In God we trust

I wonder at the wisdom of getting on a bus with "In God we trust" painted in eight inch letters across the top of its windscreen. But having looked at the state of the vehicle and the baldness of its tyres I could understand the need to trust in something other than the bus itself for your safe arrival at your destination.

Lusaka's intercity bus station is a buzzing hive of activity, but I was distracted from my purpose there by the names or mottoes on the buses. I rather liked "Terminal Justice" and "Heaven Awaits". Once I'd got down to the business of sorting out a ticket, I asked one company what their buses were like and one was pointed out. Half of its windscreen was cracked and sagging. I asked whether something had hit it and was told,
"No, no, it's ok. It's just the wind pushing against it when you drive that does that." How reassuring. I decided to buy my ticket from the other company serving my destination, deciding that a few bald tyres won't matter too much in the dry season.

I don't normally blog stuff before it happens, but if all goes to plan I could be off the air for a while. So get out your maps if you will, and trace my proposed route: bus to Mpulungu, followed by a ferry up Lake Tanganyika to Kigoma in Tanzania. The ferry seems to be unbookable, only runs once a week, and is a 100-year old German battleship which takes two days to do the journey. Coupled with a 15 hour (if all goes to timetable - unlikely!) bus ride and no way of finding somewhere to stay in Mpulungu until I get there, this sounds like a long and probably uncomfortable but interesting journey.

Lusaka

I like Lusaka. It's an unpretentious, easy-going place, where people are genuinely friendly. Walking on Cairo Road and the back-streets behind it, you can soak up a gentle form of African city life. There's nothing "Western" to be seen, save Barclays bank, no McDonalds even. Walls are hand-painted with advertisements for local products and services, pavements are wide sandy areas beside the streets and the traffic is quite civilized. I've enjoyed being squeezed into minibuses to get around, although the city is small enough to be easily walkable. Yesterday, while enjoying walking back to town from the Tanzanian embassy, I ignored all the toots and declined all the invitations to get in - each minibus has a conductor who's job it is to leap out at every pedestrian and persuade them to take the bus - especially as I knew I only had a 50,0000 kwacha note and the fare would be 2000, so I told one insistent guy that I had no money, whereupon he insisted I ride for free!

After the tourist-mecca of Livingstone, packed with high-adrenalin, high-dollar activities, and the beautiful South Luangua national park, it was goodto get a taste of everyday Zambia. There are few tourists here, just some travellers on their way to something else - there certainly is nothing for tourists to do in the city. In my three days here, nobody has tried to sell me a single tacky souvenir. And interestingly, despite Zambia still being one of Africa's poorer countries, I've seen only one beggar on the street. The gap between rich and poor seems less obvious here than in the other parts of Zambia I've seen, but I would be interested to see what conditions are like in other parts of the city. There are many aid organizations working here, mostly doing with HIV related work. Here in the city centre, the vibe is one of peaceful purposefulness rather than lethargy or desperation.

The Zambians are lovely people. I know it's a sweeping generalization, but I've met so many nice people. People who are interested in me, my home, my experience of Africa, and also keen to share their country with me, glad that I am here and eager to advise me on other places I should see. I've had many interesting political discussions - certainly makes a change from travelling in Asia and being expected to talk about football! Everyone seems open, warm and friendly. Maybe I've just been lucky, but I'd say that as "The warm heart of Africa," Zambia gives Malawi a run for its money - and more.

Zambian airways - from the ridiculous to the sublime

I surprised the staff in Mfuwe airport - they weren't aware of a flight to Lusaka today. They peered at the printout of my e-ticket and then explained that although there was an incoming flight, it would "sleep here" and return to Lusaka in the morning. My day had been stressful enough, with finding that I had been misinformed that my credit card was accepted by Flatdogs, and so trying to find a way to pay - not helped much by their lack of phone or electricity, so I decided that the flight issue really didn't matter. I smiled to myself and waited to see what would happen. Someone in the Zambian airways office made a phone call or two and they decided it would be ok for me to check in, quickly rooting around to find a "Lusaka" sign to hang on the desk. Overcome by the complexities of my name, I was entered as "Zoe H" on the hand-written (carbon in triplicate, of course) passenger manifest.

As there was nothing much happening in the way of aircraft, but too much in the way of country and western music, I wandered back out of departures to a cafe across the road. Returning an hour later, the place was deserted, so I processed myself back through security to departures. Outside the door onto the apron my bag and a baggage handler sat together on a trolley, both wearing a look of low expectation.

