December Vacation – Zambia (Round 1)

This is part two of many, so if you are not up to speed, don’t worry because none of this story really depends on the previous parts.

Fawlty Towers in Livingstone is a large set of buildings located about five minutes from the town center and about an hour walk from Victoria Falls which, unlike Popa Falls, are real, full on, no joke, falls. Fawlty Towers has a few dorm rooms set inside the one real “tower” which is really only two stories tall. Each dorm room has four beds and a little space to cram all the junk you brought with you. There are single and double bed rooms set around a courtyard that has a swimming pool and doubles as the camping area. One danger with camping in the Fawlty Towers courtyard: those nice shady trees overhead have mangoes about thirty feet up. A fully ripe mango falling from thirty feet is not something that many tent manufacturers plan for. Robin had set up her tent out of the blast radius so was safe and we were staying in the dorm rooms making the only mango problems the occasional ‘WHAM!’ sound from one of the neighboring corrugated metal roofs.

The next morning it was time for our rafting adventure. We had signed up for a full day of white water rafting on the Zambezi starting right after Vic Falls. We were picked up at Fawlty Towers in the morning and driven down to a different lodge where we were served breakfast, outfitted, and given the “scary talk.” The scary talk was what to do if we got into a bad place outside of the boat. Throughout the day, we would be going through everything from calm waters to class five rapids. We were in a group of about twenty five people divided between four rafts with three or four chase kayaks, a boat of other guides who were just along for the fun of it, and six other customers who were doing the river boarding deal where they spent most of the day going down on boogey boards. They were referred to as the “crocodile biscuits”.

We walked down the long hill to the start point which was an eddy pool around the corner from the base of the falls. Looking up stream you could make out the end of Victoria Falls at her full height and down stream was the bridge where the bungee jumpers were losing their lunch into the river. After getting into the boat and going over the commands with our guide, Babyface, our first task was to cross the rapids that made up our eddy pool. After the falls, the river went down a long rapid that gained speed through a narrow canal and then continued through a more open area before running smack into the wall of the canyon. When the water hit, the current split off to the left and the right. The left water came back and circled in a calm pool about ten to fifteen meters in radius, which is where we were getting into the boats. The right water continued down stream. We had to paddle up to the end of the canal and paddle like mad across the current to get far enough that the rapid would spit us out going down the river instead of circling back around in the left side pool and having to start over again.

We started out with our first attempt and failed miserably. Circling back around, we gave it another go. It was Robin, Carl, Angie, a South African guy, an Australian girl, and myself at the hollering voice of our guide saying, “Go! Go!” and then silence. We were about half way down the rapid and making no progress across it when all the other boats started yelling at us and waving. We looked behind us and Babyface had fallen out. Our first rapid of the day and we fail once and lose our guide on the second try. This is going to be good. Carl takes charge of the situation and starts saying commands, but we are at the mercy of the current at this point so it’s back into the calm waters of the left side pool for us. Third time was a charm with none of us wanting to go through that again.

The first rapid of the day was an intentional flip by all the guides. We went into the first wave sideways and the boat came up high on the left and dumped us all in and spat us out at the other end. We could read the body language of the guides so had a pretty good idea it was coming and it was probably good to get us used to the process of getting flipped and then getting back into the boat. We went through another easy rapid after that, which warmed us up for the big show. We approached the third rapid, a 4+ or 5 and got flipped at the second wave. I had been coughing water out from the previous wave when I went under so didn’t have much air in my lungs in the first place. At first, it was all dark over my head. I gulped once, and yes it is true that I cannot breathe underwater. Still dark over my head, I must be under the boat so I start flailing. Suddenly, it’s light overhead so I start swimming. Another gulp to confirm my previous hypothesis. The surface seems like a mile away. Finally my head comes up and I cough back what I took from the Zambezi only to get another mouthful from the next wave. I’m bobbing around going through more rapids. Every time I come up on the crest of a rapid I can see a little bit of what’s going on around me before I get smacked in the face with another wave. The boat is upside down behind me. Carl and Angie are holding a couple of the kayaks to my right. There are two oars around me, which I grab. Don’t really know what I was going to use those for since the boat was upside down behind me and all of my boat-mates were coughing out water and looking equally as panicked and confused as me. One of the kayakers is telling me to get my feet up and face down stream. He asks me if I’m alright. Compared to thirty seconds ago, I reply with a whole hearted, yes! I think that exchange kicked my head back into gear because I realized my sunglasses were attached to my forehead. Put those back on to help hide the dying terror that was probably still plastered to my face. I got into a rhythm of breathing before the waves and rode out the rest of the rapid, letting the river decide when I could get back to the boat.

