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May 25th
Typical morning at the Croc Valley campsite: keeping the primates from stealing all your food! Their sneaky little shites, creeping up out of nowhere and stealing a tomato or onion. That happened the day before actually but this morning they had gotten on the truck and ripped open a bag of beans and rice as well. You can check out a video of me fending for my life against one of the primates
here, eventually. There is another video of them eating rice and hangin’ around the truck
here. So after breakfast we packed up our things and headed out of the national park. Farron had another Farron surprise for us, so we were excited. Although admittedly it would be hard to top his previous surprise which was Sanje Falls. He took us to Tribal Textiles, a company started 25 years ago. They make fabrics and all sorts of things really, you name it. African styles bags, room sets, comforters, napkins, etc etc. You get the idea though, they ship all over the world and are free trade. And basically the people working for the company aren’t working on meager wages for tons of work either, and all
the money goes back into the community. We were able to see how the designs are made and then pressed and the whole process really, until finished product. We had the chance to pick up some gifts and I did just that for my soon to be born niece, Adelita!
After the textile mill we headed for Chipata. It meant going back 3 hours on a crappy road that we had gone on 2 days before. Such a bumpy road but this time we had another passenger. We picked up a police officer that was heading for a seminar in Chipata so we gave him a lift. He was sooo smiley and grateful to be riding with some foreigners, it was really something else.
We reached Chipata in the early afternoon and dropped our enforcement officer off and headed for the grocery store to get some things for dinner. We bolted out of town and for southern southern Zambia and towards the capitol Lusaka. We would be bush camping for the night, meaning no campsite or electricity or any toilets, really ruffing it.
Farron picked out an amazing spot for the camp. It was about an hour
before sun down and we headed up a hill towards some phone towers. The view from the top was amazing, if only pictures could do the sunset justice!! It was a really special spot and I decided right away I would be sleeping on the truck and not in a tent. Maya and Cam also agreed and we setup ourselves on top of the truck.
I hung out on top of the truck for a while providing some drum beats while dinner was prepared by Nicio and Cameron. The two of them cooked a great meal that everyone really enjoyed, a nice beef stew type of dish with a Brazilian touch along with rice. Post dinner we sat around the fire and drank our tea and talked about the trip thus far and what was to come.
Cam ended up bailing on the sleep-on-top-of-the-truck idea, he thought it would get too cold and he might roll off. Maya and I enjoyed the view and got a decent nights sleep. I woke up a couple times at night to see the moonlight had allowed the stars to come out and the Milky Way to illuminate like clouds. It was
so spectacular I had to wake up Maya to show her, and she was grateful. I went back to sleep after marveling at the night sky and looked forward to seeing the sun come up over the hills around us.
Hope enjoy the photos and post! Until next time, Pura Vida! ]
-Brendan
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Julia
non-member comment
Beautiful
stuff there...do they have a website for all of us stuck stateside can buy?