Tafika Camp
Location - Edge of Nsefu sector in own conversation area, overlooking Luangwa river opposite the park.
Accommodation - 6 reed huts. Sleeps 12
Experience - Game drives, night drives, walking safaris, microlite trips, mountain biking, specialist safaris (painting)
Price Guide - $530 - 750 pppn
Arriving at Tafika feels like you have discovered a well kept secret. The camp overlooks two bends in the Luangwa valley. The six, well spread out reed houses are all under some wonderful sausage and leadwood trees, separated by deliciously cool lawns. Tafika is Remote Africa's main camp and an excellent place to stay before going off to the smaller bush camps, Chikoko and Crocodile in the south Luangwa National Park and Mwaleshi in the north. Read more?
The houses are rebuilt each year with local grasses and reeds and are big, spacious and light but wonderfully simple and rustic. They have huge comfortable beds and hot showers, flush loos, solar lighting and hot water at all time of the day. There is a main bar and sitting area. Breakfast, like at most camps is done around the fire in the morning with lunch and dinner in different places around the camp.
It is the atmosphere that is so lovely at Tafika; it is like a world of its own. It does not have the slighly frantic feel “that clients must see game” impression of some of the other lodges. It is more laid back but without in any way being non professional.
You feel quite happy just sitting in the lovely hammocks or lying on the sun beds and watching the world go by. The camp also has a hide for a lagoon at the back of camp, which during the dry season is a magnet for the game. It is a small and intimate camp with extremely friendly staff and a complete mixture of Africans and Europeans doing all the various jobs and guiding.
Everyone appears at the bar for pre dinner drinks or for breakfast including the 3 cats and the 2 dogs. Tafika is John and Carol Coppingers home. It is also home for all the other guides, including Brian, Alex, Issac and Cameron who have been with Remote Africa for years and who will all make you feel extremely welcome.
The bush camps, Crocodile and Chikoko are on the other side of the bank and they have five crossing points, by canoe, into the park. You need to fly to Mwaleshi in north Luangwa and if keen on walking and being really very wild, all these camps are highly recommended.
John offers microlight flights from Tafika and they are just wonderful, not just because you feel like a bird flying, but you get a perspective of where you are, what the river is doing and the area around you as well as course of flying over herds of buffalo and elephant, buck and lions, hippo and huge crocodile. You can walk or game drive from the camp as well as night drive and you can also go out on Mountain bikes into the park or around the surrounding area.
Location - South Luangwa
The Luangwa Valley is probably Zambia's best known wildlife area. As well as having very good all-round game, Luangwa is somewhere that has gained a well deserved reputation for walking safaris, though there is a great deal more to do above and beyond. Jump to page?
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