After we reached calmer water, we regrouped and get back in the boat. It took two kayakers and a few minutes of searching to get all our paddles back. We had flipped early in the rapid and when the boat came over, the big South African guy had hit Angie in the cheek, knocking her glasses off. I must have been under the boat at first and was probably under water for only ten seconds or so, though it felt like ten minutes. Though exciting that first time, we were all in agreement that flipping sucked and we would do all we could to avoid it for the rest of the day. After that rapid, which many people either fell out or flipped on, a few decided that they would opt out after lunch and one guy bailed for the rest of the trip. That was the most difficult rapid we would run that day. We almost got into a bad spot on a different rapid where we had to stay right and then cut back left to avoid a big boulder that had the “washing machine” on the other side. We stayed right but didn’t make the turn to cut back left so we had to back paddle and get ourselves stuck up on some rocks above and to the right of the “washing machine”. Walking around, we saw what we were trying to avoid. The washing machine was a big curl of water falling about six feet high and eight feet at its widest point which curled back on a wave on the other side, sucking you right back in. It looked like it would just bounce you around in circles next to the rock until someone pulled you out from the side.

We had lunch next to the river. The company we were with brought lunch down from the rim and we ate in the sun, and attempted to reapply sunscreen, though this would prove to be futile by the end of the day. The half-day people left after lunch for the long walk back up to the road while the rest of us got back in the boats. In total, only one boat was out so we still had a fair line of people going down the rest of the river which was much tamer than the first half. That isn’t to say that I didn’t end up in the drink a few more times. I was in the middle of paddling when the boat tipped a little too much and I went over the side all alone. And for the not so accidental times, let’s just say that you shouldn’t turn your back on a river guide in calm water, especially if you splashed him with your paddle earlier in the day.

At the end of the day, we didn’t have to walk all the way up the hill. The full day trip ends where a cable car will take everyone up the steepest three quarters of the canyon, but I couldn’t see anything that would realistically stop us if the cable broke or the engine seized up. Well, I suppose the river would eventually stop us, but that’s only after crashing through a barricade of rocks and trees and then flying off a thirty foot cliff. But I’ll take it since I’m sure not walking up this stupid hill!

Back at the lodge again for dinner, we watched the raw video they had been taping all day that would be put into a DVD anyone could buy. We got to see our first (and easiest) flip but the camera stopped before our bad flip happened. The washing machine part was taped from right above where we got stuck, which was pretty cool, but we just sort of stop and then look around at each other. Being cheap, we opted out of purchasing the DVD and got a ride back to Fawlty Towers.

The next day was a laze about day to nurse our sunburns and sore limbs. We watched TV all day in the lounge and wandered around the town of Livingstone. Livingstone has a small town center with a hotel and a lot of little shops and booking places that you would expect in a tourist town. There is an open market next to the bus station that caters to the local crowd more than the tourist and was a welcome change from the open markets we were used to. The markets in Namibia usually consist of a dozen people coming up and telling you how good a price they will give you and you should come and have a look. The good price is usually twice what it should be and you are coming to have a look at the same stuff you saw at the other eleven places. This open market was different. It was a real market and not a bunch of little trinkets and souvenirs. There was a guy selling bolts and screws and a toilet next to the place selling pirated DVDs right across from the place that sold paraffin oil in plastic coke bottles. You could buy fruit, fabric, alcohol, flour, shoes, hats, phones, bath stuff, and the occasional TV or used stereo speakers. The locals looked at us not as tourists to try and hawk stuff to, but as tourists who were obviously out of place and just passing through.

