As soon as school finished, Dylan and I jetted off to Zambia to see Vic Falls. And by "jetted" I mean, took the 15-hour overnight bus ride. Actually it wasn't too bad -- air conditioned and we slept most of the way to the border. It was immediately clear on crossing into Zambia that we're a bit spoiled in Namibia. The Namibian border control was very organized -- had a single building, a parking lot, official forms to be filled in, etc. The Zambian side had people, cars, and buildings scattered haphazardly around and we had to fight to sign in a register book before we could get our passports stamped. We passed a lot of thatched roof huts and were impressed at how green everything was. On arriving in Livingstone, we dropped our bags at our hostel and went out to explore.
Our first goal was to find the Indian restaurant that was advertised in our guidebook. We found it, but for various reasons it took two more trips there before we actually managed to eat anything. When we finally had dinner there on our last night, we were super impressed -- absolutely delicious chicken tikka masala and chicken korma and naan bread!
Many of the shops in town were familiar to us from Namibia -- Spar and Shoprite for example. Eventually we found the big tourist market and had fun looking for souvenirs and Christmas presents. The currency in Zambia is kwatcha and the exchange rate is about 5200 kwatcha per US dollar. It took a while to get used to talking about money in the tens and hundreds of thousands! On finding that the chitenges (colorful African cloth) were actually very expensive at the tourist market, we went in search of the local market as well. After a half an hour walk and a fruitless search through stalls of clothing, kitchen goods, fish, grains, and all kinds of other things, we finally found the chitenge stalls! I love these cloths and had a field day picking out my favorites to buy for only 7000 kwatcha each.
Sadly, we did not get away without some stomach problems and consequently we spent Sunday lounging at the pool at Jollyboys (where we were staying). It was aow-key day finished off with a sunset cruise on the Zambezi (see pictures below).
Monday and Tuesday we went to both the Zambian and Zimbabwean sides of Vic Falls. The sites are really well developed with paths and lots of viewpoints for taking pictures. This time of year is just beginning the rainy season, so the water was still fairly low. Even so we were getting wet on the Zimbabwe side!
We were not remotely tempted by the bungee jumping or any of the other crazy adrenalin activities offered, but we did stand on the bridge and watch someone jump. It reaffirmed our desire not to!
Wednesday morning we had a few hours before our bus left so we visited the Livingstone Museum. There was a lot of information on Zambian culture and history, the formation of Vic Falls, and David Livingstone himself.
The bus left Livngstone promptly(!) at 12, bringing us back to Tsumeb at 3:30am. We were greeted right away by Other Dog when we got to our house, but other than that we went straight to bed.
Now we have a carefree week at home followed by finally meeting Dylan’s family in Cape Town! Enjoy the pictures!
Our first goal was to find the Indian restaurant that was advertised in our guidebook. We found it, but for various reasons it took two more trips there before we actually managed to eat anything. When we finally had dinner there on our last night, we were super impressed -- absolutely delicious chicken tikka masala and chicken korma and naan bread!
Many of the shops in town were familiar to us from Namibia -- Spar and Shoprite for example. Eventually we found the big tourist market and had fun looking for souvenirs and Christmas presents. The currency in Zambia is kwatcha and the exchange rate is about 5200 kwatcha per US dollar. It took a while to get used to talking about money in the tens and hundreds of thousands! On finding that the chitenges (colorful African cloth) were actually very expensive at the tourist market, we went in search of the local market as well. After a half an hour walk and a fruitless search through stalls of clothing, kitchen goods, fish, grains, and all kinds of other things, we finally found the chitenge stalls! I love these cloths and had a field day picking out my favorites to buy for only 7000 kwatcha each.
Sadly, we did not get away without some stomach problems and consequently we spent Sunday lounging at the pool at Jollyboys (where we were staying). It was aow-key day finished off with a sunset cruise on the Zambezi (see pictures below).
Monday and Tuesday we went to both the Zambian and Zimbabwean sides of Vic Falls. The sites are really well developed with paths and lots of viewpoints for taking pictures. This time of year is just beginning the rainy season, so the water was still fairly low. Even so we were getting wet on the Zimbabwe side!
We were not remotely tempted by the bungee jumping or any of the other crazy adrenalin activities offered, but we did stand on the bridge and watch someone jump. It reaffirmed our desire not to!
Wednesday morning we had a few hours before our bus left so we visited the Livingstone Museum. There was a lot of information on Zambian culture and history, the formation of Vic Falls, and David Livingstone himself.
The bus left Livngstone promptly(!) at 12, bringing us back to Tsumeb at 3:30am. We were greeted right away by Other Dog when we got to our house, but other than that we went straight to bed.
Now we have a carefree week at home followed by finally meeting Dylan’s family in Cape Town! Enjoy the pictures!
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