Zambia: Hanging around in Livingstone

After visiting Victoria Falls we still had a few nights at the backpackers so we decided we would spend it exploring Livingstone.  We actually hit the town on Labor Day so there was a big parade down the center of the streets we got to watch that for a while, then we spent part of the day relaxing and hanging out at the backpackers. In the afternoon we decided we wanted to do a village stay-where you go and spend the night in a hut of a local village and that sounded super intriguing to me so we went to this village who has a tourism "village stay" set up but too bad for us, the lady that ran it died like a year ago and sadly for them, she has not been replaced yet which meant we were allowed to go on a day tour but we couldn't spend the night.  Our guide was a local guy from the village who I ended up getting into a pretty deep conversation about how people in these sort of communities are stuck there because of the lack of educational options.  They have a primary school in their village but there is an exam you have to pass to get to secondary school, which many of the kids don't pass so they don't get to do to secondary school and then they have to bus to their school which many of the kids cannot afford resulting in a very small percentage of the kids in the village actually get the opportunity to go to secondary school and an impossible few get the opportunity to go to college after secondary school.  Most people remain stuck in that community, living as substance farmers with no regular source of income and no way to get further educated or trained.  Then he talked about how all of the good teachers go to private schools and many of the teachers that teach in local primary schools could honestly care less about the education that the children are receiving.  It was a very interesting conversation.  Anyways, about 5 minutes into the tour the entire village of children started to follow us and they were all taking turns holding our hands...Gregory Mortenson, in the book Three Cups of Tea says something about how after walking through the village he ended up with a comets tail following behind him, I love that and that is exactly what happened.  We got to go inside a house, saw and started to understand family compounds, got a tour of the school and met one of the school teachers.  Also I finally got to play soccer with some little local kids which was something I had been wanting to do since I got to Africa.

I met one older girl named Rosemary who was in grade 5 and spoke excellent english, she told me about what she was studying in school, about her life and how she like to play soccer and net ball.  She tried to corn-row my hair but realized that it wouldn't stay very well.  At one point while she was braiding, and I had about 15 different kids crawling around me, I caught sight of a little girl standing next to me who had what looked like burns all the way up one of her arms, and a brace/wrap around her wrist.  I asked Rosemary what happened and it turns out this little 10 year old girl got bit by a cobra and the venom from the snake has pretty much eaten away her skin so they did a skin graft from her thigh to try and help her arm.  So of course I looked at her thigh only to find a pussing and severely infected square where the skin had been grafted.  I thought I might cry because there was absolutely nothing I could do and it did not look good at all.  This community had no education and no health care which are basic necessities of life.

That was a great day though, it was eye opening and wonderful.  Those kids were so kind and loving and gentle.

After we got back from our village tour, we ate dinner and met up with this guy from Holland who was living and working there- he and a few of his friends took us to the river for sunset and it was absolutely gorgeous- the sky was this crazy combination of orange and pink and reflected over the water.  We hung out there for a while until it got dark and we went back to our hostel.  We found a Bow game board to I taught Anna how to play and ended up attracting a couple of Danish backpackers over to see what we were doing.  Then Anna got tired and went to bed and I spent the next three hours hanging out with these super interesting guys from Denmark that were traveling Souther Africa.  Danish is such a strange language and I have a soft spot for it since my dad speaks Danish but they were way into old music- they made me sit and listen to "The Wall" Pink Floyd album for an hour and a half non-stop.  But they were cool and it was fun to meet them.

The next morning we got up early and did a little bit of shopping at a local market- I got tons of really beautiful fabrics that I want to make pillow cases with and we indulged in every type of scone and muffin from a small local market before we headed back to the Victoria Falls bridge to cross the border and head to the Zimbabwe side- easy border, you just walk across the bridge. 

Zambia: Victoria Falls

We made it to our backpackers in Livingstone which is another really adorable tourist town because it is so close to one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World which are these: added onto my bucket list to see all of these before I die.

