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Hi Eveyone! I hope you are all doing well and Vancity is at its summertime best! I actually do miss home sometimes and the street festivals, sushi and good friends, but I've got one more month left on my trip so it's gonna be big.
Soooo.... Zambia wasn't quite on the itinerary. Far from it. My plan was to leave from Rwanda and spend some time in Burundi before taking the arduous and somewhat tedious journey through NW Tanzania which we've heard nothing but horror stories about. I met two American travelers along the way and met up again in Kigali to see whether we would have compatable travel itineraries and they were kind enough to offer me and my new traveling compatriot to crash on the floor in their hotel. We were staying in a relatively expensive dump with the only redeeming feature being a dead 1.5 inch cockroach so we packed up and headed to the 4 star Hotel des Mille Collines, better known to North Americans as "Hotel Rwanda" from the film from a few years ago. In this hotel, thousands of Tutsis sought refuge and protection from the manager. Kigali is so strange though. Only a
half block away sits a church where many other Tutsis hid thinking the church would be a sanctuary from the horrific violence, however the priest betrayed the refugees and many were slaughtered there. I recognized the church from a number of films that I'd seen but very surreal to see these places mostly by accident. Kigali today is a great city. It is clean and orderly, there is great coffee, efficient busses and plastic bags are even illegal in an effort to clean up garbage.
Oh right... How I arrived in Zambia... So one morning at about 7am over mooching off of the free breakfast buffet at the Milles Collines, we were pouring over a travel guide trying to figure out how the hell we were going to get across Tanzania and not coming up with many good solutions. We stumbled across Zambia and within minutes we broke into 2 teams and ran into every travel agency we could find to see if airfare would be reasonable. We found a decent price and had time to run back to the hotel, grab out bags (grab a second breakfast at the buffet) and rush to the airport to catch a
flight to Nairobi and on to Lusaka where we arrived at night without a clue of where to go, where to stay, what the language is and no local currency. Good times! We ended up heading straight to the bus station where we were kindly let onto a bus to sleep for the night before heading off to Livingstone and Victoria Falls in the morning.
Victoria Falls has got to be by far the most impressive and awe inspiring sight I have ever seen. We arrived in time for the full moon viewing and we were treated to a remarkable sight of unparallelled power of one of the world's greatest rivers plunging down the cliffs with a deafening roar and sheets of "rain" threatening the livelihood of our soggy cameras from across the cliff. Unbelievable lunar rainbows from the bright moonlight cascaded into the falls creating an eerie glow as the rainbows reflected shades of grey with only a hint of the brilliant colours of their daytime counterparts. Absolutely stunning.
Yesterday we got off to an early start as Chris (a 19 year old American from Bellingham) and I headed to the border bridge between Zambia and Zimbabwe
for a morning of unbelievable adrenaline. First up was the bungee jump off of the bridge with Victoria Falls as a backdrop and 30 stories below me. I had hardly slept the night before and was trying my hardest (and failing) to appear unfazed by the ridiculous height. Before long they had me in the harness and my legs shackled together and was led to the platform. The platform was a metal grate that was transparent and my knees nearly buckled looking down. Finally I was led to the edge of the jump where my final instructions were read to me as my feet shuffled half over the edge and a view of nothing but white water from the river below. The attendant gave me the fastest 5 count ever and without thinking and ignoring any little bit of common sense in my possession, I flung myself as far as I could off of the bridge and screaming my lungs out all the way down the 111 meter free fall at 120 km/hr before being flung back up like a yoyo. At the apex of the jump, the blood in my body rushed to my head and a moment of
weightlessnes ensued followed by the tension of the bungee cord flinging me back 50 meteres into the air with another moment of floating in the air before gravity reestablishes it's dominance over the cord and I fell back into free fall. The sight of the rocky cliffs flying by and the speed at which I was heading towards the churnig river will be forever etched into my memory.
Bungee was followed by a "swing" which sounds nice and peacful but was nearly as frightenig as the bungee jump itself. I was fitted for a different harness and taken to the same platform which was equally as scary as the first jump. I was instead strapped around my upper torso with a bungee cord attached to a cable 50 meters from the bridge. My instructions were the same as I gingerly moved my feet over the edge and instead of leaping forward was told to simply step off of the platform. The lead up was frightening as I did my best to balance on the edge of the platform as a heavy bungee cord strapped to my front was pulling me forward and off of the edge. After an equally
fast 5 count, I stepped off and plummetted feet first this time into a free fall before mercifully the rope caught me and I swung clear across the canyon like a pendalum. The initial free fall was even more frightening than the bungee jump though the multiple drops of the bungee probably made it a bit better. After the bungee jump and swing, the zip line was cake and was more of a relaxing scenic guide from Zambia over to the Zimbabwe side of the border. Not a bad way to transit between countries!
Today, I was to raft the Zambezi River but the water is high, some of the biggest rapids are closed and those that remain are smaller than they would be otherwise so I've decided to save my pennies and perhaps move today to Botswana, the Okavango Delta and maybe do some Safariing at Chobe Park.
Again, sorry for the mindless rambling, this is probably more for a good release for me than a good read for you, but I haven't bored you with indescribable travel tales!
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