DAY 6: MUTINONDO WILDERNESS-KAPISHYA HOT SPRINGS (Sat 18 June)
Mutinondo really served only one purpose: to break up the journey from Shoebill to Kapishya, since those were our two main destinations but the journey time would have been a bit intense to take it all in one fell swoop. So, having spent the night in Mutinondo, we packed up camp the next morning. Phil made an early start around 8.30 with Marjanne and Jacomien accompanying him, the three of them planning to visit Shiwa N’gandu (Africa House), a historic Colonial British estate built in the middle of nowhere in Zambia. The rest of us (Heinrich and the kids and ourselves) made a slower start to the morning and packed up tent more leisurely, not feeling like rushing. We left around 10am. Kapishya was not too far away and mostly on tarmac, so we anticipated a reasonable and easy journey.
Everything went smoothly until we tried to stop to buy some more bottled water and a few groceries for the remainder of our camping trip at a town along the way. We mistakenly turned off the tarmac before we reached the town, and ended up bouncing along on narrow dirt roads, winding through neighborhoods and not seeing a single shop anywhere. After asking for directions four times, we finally got back on the right track after wasting more than 20 minutes driving in circles. Once we reached the tarmac, we easily found what we were looking for!
The end of the drive was a very pretty scenic wooded road in the country, winding through part of the Shiwa N’gandu estate. Kapishya Hot Springs was about 30 kilometres off the tarmac. When we reached the campsite all of us breathed a sigh of relief, since this was to be our last major destination of the trip and it would be good to stay put for a few days! The campsite was very nicely maintained and located next to a rushing river (signs were posted to be wary of crocodiles). And unlike all our previous campsites, this one provided flush toilets, real showers, and running cold AND hot water, for which we were all immensely grateful! The Hot Spring was right around the corner from the campsite, so while David set up our tent I took Elijah, who was cutting teeth and a little bit out of sorts, to play in the Hot Springs for a while. We had reached the campsite around 3pm or so, one of the earliest arrivals of our whole trip, and we all felt at liberty to relax and enjoy ourselves for a bit of the remaining afternoon instead of frantically trying to set up camp and sort out the cooking. I was soon joined in the hot spring by several others! It was a very restful start to our stay at Kapishya.
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