That night, we went to what could be the most exciting restaurant we’ve been to yet. We were all looking forward to… Subway. That’s right, Livingstone had just opened its first Subway sandwich shop. And, oh, the beauty of corporate America! The menu was exactly the same as any Subway in the states. Granted, since they had just opened, some things were missing. Like the sun chips, cookies, and parmesan oregano bread, but we can look past that. I was still able to get a steak and cheese foot-long on honey oat bread.

We were up early the next day to try and get a hike to Lusaka. Carl took the bus back to Namibia that day since he had to get to Merry Ol’ England for his vacation. Angie, Robin and I had to move on through Zambia. The transport in Zambia is a little different than the transport in Namibia. In Namibia, there are few enough people that the mini bus drivers will pack the bus full for one destination and then leave with no room for others. In Zambia, there are enough people going to enough places that the buses we found would leave seventy-five to ninety percent full and then cram the other twenty-five to forty percent in as they pick people up on the way. Yes, that does add up to the buses being filled to only 130% capacity, but I’m not counting babies and livestock. Since any bus will stop on its way out of town, we had to walk way out of town before we could start to look for a ride. This was about a thirty minute walk with an extra ten minutes taken sitting in the doorway to a bank waiting for a downpour to pass. We eventually got a ride with a Zambian in his luxury Toyota Land Cruiser with A/C and leather interior. Tough times. It was a long way to Lusaka, but very nice to see more of Zambia. We watched the green hills and large corn farms pass and then got into the more mountainous country in the last hour heading into Lusaka.

Lusaka is a city. A big city. A really big, densely populated, bustling city with traffic jams, big buildings, buses, trucks, cars, bikes, people, fumes, and all the other things that big cities have. And it took a minute to adjust. We got dropped at Chachacha Backpackers a few blocks from the main strip. We got our tents set up and went out to change our money since the only thing we had was South African Rand. Since Angie’s glasses were sitting at the bottom of the mighty Zambezi, we had gone to an eye place in Livingstone for new glasses. They had them made in Lusaka, so she was able to do the eye exam there and choose the frames then we could pick them up in Lusaka the next day, which was today. We had the street name and a small map of the city so we set out on our errands. The main strip of Lusaka is set on the other side of the railroad tracks from the residential zone we were staying in. We walked to the nearest main road and crossed the rails to get to Cairo Road where the money changing places were. As we descended the other side of the bridge, headed for Cairo, a man walked right at Angie and ran into her. She checked her pockets and still had everything so we went on. When we reached Cairo, we headed north and had our second incident in less than a block. A man, who appeared to be a few cards short of a full deck, fell into step right next to Robin, the only person in our trio with a bag. She would slow down, he would slow down. We were all staying close so she wasn’t alone in this. Finally, after a few more speed adjustments, we all just stopped in the middle of the busy sidewalk and told him to keep moving. He started gesturing up the street and shaking his head, saying something that was unintelligible but ultimately irrelevant. After playing the slow walk game for another ten feet, we ducked into the nearest shop which was a stamp making place. The woman looked kind of surprised to see customers, but then we tried to explain that we were avoiding a mugging. We stood there for a minute or two while the guy waited outside. I started getting frustrated that we couldn’t get on with the things we wanted to do so I went and stood outside staring at him. He went back to his story about the other end of the street and kept walking. Eventually, he started to cross the street so we moved on past him. He met up with some other guy, probably his partner, and they crossed together. Two attempted robberies in one block. I suddenly don’t like Lusaka.

We had originally been trying to find this place to pick up Angie’s glasses but shouldn’t have crossed the tracks. We decided that we could just see more of the town by walking up to the next main cross street and going back across the tracks to the east and then down the street we were supposed to be on in the first place. We crossed back over and turned right down a different street but had gone too far back so we had to go in a side road to find the road we were supposed to be on. Even then, everywhere we asked had no idea of where Optic-lab was. We eventually found it tucked back behind another building within sight of the first main street we had taken to cross the railway. I’m sure that last part was pretty boring, but it was really just so that I can challenge Amy’s Dad to find out how far we walked that day.

