Blogs from Zambia, Africa - page 80

Zambia and Botswana .... by Miss Wendy O As a Christmas gift from Sheena (Stuart's Mum) we took a flight to Zambia for a few days break. Arriving in Lusaka we were overwhelmed by the aggression and nastiness of the Zambians. The bus station was crowded, dirty, smelly and loud with locals in your face trying to push you buses and taxis. We later realized that this is really just an African bus station experience and this one was probably no worse than any other. We took a hot 6 1/2 hour bus journey to Livingstone, which is on the border with Zimbabwe and home to Victoria Falls, one of the 7 wonders of the world. We checked into Jolly Boy Backpackers. Sounds dodgy but despite the suspect hooker and drug pushing activity, it was a ... read more

D: Hi, I’m Danielle. I’m Mike’s newly acquired Zambian-Adventure Buddy, via way of a mutual friend. Not to confuse folks, I’m actually from Virginia and just moved to Lusaka from Boston to do HIV research. I will be periodically interjecting to add spice to this blog. Hope you don’t mind! We have returned to Lusaka having survived the four-day canoeing safari on the lower Zambezi River. Yes, I said “WE.” In some strange twist of fate Danielle decided that having never been camping or canoeing before she should blow off work and try both at the same time. Some call it crazy, she said it was baptism by fire. But since I said “we” returned, I guess it wasn’t so bad. Though I had many threats on my life but we will get to those. D: ... read more

To say I was apprehensive about this little escapade would be an understatement, but i went ahead and did half a day. The section of the Zambezi we did was the first ten rapids starting from the Boiling Pot, just after the end of the waterfall section. We had a leader who was manic but I think very good. There were six of us on the raft with Boyd at the rear, the one thing that we became very familiar with on the raft was teh rope around the side - the "Oh Shit!" rope. We were taught to paddle forwards, backwards, sit down and get up. Easy huh? Well our raft was the first of five to get through the first rapid without capsizing, we took three attempts but felt very pleased with that. Should ... read more

We have visited the Falls twice in the last few days and they are mind blowing. The figures of 800,000,000 litres of water flowing over in one minute are just too much to take on board. So I won't talk about those! The Falls are in a National Park which you have to pay to enter, which is fair enough. They have laid trails that you can follow to get to the vantage points for viewing them. (These paths are of course fairly near to the edge of the opposite 'cliff', so my vertigo received some serious battering. I think it is being pushed into some sort of order, I did the walking and by the second visit I walked over knife edge bridge unaided and with my glasses on. Great achievement! Enough of that though.) ... read more

Sorry about the lack of pickies - I think I have sorted myself out, so let's try again!! Others watiing to use the internet, so not many words - for once!! Well, that didn't work - so i will leave the pictures until S Africa and a broadband connection. Sleep is proving to be quite important on this trip. Going to sleep in Africa is a totally different ball game: insects, frogs, bats and some birds all start to sing. Loudly. That is fine in the countrysde until the hippos start to laugh which makes me giggle and sleep becomes even more elusive. Here at Lawlty Towers, there is another sound effect that is rather shattering - the soiund of mangoes falling from the trees and hitting the corrugated iron roof. The first one sounded like ... read more