Zambezi Surprises

G'day again. Time to continue my bursts of activity on the log front, and start to cover my activities in the lovely country of Zambia.

Our first stop in Zambia was the town of Chipata, just 20km or so over the border. Or rather, it was a campsite outside Chipata, in common with the usual overlander syndrome. It was a fairly quiet night there, though, with people still recovering from Kande and was notable principally for (a) being able to camp on grass again for the first time in a while, rather than sand or mud and (b) having another truck parked next to us, whose guide's birthday it was, so they were making a cake. I ended up chatting with some of the latter group in the bar - slightly different environment on their truck. Their guide was called their "courier" and they'd all been given nicknames (e.g. the lad I was getting this info off was an Aussie called Christian, but they all called him Dik-Dik - for those unfamiliar with the animal, it's one of Africa's smallest antelopes).

The next day was another of our very long drives, heading west across Zambia to the capital, Lusaka. We passed over the Luangwa river, having lunch just the other side, and pressed on along steadily improving roads (the "joke" here is that some foreign government fronted up the money for the highway from Lusaka to the border, but it hasn't been redeveloped all the way as some of the money went AWOL...). Arrival in Lusaka was something of a shock, as we encountered shopping malls. Honest-to-God, western-style shopping malls. After the little markets and occasional dodgy shops, interspersed with very rare big supermarkets of the trip so far, this had some people reeling. Leonie almost had a fit at the possibility there might be a McDonalds...! My interest in this was confined primarily to the possibility I might be able to get some sandals at last (I'd been hunting for some for the last couple of weeks) - alas, my big feet continued to frustrate me, as nowhere had any bigger than a size 10. Damnation.

Anyways, we continued on to our campsite, just out the other side of town, where it was another pretty quiet night (aided somewhat by the fact that the power cut off from the bar on the site around 7pm, and wasn't back on for another couple of hours), ahead of another early morning departure. This was proving to be even more of a whistle-stop traverse of Zambia than I had actually expected. Another fairly uneventful morning on the road followed, as we headed down through southern Zambia to the unprepossessing town of Livingstone, yet another place named for the omni-present missionary and explorer and the Zambian base for exploring Mosi-Oa-Tunya, better known to most of the anglophone world as Victoria Falls.

Livingstone is a strange place - despite its location next to one of the most amazing sights in the world, it remains to a large extent still a backwater African town. The collapse into a very unpleasant hole of Zimbabwe, and the consequent loss of appeal of the town of Victoria Falls, just the other side of the border, to much of the travelling community (whether due to scruples, nervousness or whatever else, the tourist market for travelling into Zim has collapsed recently) has started to gee things up a bit in Livi, but it still has a ways to go. In the course of my 4 nights in Livi, I have to admit that I was never once tempted to cross the border. I refuse to give any money to the Mugabe government, whether in visas or to any of the many state-owned enterprises in the country, especially given that Zim takes the frequent African practice of charging Brits more for visas than anyone else to another level (something like 65 USD for Brits vs 25 for most nationalities, and free for the Kiwis). Some of the others on the truck (notably the Kiwis) thought that this was penalising the Zim people (by not going there and supporting their businesses) for the actions of their leader, but I was not willing to give him more money to use to knock down people's houses and murder opposition supporters.

Anyway, enough of the sermon. Our first (half-)day in Livi we had a few things to sort out. First of these was getting tour T-shirts printed. This is pretty much a must, but was complicated in our case by the fact that we had several groups of people doing different lengths of tour. In the end, there were 4 different designs from our truck (later to be joined by another for those who joined us after coming up from Jo'burg and yet another for those joining us afresh), all featuring some variety of map on the back showing our respective travels. Next, we had to sit through the videos covering the activities that were available to us whilst in Livi (white-water rafting, elephant rides, helicopter flights, river-boarding, micro-lighting, rhino safaris, etc etc), so that we could start to make up our minds what to do with the next few days. Finally, we had to go on our booze cruise.

Although officially marketed in some quarters as a "sunset cruise on the mighty Zambezi", it is generally acknowledged, even by the operators, what the intent of these little voyages is (at least as far as overlanders are concerned). You get to drift along the Zambezi river, looking out for wildlife, enjoying snacks and a barbeque dinner and drinking as much as you feel you can handle from an open bar. So, we saw more hippos, and some elephants down to drink at the water's edge, plus a few antelope of various sorts. And we consumed pleasant bar snacks with our drinks of choice (in my case, large G&Ts). And we encountered the "Zambezi Surprise", a violent orange-coloured concoction provided in a small beaker, and intended to be downed like a shooter. And we had our BBQ dinner. And we saw Ian try to tie his girlfriend Emma to a pole. And we experienced a beautiful sunset. And we rocked back to shore, and headed into the bar. And saw Ian try to throw Leonie in the pool. And end up in there himself. As did Mark, for reasons I was never able to ascertain. And saw Jon fall over whilst chatting to this Afrikaner lass, taking her down with him. And saw Heetan throw an ash-tray at Ian. And got threatened with eviction from the bar if we did anything else. And so on. And so on.