Anyways so we made it to the Backpackers which was really cool and set up transport and activities at the falls and around the town.  We just sort of wandered around and hung out the first day working on getting our bearings, exploring the town and hanging out at the backpackers reading, eating and talking to other backpackers.  The next day was probably one of the best days of the trip- actually maybe the best day of the entire trip BECAUSE, speaking of bucket lists... I bungee jumped over Victoria Falls! 111meters straight down, head first, 4 second free fall and the coolest experience of my entire career.  So we showed up at the bridge that connects Zambia and Zimbabwe and there is an extreme sporting activity place on the bridge where you can do a 110ft swing, bungee jump and zipline from one country to another so of course, I had to do all three.  First was the bungee jump and I had been sort of preparing myself for it because I knew that if I didn't I would chicken out but I payed my money, got in my harness and stepped out onto the platform where they wrapped towels around my ankles and rope around the towels that they attached to the bungee chord. I just starred at them wondering if they were joking because it did NOT seem secure at all so I told them that my mom would be really sad if I died and they said I wasn't going to.  I stood on the very edge of the bridge with my toes dangling over the end and then they counted.. 5-4-3-2-1-BUNGEE and I jumped out as hard and far as I could.  First thought: I'm gonna die.  Second thought: Man I am falling fast. Third though: I did it! This is so fun!  Fourth thought: Dang this is awesome. I never want to stop bouncing!  After about thought two, I started laughing, not just laughing but this weird giggle thing that occurred until I was on my feet again.  So I fell and bounced back up and fell again and bounced up and down like 5 times before I hung upside down and waited for the guy to come and get me.  Best experience ever.  

How neat is that?  Pretty neat I would say.  When I got back up to the bridge I was on such an adrenaline rush I was bouncing all over the place and talking to all sorts of random strangers.  Then it was my turn to do the big swing and for some reason I was even more nervous for that- mostly because as soon as you got hooked in, the rope pulled you forward really hard but I pulled myself together picked a tree right in front of me and stepped off the platform. The rush of that wind in your face and you loosing your breath for a good three seconds- not being able to catch a breath is the most bizarre and exhilarating thing- this goes for both the bungee and the swing. 

I finished with the zipline from Zambia to Zimbabwe and sadly it was not as cool as the other ones, I think if I had started with it, it would have been way awesome but since I did the swing and bungee first, it was sort of no big deal but doing those three activities was the coolest thing ever!

After I finished the activities, Anna and I decided we should actually go take a peak at Victoria Falls since all we could see from the bridge was mist...  It was spectacular.  I have never seen so much water in my entire life and mind you, it was a clear blue sky day but after walking the path through the falls, we were soaked from head to toe, why? Because there is so much water, it hits the rocks below and mist sprays back up and hits you like its pouring rain- of course I found this highly entertaining and again was dancing and laughing and gawking at the falls. 

before...dry

after...soaked

Great day, beautiful place, extremely fun activities. Winning.

Kasane- Chobe National Park

After a wonderful three days in Maun, Anna and I packed up and posted at the local hitch hikers spot hoping to catch a ride to our next destination.  And we did! We caught a ride with this nice guy that got us to Nata, which is the half way point and then he was headed the opposite direction of us so he dropped us off and we were thumbs up again on the side of the road.  A really nice doctor from Francistown picked us up and took us the rest of the way to a place called Kasane which is a little town in Northern Botswana that is specifically known for the wildlife walking around town, and it did not disappoint- driving there we saw elephants cross the road, there were warthogs walking around town and giraffes off in the distance.  We got to our lodge that was super expensive unless you were camping and we realized that we had left our tent in the nice doctors car. DANG IT. But we found a taxi man who took us to a local chinese shop and of course, they had tents! Woot Woot we got one that was neon pink and blue- it was also a lot bigger than the one we had before so that was fortunate. But we got back to our lodge, set up camp and sort of hung out there for the night, there wasn't much to do since the lodge was 90% old rich white people buttt that was okay because at 5 am in the next morning we went on our last game drive.  We went to Chobe National Park which is one of the top game reserves in the world and based on the amount of animals we saw, I understand why!  Thanks to that safari I completed seeing all of my big five, saw some lions and some buffalo- which are scary, we saw insane numbers of hippos and elephants, saw some giraffes, impalas, kudu, warthogs, crocodiles, and fish eagles.  At one point we drove through a baboon invasion.. if aliens ever invaded earth, I imagine it would look a little bit like this did since baboons look like aliens and there were a million of them, ready to pounce if you looked at them wrong.  So that was neat.

