Adventure to Zambia Part 3: The Return Trip with a Safari in South Luangwa

The next day we were up early again to begin our travel back to Lusaka, Chipata then up to South Luangwa.  Little did we know that our traveling luck was about to run out.  It wasn’t all bad, but we tried to do too much in one day, and we should have taken our time.  We arrived in Lusaka at 12 noon, and we bought tickets for the next bus that was supposed to leave at 2 PM.  The bus didn’t arrive until 4:30 and we didn’t leave until 5:30 (the sun sets at 6:00 and we narrowly made it out.  Before we left
the capital for the boarder, three locals were moving through the crowd trying to get people to pay for things that they didn’t have to pay for (such as putting luggage on the bus) and actually tried to
threaten me and steal our bags.  Long story short, I refused to let up and refused to give them any money – nothing was lost and I watched them put my luggage on the bus.  By the way, when in Africa, if you ever consider taking a Ronsil Bus, I would advise you that it is easier and likely faster to walk.  The bus is supposed to take 7 hours from Lusaka to Chipata, instead it took 14 hours, and like I said above, I do not fit well on buses.  We stopped at nearly every single village and town on our way and took anything but a direct route – it was not enjoyable.  Then we arrived in Chipata at 4:30 AM and took a taxi up to the park (two and a half hours with a taxi driver that was falling asleep at the wheel).  It cost us 500 000ZK (approximately $111 Canadian Dollars) to get to our destination, but we arrived safely. 
 

The view from our campsite at sunrise

The day we got to the park we didn’t sleep at all, we were so blown away by what we were seeing that we weren’t even tired.  The park was incredible.  We sat by the river bank at the edge of our camp site for the entire day recovering from our travels, and booked an evening safari that gave us two hours of sunlight and two hours of darkness to see the best of both worlds.  Along the way we saw zebra, impala, elephants, monkeys, hippos, even a leopard feasting on an animal (pretty cool).  When we arrived back at our camp site, we were surprised to find a full grown hippo eating the grass around our tent, not even ten feet away from us.  If you know anything about hippos, they are incredibly dangerous and very territorial.  Therefore, this was probably not the safest place to be, although with all the tourists that frequently travel through the area, I am sure that they have been desensitized to a certain extent, provided people keep their distance. 

We decided that we were done with traveling by mini bus and local bus and didn’t want a return trip to the boarder to take 12 hours waiting for a bus to come, so we booked a private taxi. Long story short, the road was completely torn up and our driver thought he knew the road under construction better than the people that were doing the construction, so he ended up taking his car, which was half Toyota Corolla and half...something else, off roading.  Long story short, he tore out his fuel line.  We ended up waiting for him to fix it (with the rubber seal from his trunk lining, a piece of straw and a plastic bag) for 4 hours, and our travel time back to the boarder was over 6 hours.  The entire time that we were stranded waiting for the car to be fixed; we were actually sitting in the middle of someone’s garden/front yard, where the children who lived in the house came out to see us and spent the better part of two hours yelling “AZUNGU! AZUNGU!” over and over again, and later “GIVE ME MONEY!” as those are the usual two phrases that we hear from African children, to which we simply reply “Papani” combined with a hand gesture of opening your hands like a book, which essentially means “Sorry, I don’t have any money.”  Following this ordeal, we made it back to Chipata, and finally to the border, with Rachel becoming increasingly car sick along the way, and the car that we were in barely able to make it up small hills as a result of running on fumes. 

Crossing the border into Malawi was fairly easy, and the feeling of finally crossing back into the country in which we were living was soothing, although short lived.  The cab drivers on the Malawi side persisted to take advantage of the fact that there were no alternative forms of transportation and made us pay double the rate to get back to the boarder city for a mini bus – by this point we didn’t care and we just wanted to keep moving.

The mini bus back to Lilongwe was relatively quick, taking just over an hour and didn’t stop for every individual who was standing on the side of the road waiting for a mini bus back to Lilongwe.  Our original intent was to stay in Lilongwe for the night, and travel back to Mzuzu the following day.  However, we had not yet learned our lesson, and schedules in African countries are more like guidelines, or possibilities.  In this case, the bus service on Sunday back to Mzuzu had been cancelled, and we were given the option of waiting until Monday instead (with no other alternative), until we pestered the ticket sales people a little more and they told us that there was another Axa bus leaving from the Lilongwe Bus Depot in Old town at 3, 4, 5, or 6 (it doesn’t leave until it is full) if we wanted to take that bus instead.  By this point we were so completely worn down that we just decided that it would be best to get home, rather than prolong our traveling experience.  We made our way to the bus depot and got on a bus to take us to Mzuzu.  We were told when we arrived at the bus depot that the bus was supposed to leave at 6 and it did.  The only hiccup was that we were supposed to reach Mzuzu by 12 AM, and we didn’t arrive until 2:30 AM.  Although this bus was beyond full, and continued to stop at almost every village along the way, we knew that it could have been a lot worse.  Malawian buses are known for being over crowded beyond capacity, and at any moment you could find yourself riding with chickens or other farm animals while standing in the aisles.  

By the end of our long journey back to Mzuzu, our skin was black with dirt.  Thankfully we had running water and power when we returned, as Sunday we had neither.  We made dinner, showered, and we were finally in bed by 4 AM, and ended up sleeping all Sunday.  Rachel came down with a really bad cold that was almost like the flu, and it took us nearly all week to start to recover from our adventure.  Our total travel time was over 58 hours on buses, taxis, or other.  You know it’s a good vacation when you need a vacation to recover from it.