The scary thing is, it was only about 6:30 when we got back off the cruise. Most of the antics were over by 7:30 or 8:00, as people just crashed out. Yet I was still sitting at the bar, beer in hand, engaged in something approaching reasonable conversation, at nearly 11pm. And, after I went to bed, Jon apparently ended up on all manner of adventures after going drinking in Livingstone town (we were, you guessed it, a few kms out of town at a campsite), which I won't elaborate on now for fear of landing him in trouble with the Zambian authorities. It was just one of those nights.

And the next morning we got up and went rafting. I was glad that I'd at least had something like 7 or 8 hours sleep, which had gotten much of the alcohol out of my system. Jon had had about an hour, and spent most of breakfast (at which point he was still pretty merry) trying to work out what he had actually done the previous night, often quite loudly and to the obvious fascination (and occasional horror) of those joining us on the rafting trip and sitting nearby. Amazingly, everybody who was due to raft, other than Paul, our guide, made it up and about, and got kitted up and through the safety briefing before loading onto 4WD trucks to be driven out to the gorge. Here, above rapid 10 (they're numbered from just below the falls themselves, heading downstream - 1-10 were considered unraftable at this time of year), we encountered one of the main reasons for signing the usual indemnity waiver, and one of the more dangerous parts of the whole day: the walk down.

If ever I were to need an example to ram home that I was in Africa, and in a different environment, then, strangely, that descent was one of them. You see, the Zambezi at this point runs through a pretty steep gorge, and there's no lifts or cable cars or anything like that to get you down. There's a walkway, constructed largely of branches assembled into a rudimentary staircase, with little or nothing in the way of hand-railings, sometimes descending through crazy gradients, and with the odd broken branch just to show how solid all the construction really is. There is no way, in a million years, that this would ever pass any kind of health & safety check at home, or in Aus or NZ or wherever, but here it's just regarded as normal. The lack of any hoist or lift also means that the rafts have to be transported up and down this trail, which they are, astonishingly, by teams of local porters who near-enough run up and down them. Utterly crazy, but it works.

In terms of our rafting crews, I was in with Barry and a group of other random people unconnected with the truck, having decided to forsake the boat in which the majority of our group would travel. This was largely because most of them were convinced that the raison d'etre of rafting was to flip as many times as possible, to the point where Heetan (whilst inebriated the previous night) had bought their prospective rafting guide drinks to ensure that he made them flip. It was in this environment that our boats approached Rapid 11, the Overland Truck Eater. Now, somebody out there in the world of rafting is guilty of gross plagiarism, as I encountered a rapid called the Bus Eater on the Ottawa river in Canada a few years back (I say "encountered", I was in a raft that accidentally went into it side-on and had a fairly spectacular wipe-out...). Anyways, our intrepid crew, guided by the irrepressible Vinnie, made it safely through, despite a brief close-call. The rest of our group, who were later to be christened the "Zambezi Swimming Team" in the rafting video, went straight in.

At this point, I think it's fair to say, a few of them reconsidered their earlier "tipping is good" philosophy, as they dumped straight into a whirlpool. It was not merely Heetan (for whom the phrase was something of a stock-in-trade) who claimed afterwards that "I thought I was going to die!". Whirlpools can drag you down for a while, despite the serious positive bouyancy of the life-jacket, and several people reported seeing the raft drifting further away above them as they sank into the depths. Luckily, everyone made it out okay, but you can safely say that I was very glad not to be in that boat!!

Amusingly, they then managed to tip straight into the next rapid as well, this time apparently accidentally, but managed to stay upright from that point on. It's safe to say that by that point, Jon had managed to sober up... Despite the occasional attempt by Vinnie (including one point where we went "tubing" through the rapids, which involved all of us piling in the back of the raft so it went through with the bow up like a speedboat) we stayed upright for the whole day, only ever losing one or two people over the sides. And the day was great fun, with several very intense sections. The only less pleasant part was the climb back out of the gorge after our final rapid. At that point, I was convinced I was going to die! But we made it safe back to camp, where many of the guys understandably decided to have a quiet night. I stayed out for a few more bevvies, chatting with Valdy and a couple of lasses who'd just come back off their own booze cruise (very amusing), before crashing and heading to bed myself.

And I think that will have to do for now, as I'm suffering internet fatigue again. Hope you are all well! Take care and have fun,

Pat