Blogs from Livingstone, Zambia, Africa - page 10

from victoria falls to malawi by public bus... read more

some photos!... read more

The Bookbus is a UK charity, very small and started about 2 years ago. At the moment they have a bus based in Livingstone and an ex overland truck based in a refugee camp near the border with Congo. In Livingstone the bus is based at a place called the Grotto, it is an old colonial house with large garden and owned by a Kiwi. The grotto also has the occasional overland trucks staying. Our accommodation is in tents, cooking is done outside and we use the pool house as the office. There was about 6 volunteers at anyone time, all from the UK, Kelly manages the project in Zambia, it her second season which runs for about 6 months of the year until the rainy season start in October. Usually the Bookbus goes to a ... read more

We set out on our journey 5 days ago... although it seems much longer than that... it was hard to say goodbye to a few people at the hostel, people that make us laugh every day with their insane personalities... but we will see them again, so after a few hugs we took off... our friend Jama, who is babysitting our things, drove us to the station on his day off- which was great. We found our way through the busy Joburg bus station and joined the line- thinking that we would need to be up there right then and there- we were wrong. Africa time struck again... we sat in line for ages, feeling the weight of our bags slicing into our backs and shoulders. Finally it was time to board the bus. Intercape. Joburg ... read more

Zambia Our first night was spent in Lilongwe, the capital city of Malawi and some much needed grocery shopping at Shoprite - the South African supermarket chain - getting the neccessities like water, chocolate and chips. Another long day of driving and we made it through the border to Chipata to a campsite called Mama Rulas. Here we saw New Zealand play their final World Cup game - a good effort again. Not bad for such underdogs to come out undefeated out of their first World Cup showing in 27 years. We heard that more than 2.2m people in New Zealand had got up at 2.30am in the morning to watch the game. Not bad! We then had one more full day on the road to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia before arriving at our final ... read more