Advertisement
Published: October 28th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Breakfast stop en route
Fried Chicken at 9am, the bus' one and only break during the ride from Lusaka to Livingstone. I was one of 10 lucky teachers to be sent by my school to a PYP training conference in Lusaka, Zambia. The conference ran from Thurs-Sat in October, which meant that it ended right when our school's October break began. As the flights and visa were already paid for by the school, for the conference, a group of us decided to extend our tickets and spend our break down in Livingstone, exploring Victoria Falls and the Zambezi river. The conference itself was quite beneficial, and I definitely left it with a better understanding of the PYP (Primary Years Programme- our curriculum at IST), and with some new contacts at schools in various other cool places. My host, Jackie, was awesome and definitely made sure that I was well fed, rested, and saw the good times to be had in Lusaka.
So, after the conference ended, we had a party on Saturday night and then hopped on a 6am bus on Sunday morning. Five and a half hours later, we arrived in Livingstone. Our luck was with us, in that another woman from the conference happened to be going down to Livingstone as well, to see her husband. When we got
Jackie's House
My host's home in Lusaka. off the bus, she offered us a ride to our hotel. We stayed right on the Zambezi river, in a cute hotel... though, our accommodations were not exactly your typical hotel rooms. We opted to stay in the more budget section of the hotel: the Adventure Village. This meant that we stayed in tents, with beds and a lamp inside, with a communal bathroom area on either side of the village. Perfectly fine and all we needed since we spent most of our daylight hours out and about exploring the area.
On our first full day in Livingstone, we woke up early to go on a walking safari. We were driven to the nearby National Park, and were supplied with one tiny bottle of water and a gun-toting park guide. We walked around in the intense African sun for 3 hours, carefully rationing our water. I began to wonder how tribes have ever managed to cross the desert, because after 3 hours I was about ready to lay down in the nearest hole! We saw several zebra up close, some giraffes (very light in color due to inbreeding), birds, warthogs, impala... and then we came across the one remaining
Our Tent
My room in the Adventure Village for the week. white rhino of the park! There were two up until a few weeks ago, when poachers came in and got the other one. The one we saw sprained his ankle when running from the poachers. He is under 24 hour supervision from the park now, and more rhinos will be brought in from South Africa once he is healed. We also came upon a lone male buffalo and had to silently back away from the area, as lone males are very, very dangerous.
That afternoon, we went to explore Victoria Falls. Since it is the dry season, they are very small right now. We were able to walk across the top of the river bed, hopping from rock to rock. We even came across some locals bathing in the pools of water. After this mini-adventure, we came home and showered before boarding our boat for a dinner cruise on the Zambezi river. We saw some hippos in the water and watched a beautiful sunset. The drinks were unlimited, and we definitely took advantage of this, making us primed for meeting some fun people when we disembarked the boat and sat at the bar for the remainder of the evening.
Adventure Village
There were about 30 tents in all. On day two, we had a little sleep in, until the intense heat kicked us out of our tents at 7am. We went to the gorge and did a "flying fox." This means that we were harnessed in and clipped onto a zipline from behind. You have to take a running start and then leap off the edge of the cliff, to go flying out into the middle of the gorge. The view was wonderful, you could even see rafters down on the river. Once you got over the counter-intuitive leap off the edge, it was a really fun way to see the giant gorge that the falls created. We then went home to the hotel for a poolside rest, before our afternoon activity of micro-light flights! This is where you are in a tiny, two seater, hang glider plane. You get to go overtop of the falls and see a bird's eye view of the area. It was really cool; we even saw a huge pack of elephants playing in the water! Again we spent our evening river-side at the bar and met a bunch of locals, who sang and danced for us until closing time.
On
Monkeys Everywhere
There were monkeys all over our hotel grounds... including 2 brand new babies! Here one is practicing its climbing! our last day in Livingstone, we went white water rafting! The Zambezi river is one of the top 10 rivers in the world for white water rafting, so we couldn't pass up the opportunity. Apparently this was also the best time of year for it . So we had our safety briefing and headed back over to the gorge. The hardest part of the rafting was probably the before and after parts, where you had to hike down into and then back out of the gorge! On our way in, you had to step from giant rock to rock all the way down hill. My clumsy nature and bum ankle made this a giant feat, and just after my friend Julie turned to see how I was doing, she took a step and slipped, going bouncing off of rocks for a good 2 meter fall. It was super scary! After time starting moving again, Julie downed some painkillers and decided to go through with the trip (post trip x-rays and doctor's visit shows that she had some contusions on her lower ribs, but no breakage!). So we made it to the river and spent 2 hours going through crazy rapids!
Dinner first night
Sitting at the hotel restaurant with the Zambezi river in the background. At one point our raft went vertical and nearly flipped! People fell out on practically every single rapid, so we got really good at our rescue efforts. It was quite the adrenaline rush! After finishing, we had to spend a good 45 minutes hiking back UP and out of the gorge... again not so fun and extremely tough after just using all of my adrenaline on rafting! We came home and had a nice relaxing afternoon at the pool, then group goodbye dinner, before one more night at the bar with our new raft guide and local friends.
Thursday morning, we had to be at the bus at 6am to get our seats for the bus ride back. We were welcomed on the bus by a born-again preacher, who spent the 30 min. prior to departure standing in the front and yelling about God and Jesus. We had chosen the front row seats in favor of clean air and less motion - sickness, and were now faced with the loud preacher in our faces instead. The bus started moving at 6:30, and the preacher stayed on and kept talking/yelling! This was not ok. About 15 more minutes into the
Heading to the Safari
Our vehicle to get to the walking safari. drive, the bus stopped to let him off- thank goodness! Then we had a 7 hour bus ride back up to Lusaka, full of gospel music and bad African soap opera mini-series. We had an early night, needing rest after our adrenaline-filled vacation, and spent all day Friday flying back to Dar Es Salaam.
It was such a cool vacation, full of fun sports, adventures, great new friends, and beautiful sights. I am plotting a return trip in the wet season so that I can see the differences in the falls when they are in full force!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.089s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 55; dbt: 0.0514s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb