Livingstone, Zambia (By Kev)

14.5.2035. Bus trip today. We had a taxi booked for 8, and they turned up right on time. Good thing too, as traffic was a bit shit. Nevertheless, we were on time, that's why we leave early for everything. What a show! What the bloody hell is going on! Random people in regular clothes asking where we are going, which bus, trying to take our bags. Nunya mate and bugger off. They probably work for the bus company, how am I supposed to know that tho. Walked past butt loads of people and bags and packages and who knows what else, into the ticket booth. Checked in and got our seats numbers and different tickets. Our bags got loaded, along with half of Lusaka I think. We hopped on board, and waited. Bus left 20mins late, ah that's not so bad. We made a stop after a few hours for food. Grabbed these pastry things they called pies, flat one side, domed the other. Like they were made in a bowl. Meat and potatoes and some other stuff in them. Really nice, Andrew and Emma smashed 1 each. Mine didn't last real long either. We grabbed some other stuff and a bag of mixed fruit, and we're off again. We stopped at a railway crossing and stayed there. What’s happened? Everything was going too smoothly apparently. The bus had decided to shit itself. The guys working in the bus, we're now working on the bus. It was getting warm, so I hopped off the bus, much cooler outside. Some people were waving cars down and hopping in with them. An older lady came over to Mel and I and asked if we were going to Livingstone. I replied that yes we were, but there were 4 of us and we had quite a lot of bags. There was not enough room for all of us, so we thanked her and stayed with the bus. That was a nice gesture, this lady had noticed some foreign people having trouble, probably recognised a “we don't know what's happening” look on our faces and stopped to help us. I asked the driver a little later what was happening, he told me another bus was coming to get us and that it was about 40mins away. I thought he meant they had sent another bus to pick us up. Nope, it was another bus already packed with people that stopped to pick us up. Bags and people somehow managed to all get jammed into an already full bus. I sat beside the driver on a water container, with Andrew sitting in the aisle right behind me. It was a little after 8pm when we left this little town in the middle of nowhere, we had been there for 4hrs, we should already be at our stay in Livingstone. Finally we arrived in Livingstone just after 11pm, we'd been having trouble with our phones not working outside of Lusaka and if course they didn't work here. We couldn't call the owner of the apartment, who had offered to pick us up. Mel had been in contact with him during the day, letting him know we would be late. He had said he would pick us up at anytime, and had also went and gotten some eggs milk and bread for us for breakfast and left it in the stay, which was greatly appreciated. We had turned down a few taxi offers, then the bus driver came over and asked if we needed help. We do, our phones aren't working so we can't call the guy to pick us up. He asked if he is on WhatsApp, then gave us his phone to use. We made the call, thanked the driver and waited. By the time we were picked up, dropped off and shown around the house it was getting very close to 12:30. Kids in bed, I sat on the couch for a few minutes just to decompress a bit I think, then went to bed.
15.5.2025. You would think we'd all have a sleep in after a day/night like yesterday wouldn't you. Nope, brain wouldn't let us. The kids were up early too, they had managed to sleep a fair bit, albeit a little uncomfortably, on the bus. Time for breakfast, we had a decent lunch yesterday, but no dinner. We had eggs on toast, and it was delicious. Throw in a coffee and I was good to go. We got a taxi over to Victoria Falls around 10, grabbed some tickets, ignored the people trying to sell us things and entered the park. We walked past a place where you can rent ponchos, nah we won't need that. Got our first good look at the falls, noisy, with mist rising up and blowing all over. We got to a bridge, hmmmm the mist looks a bit heavy on that. We walked across, by the time we got to the other side, we were soaked through. We hid a bit from the spray and I went back to get some ponchos, not for us really, to cover our phones and camera and backpack. I was wearing denim shorts, so I was wet all day after that. Ponchos now on, we braved the rest of it. The spray/mist whatever you wanna call it was something else. Pushed far into the air above the falls purely by the power of the water crashing over the rocks at the bottom. Sometimes it seemed to go 20-30metres above us, then land on-top of you like the heaviest rain you have ever witnessed. We were already wet, but at least under the ponchos we were starting to feel a little warmer. We walked a path down to the water a little away from the falls, called the boiling pot. What a place to see, the water is at different levels right in front of you as it can't get away quick enough, gets pushed up the rocks and swirls around creating whirlpools. No wonder they call it the boiling pot, that's what it looks like. We hiked back up, passing a few baboons. If you don't have food, they don't give a shit about you. We walked further around, checking out all the lookouts and seeing the boiling pot from a different point of view. We had lunch at a restaurant near the entrance, it was ordinary, wouldn't recommend it, and went back in. This time we went to the right, up river above the falls. This was also nice, dry too. It was time to go, our taxi turned up and on our way back to our stay, we stopped in to organise a safari for tomorrow morning. Back “home”, watched some tv and went to bed.
