Cruiser02697188871
April 21, 2024
I just recently returned from a 4-night stay at Flatdogs with a family member, and after traveling all the way from Zambia back home to the USA, the first thing I did was hop online to write a review. Flatdogs exceeded every expectation I had. If you are thinking about going to South Luangwa, do it. And stay at Flatdogs. To start with, the staff is beyond friendly and hospitable. The ownership & management team will go out of their way to get to know you and make sure you are comfortable, and that level of hospitality trickles right down to all the other members of the staff on premises. The friendliness & professionalism of the staff was a major factor in my happiness with Flatdogs. While there, I talked with other guests, some of whom had been coming to Flatdogs for more than a decade, and they told me they continue to come back because they experience the same hospitality year after year. We were assigned one guide for our entire stay (Chris), and he was simply terrific. He is friendly and incredibly knowledgeable with well over 10+ years of guiding experience. Being with one guide the entire time really paid dividends for our stay as we started to be able to reference earlier drives, locations, and experiences as we got further into our trip. It created a comfortable shorthand with Chris where he could then start catering future drives with us based on our past experiences. While on our drives, we saw everything you can think of - multiple close lion & leopard encounters (some on the same drive!), several great elephant encounters, lots of sightings of thorncroft giraffe, more hippo sightings than you can count, exceptional sightings of various birds, the first porcupine sighting of the season, etc. We saw buffalo chase away a couple lions. We saw a male leopard chase a female up a tree. We sat and watched a large pride of lions strategize but ultimately fail to do an end around on a few impala after dusk. Chris did a terrific job finding these animals, getting us the best views possible, and educating us about them throughout. We were in the vehicle with him for about 4 hours per drive, 2 drives per day, and he was a major contributing factor to why we loved our stay so much. BTW, for anyone on the fence about going to South Luangwa, you should simply go. We were there at the very beginning of the dry season when many roads still aren't open due to the water levels, and we still had absolutely no problem seeing so many different animals on each drive. It's a terrific park. I am not the most seasoned safari-goer, but I have been to 5-10 African game parks, and South Luangwa is currently my favorite by far. South Luangwa is not like other more well-known parks where you might see dozens of vehicles all on CB radio racing to see the same thing which ultimately results in a massive traffic jam around a couple animals. There are far fewer operators in South Luangwa, the pace is slower, and you have to work to find some of the animals. Ho