Livingstone - Tgon's Travels

Week 44 started in Livingstone, Zambia. I took some time to make sure my paperwork was in order and sent it off to the customs office in Namibia, this is to claim back the 450 Euro deposit I had to pay in order to have a temporary import permit for my bike. Hopefully this will arrive soon as my budget is running kinda low. From Livingstone we headed east to a lodge on Lake Kariba, a huge man-made lake on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. The lodge is on the grounds of the largest crocodile farm in Africa, they sell the skins for making bags, wallets and belts, the meat for food and the fat is used to make some special ‘healing cream’. We camped by the lake and took a tour around the farm in the morning before heading off east again to the capital of Zambia, Lusaka.

We stayed a couple of nights in Lusaka for Charlie to get his chain replaced then we split up for a few days. Charlie headed to South Luangwa safari park and I took a couple of days travelling east, over the border into Malawi to the capital city, Lilongwe. We met up again at the beginning of this week in a lodge on the banks of Lake Malawi. The lodge was in a small town called Monkey Bay and had been described as a ‘rustic camp’. The water was unbelievably clear and the weather was good, I met a couple of girls there who had been managing the lodge for a couple of months but were about to head off travelling again. We all decided to stay together for a while, as we were heading to the same place, Cape Maclear.

I had thought that Monkey bay was a paradise, but when we arrived in Cape Maclear I was amazed with the beauty of the place, beautiful calm fresh water in the lake, picturesque hills and mountains as a backdrop and lots of colourful Lake Malawi Chichlids to see when snorkelling. We have been in Cape Maclear for just over a week now, relaxing, socialising and doing a lot of swimming and snorkelling in the lake. In the evenings as the sun is about to set, children walk along the lake shore with home made instruments and busk for the tourists, I have managed to get some good pictures and videos together and will upload them when I can get some time on the internet. Cape Maclear is a place I could easily live out the rest of my life, but in a couple of days we will continue north along the edge of Lake Malawi towards the Tanzanian border.

Last weekend we crossed over the border from Botswana back into Namibia and stayed in the Ngepi lodge, we met a cool Canadian couple who travel all around the world in a loe budget style. They walk and hitchhike around, staying in cheap places and finding cheap or free ways to see the tourist attractions. They gave us some advice about Victoria Falls and other places along our Africa route and throughout Asia. From Ngepi we headed through the Caprivi strip to the Zambian border, there is a main road which runs through the Caprivi park, when you drive along it there is a chance that you will see elephants and other safari animals at the side of the road. We saw two groups of elephants before we arrived in the border town of Katima Mulilo.

My wrist has been hurting since the crash, two weeks ago, so I started looking into what the problem could be. I suspected it could be a fracture on my Scaphoid bone and decided that I should go to the hospital and get it checked out, I spent seven hours in the hospital, first I spent four hours waiting to see a nurse, then another two hours waiting to see a doctor. They sent me for an xray but couldn’t see any fracture and said it was probably soft tissue damage, so they gave me some cream, painkillers and bandages. Meanwhile Charlie was tired of sitting around in the guesthouse waiting for me so he left and crossed into Zambia, headed to Livingstone. The next day I followed him and was pleased to get into Zambia, it feels alot more like Africa, especially after the very German feeling Namibia. Now I have to start the process of claiming back the 450 pounds which I gave to the Namibian customs for my temporary import permit.

Over the last few days I have been chilling out in Livingstone, there are a lot of tourists here and it’s nice to speak with some English people again. On Friday night there was a full moon and the main tourist attraction was the lunar rainbow at Victoria Falls. A group of around nine of us set off to the park, but when we saw there were too many security guards for us to sneak in for free and the entrance was 25 US dollars each, we decided to skip it. We headed to the border and crossed out of Zambia without going all the way in to Zimbabwe, there is a large bridge which looks down onto the falls and its free to go there. We sat in a little shelter on the bridge for a couple of hours drinking beer and eating snacks with a soldier who was guarding the bridge. We saw the lunar rainbow and were out of beer, so we decided to leave. On the way back to the Zambian border post we decided to climb the fence into the Victoria Falls park, we wandered through the forest and found the main tourist walkway, we walked around seeing the falls without anyone else around then headed back to the hostel.

We are planning to leave Livingstone tomorrow heading to Lusaka and then on to Malawi.

Tag: Livingstone

Weeks 44 & 45: Zambia to Malawi

Week 43: Namibia to Zambia