16.5.2025. We got picked up at 7:20am and headed off for our safari. We don't really like safaris, they're expensive for what you get and you’re not in control. Why did we do this one? It's the only way to see white rhinoceros. We were in the park for 5 mins maybe, and there they were. We found a park officer, it's their job to watch and protect the rhinos. They're in camouflage and armed, it amazes me in this day and age there is still poaching. We drove back to the rhinos, and walked with him over to them. We were 15metres or so from 5 white rhinos, which in my opinion, is close enough. We were told there are only 9 in the park, and we got to see 5 of them, one of which was fairly young. After a short visit, we walked back to our vehicle, dropped the officer back at his then continued our tour. We didn't see much after that, got close to some giraffes and saw a few buffalo. Our guide told us buffalo are the most aggressive animal in Africa. I wouldn't like to mess with one. Not much else happened, we got a couple drinks and a packet of chips as a snack and got dropped back in the middle of Livingstone. It was awesome to see rhinos, that's the reason we took the safari, but the last 2 hours of it were a bit of a let down. Anyway, we had asked to be dropped in town because Emma needs a jumper, we never brought one for her. Not very far from where we got dropped off we came across some dancers and musicians. We had no idea what was going on, but we sat under a tree near a carpark and enjoyed the show. There were dancers in traditional outfits and people drumming and singing. We found out it was advertisement for a cultural festival happening tomorrow. Oh we'll be up for that. We sat there watching for ages. Afterwards we found a secondhand shop and found a jumper Emma liked on the cheap. The shops profits go towards helping children, so a good thing. We found some postcards, walked to the post office and sent them. We were starting to get hungry, we walked again along the main street looking for somewhere. It's all bloody touristy, burgers and chips and pizza, where's all the local food! I looked at GMaps, found a restaurant that was listed as “local food”, eh let's have a look. A little off the main road, good start. The “local food” was right, tho it wasn't one place, it was several places offering food. We ordered two plates of nshima with different foods on each, they had a lot of choice. It was cheap, it was local and it was delicious. This is where the people who work here, the locals, come to eat for lunch, soo good. Afterwards we discussed what we would do now, well there's a museum right there, let's do that. The museum had more artifacts and models from history. Village life from long ago and not so long ago. It had what I think were real stuffed animals, and lots of skulls with horns of various species. It also had a section on Dr David Livingstone, naturally. By the end of it we were all museumed out again. It was now just after 4pm, what now? Too far to walk back to our stay, hmmmm. How about a coffee? Or maybe a beer? Hey it's Friday, is there any live music tonight? We found a pub/bar/restaurant not far from us that advertised live music. We walked the wrong way for a little bit, backtracked and set off in the right direction. We got to a driveway and walked in, it opened up to a big bar area, a small cafe area and past that into a back area that hosted the live music. We sat and had a coffee first, this one was pretty good, we've had some not so good coffees in Zambia. After that we went into the bar area, but got told the kids weren't allowed. So we went out the back to place where the music will be. We had a couple beers, ordered food, which took forever to come out and listened to some music. It was a nice finish to a long day. We taxid back and went straight to bed.

17.5.2025. We organised a taxi to pick us up and take us to the Livingstone International Cultural Arts Festival. The flyer we got yesterday said it started at 8am. At 9:30am, when we drove through town, all the floats in the carnival where still in the middle of town at the post office. We got dropped off and walked in. There was still some setting up going, but they had some live music going on and we had a look around. Just before midday the carnival arrived, heaps of kids from the town preceding it. All the performers filled the area and did a huge welcome dance. They then all filed out, at that point we decided to get some lunch. Nshima again, oh yeah! Emma and I shared a sausage nshima and Andrew got a goat meat nshima. Mel got some other stuff, a fantastic muffin/scone thing and some fried salted sweet potato. We tried a Zambian beer we hadn't previously seen, Eagle lager. It was good, but I had to pee in the bush after that. We watched performers from all over Zambia, wearing traditional costumes, all different and different instruments were played. One performance, the main dancer looked like he had a rhino horn on his head dress. He was carrying a wooden stool around in his teeth, he placed it down and danced. After a bit he started walking our way. He kept coming closer and closer, then reached out and took Emma's hand. She was so nervous, she couldn't even look at him. With a little encouragement, she went out with him into the middle and sat on the chair he danced a bit, then brought her back. What an opportunity, Emma may not realise it right now, but that was a once in a lifetime kinda thing. We talked and I found out she felt terrified, I'm so glad she did it, and Em feels pretty good about it now. I watched Mel have a moment with a young fella, he had asked about Mel's camera, they had then spent a few minutes talking and Mel letting him take a few photos. He looked to be around Andrew's age, and they both seemed to enjoy the exchange. Unfortunately, we had organised to be picked up at 2pm, to be taken to the border. It got to 2pm way too fast, Andrew wanted to stay forever, he really loves watching live performances. Anyway, we had to go. Into the taxi and off to the Zambia/Zimbabwe border. Through passport check, walk across the bridge, through another passport check, this time Zimbabwe. The lady who owns our next stay was there waiting for us. With her help we got some money and organised a day of fun(ziplines and stuff), then took us to our flat. We were thinking of maybe heading out for dinner, but Mel was feeling shit, a migraine, so I asked the owner to run me to a supermarket and I grabbed some food for a few dinners. When I got back, I put Mel to bed, annoyed the kids for a bit, made dinner (cheesy pasta), fed everyone and put Mel back to bed. The kids and I them watched some tv and went to bed.
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