High up in the fork of a flowering kigelia crouched a leopard. So perfectly did her coat blend with the dappled light and shade that even when a flock of lovebirds flew into her tree, their bright button eyes failed to spot her.
The birds had come for the nectar in the tree's trumpet-shaped flowers. Now, as they fed, they shook down a shower of crimson blossoms, attracting a herd of impala that gathered around the base of the tree, unaware that just above their heads lay sudden death in a spotted coat.
Hardly daring to breathe, we sat and waited while the impalas continued to nibble at the flowers until the leopard flowed like water down the trunk and launched herself into the midst of the panic-stricken herd.When the dust cleared, it was obvious she had missed, and we watched her walk away, tail held in an elegant question mark as if to say: where did I go wrong?
"That was Malaika," said Patrick Njobvu, my guide at Kaingo Safari Camp in Zambia's South Luangwa National Park.
Kaingo is the dream of Derek Shenton, a third-generation naturalist, who built the camp in 1992. At its heart stands the massive trunk of a fallen leadwood that Shenton reckons is 1,000 years old.
"We used a chunk of it to make our bar and the wood was so tough it took us three days to cut through it."
While the camp was under construction, Shenton became aware of the regular presence of a female leopard he called Goldie, who shared his life for the next 10 years and is why the camp is called Kaingo - "leopard" in the local Nyanja language.MEET THE TEAM
Njobvu, who has worked at Kaingo since it opened, knows all the creatures who roam around his corner of leopard heaven.
Luambe, Golden Balls, Grumpy, Tyson . one by one he reels off their names.
"Tyson is my favourite," he says. "Such a lovely guy, so big, so handsome."
Then there are the females: Mama Kaingo, Shy Girl, Malaika (Goldie's six-year-old daughter) and Chiphadzuwa (Malaika's grown-up cub).
With more than eight leopards to every 100 square kilometres, they even outnumber the lions - but it is the latter that hold centre stage in this, one of their last true strongholds.
According to the Zambian Carnivore Programme, more than 500 lions roam the valley, split into 18 different prides and 14 coalitions of footloose males.Luangwa's most famous lion is Ginger, so-called because of his strawberry blond mane, orange tail tuft and pink toe pads, the result of a condition known as erythrism.
He and Garlic, his brother, have become top tourist attractions, but conservationists fear they may suffer the same fate as the late-lamented Cecil after Zambia lifted its hunting ban in 2015. So long as they stay in the park and out of the adjacent game-management areas they are safe.
When Tangu, one of two dominant males of the "Hollywood" pride (so named because of the number of documentaries they have starred in) was shot last year, his twin could no longer protect the pride and they were driven out of their hunting grounds, which stretched around Kaingo, by three powerful newcomers.
The guides called them the Numbu Boys, but their scrawny manes and thuggish appearance soon earned them another name: the Punks.PUNKS RULE
In the stillness just before dawn, a lion had begun to roar - a primeval sound that echoed across the plains towards the distant hills. I set out with Njobvu to find him.
We headed north to where the Punks had last been seen. Cape turtle doves cooed from the overhead branches, while impala browsed in the early morning light.
Luangwa is largely a woodland park of giant trees, whose gnarled trunks, rubbed smooth by generations of elephants, were standing here long before Livingstone crossed the valley in 1866.
But in a little while we left the oxbow lagoons and their ebony groves and drove out on to an open plain of grass and scattered thornbush.
By mid-morning, the valley was a furnace. A dazzle of zebras, stripes flickering in the heat haze, plodded in line along the horizon as vultures sailed overhead on an endless hunt for carrion.
I could feel myself submitting to the heat, falling into a trance-like state of delicious serenity, from which I was only awakened by the sudden presence of three shaggy heads under a shady acacia.There was no mistaking the Punks. Surrounded by a dozen lionesses and cubs of various ages, they had been demolishing the carcass of a buffalo and their muzzles were red with gore. Now, as we drew closer, they stopped feeding and turned to face us.
How well they had been named. Their shaven skulls gave them an air of implacable menace. Mohawk, the dominant male, was the embodiment of wildness.
Later in the week, when we moved to Nsefu Camp on the other side of the Luangwa River, I discovered he was known there as Balotelli because of his rakish topknot, resembling that of the Italian footballer.On an afternoon game drive, we came upon a dead impala. Its killer, a leopard, had gone to fetch her cub, but by the time they returned hyenas were fighting over the carcass. By now night had fallen.
We switched on the spotlight to see five wild dogs, the painted wolves of Africa, with wicked grins and coats like dappled woodland glades.
The dogs had been attracted by the hyenas and immediately set about them, snapping at their rumps as they flitted in and out of the spotlight's beam.
To complete the drama, six lionesses from the Nsefu pride emerged from the shadows. Walking shoulder to shoulder, they piled into the melee with earth-shaking grunts, and for once it didn't seem to matter if they had names or not.
© The Daily Telegraph..