That was sort of all we did in Chobe/Kasane because we only had a week and so many things to see, and safaris are really all there is to do there so we packed up after our early morning drive and got a taxi to the border of Zambia, hoped on the ferry to take us across country and to Livingstone, Zambia where our journey continued.

Maun and the Okavango Delta

My last big trip was technically the only trip I actually planned (sort of) before I went.  When I came to Botswana I thought I would go on only one trip... this trip.  Everyone talked it up like it was the best thing in the entire world and now I know why.  Northern Botswana is home to some of the most amazing wildlife and natural phenomenon's in the entire world not to mention 20 kilometers across both the Zambia and Zimbabwe boarder is one of the seven natural wonders of the world: Victoria Falls.

My friend Anna (from the Netherlands) and I decided it was not okay for us to leave Africa having been so close to these places and not see them so guess what?  We packed up our backpacks and tents and hopped on a 10 hour bus to Northern Botswana to start our last adventure.

Our first stop was the hub-bub of Northern Botswana, a small tourist town called Maun.  This has become my favorite place in Botswana, it has the feel of a little beach town and everyone there was so nice and friendly- there is sand everywhere because it is right about the Kalahari Desert and it is placed directly on the river of the Okavango Delta. We got a cab to our backpackers which is called Old Bridge Backpackers and it is right on the bank of the river.

So we got there, pitched our tents and worked on figuring out what we were going to do the next few days and how we were going to do them.  We ended up spending most of the evening playing pool with a few white guys from Namibia and a few locals who were really good at it but we kept up okay. The next morning we went exploring around the town for a few hours to see the shops, buy groceries and waste a little bit of time until the afternoon when we went horseback riding around the forest and along the river- at one point we even went in the water on the horses which was super fun.  Funny story: Anna had never been on a horse before and within 5 minutes of getting on the horse for some reason her horse and mine both started galloping top speed and of course I was just laughing my head off enjoying every second of it but Anna had no idea how to stop the horse or even how to ride it and her helmet flew off her head (so if she had fallen it could have been really bad) but I could hear here screaming "HELP" at the top of her lungs and no its not funny but I was cracking up.  Anyways I forget how much I love horse back riding until I get back on a horse and enjoy every second of the ride.  So we rode at sunset which was really pretty and fun but bummer for me I wore the wrong kind of pants because when I got off my horse I heard these two local workers start laughing and whispering in Setswana only to discover that the butt of my pants had ripped literally ALL the way down and there was a huge whole exposing half my butt cheeks and underwear... your welcome boys. Ha awkward.

After horse back riding for two hours, we went back to our backpackers and my local friend Tumi who is from Maun hooked us up with a couple of his friends that took us around for the night since it was a Saturday night they first took us to a sports bar but we only stayed there for a little while, then they took us to a place where it was karaoke night so Anna and I sang Some Nights by Fun and Mike and I sang Gangnam Style.  Both friends were a little tipsy at that point so I drove which was actually really fun on the wrong side of the road and the wrong side of the car but it was better than driving drunk... although driving on sand is hard- at one point I got us really stuck in the sand and everyone had to get out and push us.  We finished the night at this club called Fresh Exclusive where there was a rock concert and it was the most bizarre thing I have ever seen.  We walked into a legit gothic hard rock concert where everyone was head banging in long black wigs with eye liner, black leather and chains- I had a surprisingly good time until Mike started to attach himself to me and people started petting my long hair.  We finally went home at like 1:00 am and crashed.

The next morning we did what is called a Moccoro Trip where you go in a local canoe and get a tour through the delta for the day and do a walking safari on an island in the middle of the delta.  This was awesome.  There are two people in a canoe plus a guide from a local village that has a huge pole which he guides you down the river in.  Sweet! Supposedly there are hippos and crocodiles in the river but we didn't see any.  We did however enjoy two hours passing by water lilies and beautiful birds.  We got to a huge island where we took a lunch break and then went on a walking safari where we explored the island and saw some zebras and wildebeests which are always pretty cool. Then our guide let us try to row the boat and it was super hard! I got stuck in the middle of the river for a good ten minutes trying to move forward but only succeeding in moving side to side. The way back from the island was even more peaceful then the morning- the water was like glass and it was one of the most beautiful scenes I have ever been lucky enough to experience.

That was a long and draining day so we got back to our backpackers and called it a night pretty early also because the next morning we were on our way to the next stop in our trip: Chobe National Park.