Adventure to Zambia Part 2: Lusaka, Livingstone, and Victoria Falls

We arrived in Lusaka at night to find out that the President had banned buses from departing at night due to a series of horrible bus accidents, which meant that we had to spend the night in Lusaka.  This wasn’t terrible, but it meant that we had to push back our plans by one day.  We stayed in a shared dorm with our new travel companions and a guy who was biking from South Africa to Europe.  We were all exhausted by this point that we fell asleep quickly, until I woke everyone up by laughing in my sleep, to which Rachel asked me what I was laughing at and still sleeping I replied “its just so funny, everyone else has shields,” to which Rachel replied “go back to sleep Mike.”  At least I provided some entertainment for an otherwise uneventful night.  By the way, if you ever end up in Lusaka, Zambia on a random adventure and you want a cheese burger, Lusaka Backpackers is decent.  Although I was starving at the time, so it really could have been hit or miss and I still would have enjoyed it. 

The bus trip from Lusaka to Livingstone was decent, except for the fact that I don’t really fit well on buses in Canada, let alone the Asian buses that are used here.  We left at 7 AM from Lusaka and arrived in Livingstone at around 1 or 2 in the afternoon.  Livingstone is probably one of the most comfortable places that I have been in Africa so far.  It resembles any run of the mill tourist cities in North America, and since tourism is dominant force in the local economy, the street vendors typically leave you alone when if you tell them that you are not interested. 

Jolly Boys Backpackers was a comfortable place to stay.  After setting up our tent, Rachel and discovered that the tents surrounding us were the tents of other members of our team living in Lilongwe (Robin, Matt, and Riley).  We spent the afternoon exploring Livingstone, after which we accompanied the guys for dinner.  The next day we were up early for breakfast and to purchase our return tickets back to Lusaka, then we took a shuttle out to Victoria Falls.  I have to admit at this stage that ever since I arrived in Africa three months ago, I have had one song playing over and over again in my head, usually on my way to the office in the morning: the Jurassic Park Theme  (and at this point it was very loud). 

Seeing Victoria Falls has been something that I have always wanted to do since I was in Geography at Brock, and I saw it.  We spent the day roaming around the falls, taking different trails and paths to get different vantage points (with monkeys swatting at us and trying to steal from other tourists), as well as crossing a bridge to the Zimbabwe border and watched people jumping to their deaths.  Don’t worry, I’m only kidding, they had a bungee cord attached to them, just making sure you were still paying attention.  That night we rejoined our new friends and joined them on a cruise for dinner and drinks up the Zambezi River. 

Victoria Falls