple of G & Ts watching the setting of the Zambian sun....which is nice!



Spot the leopard! The South Luangwa National Park is one of Africa's top locations to see leopard, and I can definitely vouch for this. This is just one of the handful of these amazing cats that I've seen in my first week here, hiding up in a tree to escape the midday heat.


Sometimes I think it would be nice if the wildlife could keep itself to the bush and not follow he home at night! As well as the hippos, hyenas, bushbuck, impala, baboon, monkeys, lion and leopard that are found wandering our camp at night, there is also a veritable menagerie in my room, in the shape of geckos, skinks and horrible spiders.

Expedition Zambia is go go go...

Finally the time has nearly come for me to pack my bags once again, and head off into the wilderness. In just five days time I shall be flying to Lusaka in Zambia, where I'll then hop on a precariously tiny aeroplane to Mfuwe in the beautiful South Luangwa National Park, where I will be based for the coming three months.

This filming trip has taken many months of planning, but now all that is left to do is work out how exactly to fit the 80 hours of miniDV tapes, 1500GB of hard drives, 2 cameras, 3 tripods, journals, shot-logs and various field-guides into my backpack.
I hope to add photos and films here as I go, to document this amazing opportunity I have been given to live and film in one of Africa's most incredible and wild, National Parks.

An Experimental Film

As well as old photos, I've rencently located a stash of old videos which I shot on my digital camera when in Borneo in 2008. Instead of simply leaving them to gather digital dust, such is the sad fate of many of my images, I thought I'd edit them together into a short film.

For those technically minded folk out there, these clips were shot on a Fujifilm S5600, and edited on Movie Edit Pro 16.

From The Archives: BORNEO

A selection of shots from an amazing month long trip I made to Borneo's states of Sarawak and Sabah with my eternal traveling companion Brian, in 2008.

(Kuching's waterfront by sunset)

(Proboscis monkey, Bako National Park)

(Brian and me resting in one of the lodges on the trek to the Pinnacles)

(Pitcher plant, Sarawak)

(view from the longhouse, Mulu)

(sun kissed peak from Gunung Kinabalu)