Blogs from Livingstone, Zambia, Africa - page 29

Hell on the water!! I'm sure you know that I'm not one for extreme adventure. So why on earth would I jump in a boat and ride the "best rapids in the world" today along with 6 other "TV and bottle of wine" type of girls!?! We rode 23 really crazy rapids over the course of 6 painful hours which were graded from 1-5 (The scale only actually goes up to a 6!) I CANNOT EXPLAIN HOW SCARED I WAS!! ...The boat capsized 4 times and we ended up hit by our paddles, bumped against rocks, trapped under the boat, and my personal best - pulled through the "washing machine" eddy current on number 13 -"THE MOTHER" after being tipped out for the third time and deperately gulping for breath for a good minute until the ... read more

GENTLEMEN The sign on the door announced. Not that there was sign of any gentlemanly behaviour hitherto in the small toilet. On the contrary - the urine sprayed walls indicated of a squalid border police force. A squalid border police force that - led by their smirky police chief - had done a descent job delaying our entry by three hours. Accompanying us in our frustration was a Namibian truck driver, though delayed for a full 24 hours he was too seasoned to show any sign of frustration. In fact, he was so seasoned that he didn’t show any facial expressions at all. The elements of the Namibian desert had shaped his face like a limestone statue to resemble a furrowed, tawny hawk. He was the first white African we’d met. His truck cabin’s panoramic windshield ... read more

(Photos to come soon!) After such a close encounter with the King of the Jungle, Karen and I decided to keep the adrenaline pumping and started the day by doing our washing and banking and buying bus tickets for the trip to Lusaka. OK, so not the most exciting of mornings but this stuff still needs to be taken care of, even when you are traveling in exotic places like Africa. We had more interesting things planned for the afternoon though, and after lunch we were picked up from our hostel by Safari Par Excellence and taken on the short drive out of town to Mosi-Oa-Tunya National Park. Within this National Park we went to a private Game lodge for an 'Elephant Encounter'. This was to involve an hour of riding and feeding African elephants. That's ... read more

So, from Lilongwe, we were heading into Zambia. More specifically, South Luangwa Nat. Park. This was supposed to take one day, but then again, this is Africa, and things never happen on time. We were lucky enough to make it across the border and into the first town (Chipata) by 7pm! We stayed in the worst guesthouse so far. No fan, ventilation, anything! But they did have mossie nets! So after a sleepless night, dying from the heat, we caught a minibus to Mfuwe, which is at the gate of the Park. The ride, which was supposed to take 3 hours, took 7, thanks to the slowest bus driver in history. In Africa, they either drive stupidly fast, or rediculously slow... there's no in between. We finally got to Mfuwe, and our driver gave us a ... read more

Hey everybody, this is Jordan......... We are in Livingstone, Zambia now (central Africa) and we really love this town. We really love Zambia, it will be hard to leave here. There is so much to do and it really feels like we are in Africa. Wow! Today was great, I did three really great things today. I did the flying fox, the gorge swing and abseiling. I will explain each one; the first one was the abseiling. Abseiling is repelling down a wall attached to a rope. Number two is the flying fox. This is where you are attached with a harness to a rope and the rope is attached to a line going accross the gorge. You run and jump off a 180 foot cliff and you just are flying over the gorge like ... read more