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Published: November 6th 2008
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Hi everyone from Livingstone and Victoria Falls, Zambia.
Since leaving Zanzibar we have been steadily traveling south by west, encountering Malawi first after leaving Tanzania. We have been doing quite a bit of driving over the last couple of weeks, but along the way in Malawi we had the opportunity to stop at a number of local villages.
At one place in particular we were able to consult with the local witch doctor for his take on how our futures will pan out. We were each ushered into a dark mud brick hut individually, to consult the man along with his translator as well as the odd stray chicken which wandered in from the porch. Not too surprisingly the doctor only had very general good news to report, and we are pleased to announce that we will be having 3 children - 2 girls and a boy! Time will tell as to whether he is right or not, and whether we need to come back and reclaim our US$2......
However, the most amusing part of the whole visit was the guys 'uniform', where we were expecting beads, animal skins, bird feathers, but were confronted with something a little
more modern (see attached photo).
The best stop we did make in Malawi was on the lake front for a few days, getting to camp right on a white sand beach looking out into the rather large depths of Lake Malawi (admittedly all the grass was infested with ants). The water was reasonably clean and fast moving so free of any nasty parasites, but made for rather strange swimming in a body of water which looked like the ocean but was in fact fresh water.
We also dropped in on a couple of local schools where we completely disrupted any possibility of lessons taking place. With a teacher to pupil ratio of 1:100+ there were lots of kids running around and mobbing us all wanting to be the subject of digital photos. We were also able to help out a bit here too, by donating stacks of exercise books and pencils as a thank you for the school letting us stuff up their entire day.
Some more long days on the road in the truck took us further west and across the border into Zambia. Our first stop here was the South Luangwa game park where we
were camping pretty much on the edge of the wildlife area. This was a really cool camp, which had hippos coming out of the adjacent river at night to graze between our tents, and a herd of local elephant breezing through during the day to be found sleeping in front of the camp bar and swimming pool. We also had to be on our guard during breakfasts as the local vervet monkeys and baboon troops would rush the breakfast table whenever nobody was looking to steal whatever they could get their hands on.
South Luangwa was also the first place where we ran into the tsetse fly, which we discovered to our detriment to be a massive pest. Although well known as the carrier of sleeping sickness, we have had more problems with its rather painful bite which feels like it is trying to chew a hole in your skin. We are also pretty sensitive to whatever it is in its saliva which results in the itchiest bites either of us have experienced (lasting five days until they start calming down).
We did both a morning and a night game drive at South Luangwa and in both cases
had some great sightings of lions. In the morning we came across the resident male lion and a pride of lionesses and their cubs.
That evening we got to see the lionesses in action very briefly in the flash of our jeeps spotlight trying to run down an impala. By the time we had relocated the hunting lioness the whole pride (four females and three cubs) had gathered and were feeding on the impala she had brought down. We were able to get really close in our jeep as the lions were very distracted, giving us a disturbing soundtrack of slurping, crunching of bones and the odd snarl and growl when the choicest cuts were being contested. The show didn't last very long with that many mouths to feed - in five minutes it was all over bar the head and stomach being disposed of.
Before reaching our current location of Livingstone we had a brief stop in a houseboat on Zambia's Lake Kariba. This provided us with a couple of lazy days off in the 40 degree heat, but unfortunately the chances to go swimming were rather limited. Due to the presence of crocodiles and hippos at
the shores of the lake we were limited to swimming stops only in the deep water at the middle of the lake......
We have just arrived in Livingstone, and this morning went on a lion walk. This consists of an outing with two rather large lion cubs who are just on the verge of being too big to be trusted with tourists (and will then be released into a controlled environment). This was a really great experience as we were actually able to touch and pat the lions as well as walk next to them on a short outing in their territory.
We have also done the obvious in Livingstone and gone to check out Victoria falls (photos attached). Unfortunately our timing isn't that great as it is just before the wet season starts, and most of the available water has been diverted for power generation :-(
We are now just over half way though our African tour, and are about to change onto a different truck which is making its way down to Cape Town. We are really looking forward to the change in truck mates after having spent a month with the current crop. This
is not too surprising based on the close quarters that you have to keep with everyone on an overland truck.
As mentioned previously the Internet is a bit of a scarce resource here (as is free time) so we will post again when we can, hopefully within the next couple of weeks.
S&S
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