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Oops, forgot about the Walking Safari…

Saturday, June 2nd, 2007

So I was so excited about Vic Falls I forgot about the fantastic walking tour we went on a couple of days prior…

Near Livingstone, where we’re staying, there is a small national park that has animals.  But instead of being stuck in a truck looking at wildlife from a bus, we were able to walk amongst them a bit.  We saw giraffe (I’m not sure why, but I thought they’d be taller!), white rhino (which really aren’t white – they are in fact the same color as black rhino but they have lower mouths then the black ones – and apparently a lot nicer), wildebeest (according to our guide – zebras and wildebeest hang out together because they are a bit vulnerable to big animals – and the “wildebeest migration” that we’ve seen pictures of in national geographic may actually be a zebra migration and the wildebeest follow because apparently the zebras have a better memory?), baboons (the ones we saw in S Africa were black and supposed to be really mean – the ones in Zambia are more tan and just kind of looked at you but didn’t attack), impala (like everywhere), buffalo, zebra (which were smaller than the one that we raced in Namibia) and some other animals that I can’t recall.  It was really neat to be within spitting distance of these animals although the majority of them had been “reintroduced” after they had died out/been hunted out.  It was kind of sad because there were 5 rhinos and there were only 2 left.  2 of them had died of natural causes and one of them had died of heartbreak.  His honey had died and he was sad so he stopped eating.  The rhinos have guards during the day because they still poachers and of course we also had one in case something charged.

Anyway, it was a lovely few hours and gave us a “taste” of the wildlife that is in Africa.  More in the next country!

Posted in RTW Trip, Zambia | 1 Comment »

Vic Falls – okay, way impressed…

Friday, June 1st, 2007

Hello, what’s shaking?

We hopped an Intercape bus from Windhoek, Namibia to Livingstone, Zambia.  It stopped in a gazillion places (well, considering it was quite the long bus ride, it kind of makes sense) and pretty much dumped off everyone but us tourists by the time it go to the border.

The visa to get into Zambia for us darn Americans is 100 USD.  Yeah, but they have this lovely thing that they semi-publicize that if you book with one of the backpacker places at least 3 days in advance they’ll stick you on the list for the border and the visa is waived!  Score one for us!  We were just sweating bullets because sometimes it doesn’t get to the border and, well, we don’t have 200 USD just laying around so of course we would rather not have paid it.  Luckily, they had our names down.  It was so funny – as soon as they stamped our passports we snatched them up and booked out of there like they were going to have to come track us down if they had made a mistake!  Unluckily for some of our fellow travellers – it didn’t happen.  Some other Americans were to stay in Zimbabwe (Zim and Zam share Victoria Falls) and were given some bad information that they didn’t have to be put on the list and so they ended up having to pay the 100/pp.  There were some others that had to pay 25/pp because they were not one of the “unfriendly relations” countries.

Anyway, we stayed at a joint called Fawlty Towers (yes, named after that English comedy show) while it seemed the rest of the backpackers in the universe were staying at Jolly Boys.  Oh well, you win some you lose some and we did meet a couple of interesting people including a Japanese guy that had travelled the length of Central and South America in 2 months and was planning on finishing up Africa and then heading east until he hit Japan (overlanding it) – and he was planning on finishing up in 5 months total.  I mean, we’re talking holy smokes – that is WAYYYYYY fast!   And all on public transport (although he is flying from Kenya to Egypt because, well, that country called Sudan that separates them – he didn’t seem too keen on visiting).

The whole reason for visiting Zambia was essentially because, well, Zimbabwe has a crazy person running their government right now so we weren’t particularly keen on visiting there, and of course, we wanted to see Victoria Falls.  I have to say, without seeing Iguazu or Niagara yet, it was AMAZING!  I mean HUGE!  Like there is no way you can see the whole falls without being in a helicopter or plane.  On the Zambia side, you are so close to the falls that you literally get drenched.  It was soooo cool.  It was one of the coolest things we’ve ever seen.

I thought this was kind of funny – so we ask the hostel how much it’s going to cost to get to the falls (11 km away).  They say 30,000 Kwacha (7-8 US$); we go to the visitor’s center and they say you can get a shared taxi for 5,000 Kwacha each.  There are 4 people per shared taxi.  So in theory, shouldn’t the taxi be 20,000?  So we head down to this area where you can get a shared taxi and end up getting a private taxi for 15,000.  And got a shared taxi back for 10,000.  I guess it pays to shop around!

This town in Zambia is seriously lacking in groceries.  We thought it was funny that the Intercape bus, before leaving Namibia, stopped for 20 minutes at the grocery.  Now we know why!  Oh well, we’re only here a couple of more days before we head to Lusaka, the capital of Namibia, and hopefully they have better stores because we’re going to be on a train for 2 1/2 days and are hoping to not have to buy too much food on the train since you can’t buy Tanzanian Shillings in Zambia (it’s funny that you can’t change Namibian Dollars or Tanzanian Shillings in Zambia even though they border it) and we’ll be on the train in Tanzania for the majority of the journey…

Anyway, I’m just rambling on… isn’t that unusual?

Cheers

Posted in RTW Trip, Zambia | 1 Comment »