The incoming flight created a miniscule flurry of activity. The crew came into the airport and on leaving a few minutes later, simply beckoned me to follow. I chatted to the pilots on the way to the plane, then settled down to enjoy the bizarre sensation of being on my own private flight. It didn't do much for my ecological concience though, and I was already guiltily aware that flying back had been an unnecessary extravagance. Arriving in Lusaka, someone opened the cargo hatch and invited me to help myself to my bag, so shouldering my pack, I walked towards the airport building, guessing which might be the right way in as there was nobody around to ask.

Zambian airways - changing something.

A walk on the wild side

Crouched behind the knarly branches of a dead tree, we watched two lions stalking a warthog. Suddenly our guide said, "Elephants!" and reeling round we saw six elephants soundlessly walking straight towards us. The scout cocked his rifle while the guide directed us to another tree, only slightly closer to the lions and further from the elephants. We set off towards it at a brisk walking pace, hoiking Alex, who'd stopped to take photos, with us. The elephants steadily followed, thankfully showing no sign of agitation as each tree seemed to be somewhat inadequate for providing cover to four people. The elephants soon changed course and we left the area in the opposite direction. The lions had given up their hunt too.

It was our last morning in South Luangwa National Park. In two days we had been on three game drives, the highlight of which was two leopard sightings. We also saw plenty of elephants, buffalo, giraffe, hippos, genets and some fabulous birds.

South Luangwa is a large park, whose boundaries are formed by the escarpment and the Luangwa river, but no fences. We stayed in Flatdogs Camp, just across the river from the park, so we shared our camp with anything that could cross the river - mostly elephants. Guards were always on hand to walk us from one part of the camp to another after dark, magically appearing as soon as we stepped outside. The first night I was woken at 2am by the sound of an elephant tearing at a tree just feet from our netted window. Later, in the half-light of the early morning, we had to make a detour to avoid more elephants on the way to breakfast.

For anyone visiting Zambia, I can't recomment South Luangwa or Flatdogs camp enough. The park has a variety of habitats, plenty of water and more wildlife than you can shake a stick at. Fabulous.

This morning I waved Alex off as he set out towards Malawi on a thoroughly clapped out minibus and realized how much I was going to miss him. You couldn't find a better travel buddy - he's smart and funny and interesting and just a lovely person to hang out with. But my purpose holds to sail towards Uganda, so with happy memories and some sadness on my part, and hopefully not too much relief on his, we went our separate ways.
Next stop Lusaka!

Zambian Airways

"Zambian Airways - changing the way Africa flies" - I couldn't help feeling that the slogan was somewhat ambiguous. In fact, there was nothing wrong with the way that our little twenty seater flew to Mfuwe. But the process of checking in and transferring was all quite innovative.

Domestic check-in in Livingstone was at the (only) gate, where a number of people helped themselves to luggage, tickets and departure tax, in no particular order, from whichever passengers they could reach. So while some American family was being checked in, my luggage was weighed, labelled, and lobbed out of the exit doors. I soon gave up worrying that I hadn't been checked in and decided just to go with the flow, and went to beg for my departure tax receipt to be returned by the official who'd swiped it from my hand.

We took off rather late due to the departure of the presidential jet bringing all air traffic to a standstill. Security was not so tight as to stop us wandering out of the departure gate onto the edge of the runway to wave him off, climbing a spare set of plane stairs to get a better view of the president and the singing, dancing, drumming that was his send-off.

Our plane touched down in Lusaka, where we had to get off, collect luggage, and check in again. The check-in was about six inches from the arrival shelf, so this was quite easy. No departure tax was payable this time as we were only in transit, so we sat down and relaxed. Mistake. It turned out that we had to go to the departure tax desk and not only show them our previous receipt from Livingstone, but also fill out a lengthy carbon-copied form, in order to be given a receipt for the zero Kwacha we'd paid in departure tax.

Having been at the end of the pointless paperwork queue, Alex and I legged it through the departure cubicle, I mean lounge, across the tarmac and onto the waiting plane. Our sweet hostess greeted us as if she hadn't said goodbye twenty minutes ago, and off we went.

Zambian airways - changing the way logic works

Oh Zambezi!

Today I took my love for the Zambezi one step further... ...but I'm ashamed to say I was such a chicken at the top, I even thought, "I don't think I can do this."

The moment I'd left the platform I was grinning from ear to ear, I was flying with the wind in my face and the beautiful wonderful river beneath me. It felt amazing.

A few photos, from the beginning:

Nothing can come closer to feeling like flying than that did. It was blissful. Even the repeat bounces were fun. Of course I'd be even happier if I'd not been so scared - a bit disappointed in myself there. I think my biggest fear was of being scared! But wow. It was good, so good. There was no fear as I flew, just flight.

And as it happened, there was a good deal on, where it only cost an extra ten dollars to do a "swing". Swinging doesn't sound so bad, but look at the swing:

It's from the same platform as the bungee, which you can see on the bridge picture - or maybe not, as I've reduced the picture sizes somewhat brutally. Anyway, the jumping platform is on top of the bridge, halfway across. Click on the pictures for a larger view.

The swing involved running off the platform, plummeting earthwards (no sensation of flying this time) until the rope takes your weight and you swing. The rope is anchored to a cable across the river, some 20 or 30 metres from the bridge and also rather lower, allowing, we reckoned, at least 75m of graceless freefall. The swinging was very pleasant too, and gave a very good view of not only the gorge but also passing bungee jumpers.

Spot the speck that's me!

Reaching the top of the slow haul upwards after the swing:

Alex is uploading some jumping video onto his blog - so when he's got it up there I'll post a link to his blog so you can get a better impression of what was going on.

Bungee stats: Height: 111 m, 4 seconds of freefall, Max speed 120 kmh

Wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Oh Zambezi!

Out of Order

I've been trying to catch up with writing here, so have been posting things out of order. So if anyone is still reading this, scroll down a bit to find older posts published after the newer ones. Will try to get photos sorted before leaving Livingstone, but as I am considering throwing myself off the Zambezi bridge with a rubber band around my ankles, I promise nothing.

The Mighty Zambezi

Rafting the Zambezi - it sounds so wild, so exotic and adventurous.

Just below Victoria falls, all that water, now flowing at maybe 6 million litres per second across the 1.7km width of the falls, is charging down a deep and narrow gorge. This was big water. We rode waves over two metres high in the rapids -capsized and took a roller-coaster of a chilly swim, survived moments when I was sure we were going over, when we disappeared completely into waves, tilted, but somehow popped out upright, and all in all had a damn good time. We jumped in to swim a grade 2 rapid, finding ourselves swirling in whirlpools, ducked by the waves, and feeling the power of the huge currents.

It wasn't as extreme as I'd expected though, maybe because it was more about big waves and churning water than rocks and drops.

The walk to the put-in was long and steep down the side of the gorge, so it's not only the shoulders that are aching today. On the way up, after a short climb, we clambered into what was essentially a glorified shopping trolley to be pulled up by a single cable along tram-tracks. The gradient was dizzying, specially taken in conjunction with the "as shown on Blue Peter" construction of the whole apparatus. The back-up brake was a pile of rocks at the bottom of the slope. I imagine we were meant to be reassured by the words "Totally Zambian" emblazoned on the side of the contraption. I wasn't sure whether the beers at the top were to celebrate surviving the rafting or the "train", so I thought it advisable to down one for each.

Sky over Victoria Falls

A night in the Kalahari

Part three of my 'Wild dog' safari was Windhoek to Livingstone. The route took us quickly out of Namibia and into Botswana, and across the (somewhat grassy) Kalahari desert. We camped, coldly, near Ghanzi, and the next day drove on to the Okavango Delta.

It was interesting to see a different part of the delta. This time we were at the upstream end, to the North-West, where there were rivers rather than just streams. We slept in a proper camp and just further in to the delta by mokoro for a day trip. Again, we poled through reedy channels of ever-decreasing size. On an island we walked, ate the fruit of the baobab tree, and failed to see any animals at all. Of course it was still a fabulous day out, and I even learnt a couple of new trees. And slowly, slowly, I'm getting the hang of a few more birds!

On our little truck for this tour, the average age is about 79, which is, well, interesting. Four elderly Americans, who are the absolute epitomy of everything you expect from elderly American tourists. And one English woman of indeterminable age, but definitely one of those people who was over 50 at birth. She has one of those deepish penetrating very british voices, posh pronunciation with absolutely no social grace, and always sounds rather slow. A problem not helped by her habit of throwing totally unrelated comments into conversations, repeating her inanities endlessly and always, always, asking questions that had just been answered. And interrupting. She also had an amusing habit of getting lost in campsites, and even when right by the fire being unable to find her own tent out of the six that we had there. And then there was the issue with showers. We all made do with luke warm, cold, or no showers, but Carol had to moan on a daily basis about how long it had been since she'd been able to wash her hair. And ask everybody how hot the shower was, how long it was likely to remain hot (is there some way I can tell whether a shower that had hot water an hour ago will still have some now? Why did she think I had this power?) . When our guide told us that Livingstone would be expensive, he said "For example a burger and chips is about eight dollars," and immediately Carol piped up with: "Well I don't want a burger." I could go on... Luckily all us youngsters found that we could dissipate our irritation by having a giggle about it instead.

The elderly Americans: Herb videos everything, Anda loves everything, Zoltan's game for everything - even whitewater rafting. Eva is the perfect homely grandmother type - and quite the sweetest person you could ever meet. She has an interesting history too, having fled Hungary as a child in 1948 and eventually reached the States via Austria and Germany. In fact, she even crossed the mountains into Germany on foot and recalls running down the hillside. You can draw your own Sound of Music parallels here. Once in the states she lived for some time in an orphanage until the family was all sorted out (I got a bit lost at this point in the story) but all in all an amazing life.

I pity whoever has to watch Herb's video of shakily shot animals with a wonderful commentary which seems to involve him barking, for example, "Impala!" but nothing else. At one point he picked up a seed from the ground and filmed it on the palm of his hand for over a minute. He was also obsessed with checking the temperature with his watch's thermometer, insisting that it was "6 below" on a morning when clearly the dribbles of water in cups and half inch of water in a metal kettle left out all night in camp had completely refused to freeze. When I pointed out the unfrozen evidence and the fact that it certainly didn't feel that cold, he grunted and prodded his watch repeatedly while waving it in my face. I was moved to suggest that his watch might not be 100% accurate...

Also on our truck are two nice German girls and a lovely American guy, Alex. The Germans seemed good fun, great company and quite a laugh, but we never persuaded them out to a bar. Alex and I have been on a bit of a nightlife mission, hitting campsite bars whenever there is one, but generally we are the only people there - but the nights were about to get a little more exciting, so lets get back to the story...

After the delta we crossed back into Namibia (details of placenames may follow on editing) and spent the next couple of days driving East, into the Caprivi strip. The National Parks in this area were great, lots of elephants and so on. Impala.... Somewhere along the way we had a really good sighting of a honey badger, there were lots of lilac breasted rollers around, kori bustards, ground hornbills, in fact too many birds to mention...

There was a rather grim visit to a tourist, I mean traditional, village, with the obligatory demonstrations of basket making and dancing performed by people who looked as if they'd rather be anywhere else. A far cry from the wonderful trip to the Himba village last week.

Then we hit the border again and went back to Botswana. This flitting in and out is getting heavy on passport space! We camped near Kesane, at the same campsite where a couple of months ago I'd stayed with the overlanders. And like last time I went on the sunset game cruise on the Chobe river, and again marvelled at elephants. This time we also saw a huge raft of hippos, lots of buffalo and now I'm a birding geek, there was even more to get excited about. We met some nice people on the boat from another overland truck, who happily were staying at our campsite. So at last, Alex and I walked into a bar full of people and had a lively night! Hurrah. And guess what? They're all here in Livingstone too.

So, from Kasane to Livingstone... Kasane is only minutes from the border. After being stamped out of Botswana, a very short drive took us to the Zambezi where we waited for a spot on the little ferries plodding back and forth across the river. One get stuck, but was refloated by moving the trucks around. On the other side of the river, it was chaos. Multi-direction traffic, some aiming to cross to Botswana, but mostly stationary, a few stuck in the mud, most waiting for processing at the border post. Boys wandered around selling hard-boiled eggs, it was dirty and dusty and utterly peaceful in a disorderly haphazard, chaotic way. We queued for an hour or so to get passports stamped and visas sorted, but I loved it all - I was back in Africa.

The old brit looked horrified, the Americans unflustered, and Alex and I perked up with excitement - Namibia and South Africa are just too neat and tidy! Proper Africa and the end of the organized tour in sight....

We had a quick trip to see the Victoria Falls, which was great as I hadn't seen the Zambian side at all last time, but unfortunately there wasn't enough time to take the path down to the Boiling Pot or to hang out just enjoying the view for a while.

The evening went rather downhill with our guide getting drunk. Once drunk, he became very pushy, trying to get us to change our evening plans for dinner in town to suit his plans for more drinking in the campsite. Once we'd escaped, locking our valuables in the truck which he had assured us would be safe in the campsite, we ended up at a cheesy overpriced tourist trap restaurant, with lots of dancing by people scantily clad in grass skirts and bits of zebra skin. Then our guides turned up there. When we realized that the truck was now parked on some roadside in town, things got less friendly. Eventually, we got our things out of the truck, the guides got very aggressive, but eventually drove off. We decided to have just one more drink then go back to camp as nobody wanted to wander around town with their valuables. Luckily it was just us four young folk (yes, I know, but all things are relative!) as the oldies hadn't come out with us. The restaurant staff were quite understanding as we ran in and out in varying states of alarm and anger, generally trying to leave one person inside so it didn't look as if we were doing a runner. We crept back to our camp with some trepidation, saw the truck had made it and the guides had presumably gone to bed - a big sigh of relief. Alex and I leave the trip here, supposedly tomorrow, so today we looked for alternative accommodation for tonight, but Livingstone is bursting at the seams. The nice overlanders have offered to squeeze us into their tents for the night. Nothing like a bit of drama...