The next morning, we got a taxi to the north end of town so we could look for a hike to the border. A security company car picked us up and said we’d have better luck at the police check point so we rode with them there. At the checkpoint the “police” (none of which were wearing uniforms) got a ride for us to the next police check point which was, again, supposed to be a better place to wait. This place at least had police who were in uniforms. Angie and I sat next to the road waiting for a ride while Robin tried to convince the police that we did, in truth, not have enough money to spend on a bus ticket all the way to Malawi. This was mostly the truth. We probably had enough money to get TO Malawi, but paying the full fare for every ride would mean that we wouldn’t have enough money on the ride back. Plus, after paying the bill at Chachacha’s, we really were running out of Zambian kwacha and didn’t want to change money again.

After about an hour, a bus from the Chipata College of Education pulled up and said we could go with him. It was an empty bus and we agreed to pay him a hundred rand total for the three of us. No where near the right amount, but when the prices are in the tens of thousands in kwacha, a hundred of just about any other currency sounds good. (Incidentally, I still have a fifty kwacha note that I use as a book mark since it’s worth about a penny.) He asked what the conversion was and we told him that it was worth about sixty thousand kwacha, depending on the day. He was fine with it, especially since the police gave him a form that said he was allowed to have passengers as he went through other checkpoints. This was the green light for him since from then on we were picking up and dropping off people right and left. It made the trip longer, but we always had enough room to lie down and nap.

We rode to Chipata and the bus driver let us off at the taxi rank that takes you the last ten minutes to the border. Worst possible place I’ve been as a white person with a bag: Chipata taxi rank. Most places the taxi drivers, souvenir salesmen, or money changers will just wave and yell to you. Here, they come runnin. One shoves a stack of bank notes in your face while another pulls your bag towards a car that is running on two spares and faith. All the while, ten others are trying to do the same thing. We had a routine down by now where we would agree on the highest price the three of us would pay before we got to the mayhem and then wait for someone to agree. If by some miracle, someone offered less than what we expected, we would go with them. In the midst of the crowd, I grabbed the nearest guy and said that we were going to the border but only had 19000 kwacha left and didn’t want to change more. The normal fair, we were told, was 10k per person, leaving us 11k short or the 30 they wanted. As usual, it took two tries to get across the idea that this was all we had and we would ride with the first person who agreed. The guy I had grabbed walked me over to a car and said it was fine. We put our stuff in and started waiting. The car never goes until there are so many people inside that it takes a collective breath in to get the doors shut. So now we had to wait as the only three customers in a frighteningly aggressive taxi rank. Angie and Robin sit inside the back seat while I occupy the money changers with both real and feigned stupidity. “Now why would I get more money with him than with you? And is this even real? Look at that eagle; it looks like a child drew it! And your money is so dirty, he’s got cleaner money.” And then some guy runs up and gets in the driver’s seat and starts the car. This isn’t the guy we talked to before. There are four other taxis that have started their engines and we are in a mad dash out of the parking lot.
“Wha? What’s going on?”
“We must get to the bus before they do” is the driver’s reply.
We’re in a race to the bus station which is three blocks away. A bus from somewhere just pulled up and we need to get every person who is going to the border. We slam out of the parking lot and cut down a side road. We turn off in between a few street vendors and splash down a potholed alley way and round the back of a building to come to a sliding halt behind a big bus. Before the car has stopped, the driver is out and repeating the same thing as before, only with Africans he is more aggressive. With us, the drivers would only pull the bags. With these passengers, they are actually taking them out of their hands. It might have helped that ours were strapped to us, but I still think that they would have dragged one of these poor souls had the bag been attached. We weren’t the first to arrive, but we have a trump card: the three of us are already in the car which means that this will be the first car to go. We cram the luggage into the back end and stuff one more (big) lady in the back with us and two more people in the front. The driver shoves the door shut on the lady sitting next to me and gets back in with a ‘clunk’ verifying that we have bottomed out the car.

On the way to the border, the driver leans out the window and starts hollering at kids and adults who are coming the other direction. One thing that translates in most languages is, ‘police’. We are overloaded and the one thing that police will write a ticket for is an overloaded car. So we turn around and go back to town. Part way back, the driver talks to another person who says something that causes the big lady next to me to say something else and we turn around again. Hey, whatever works. We turn back around and fly like the wind up to the border. It was about 4:55 when we left and 5:00 when we turned around so I think the back tracking was just to give the police enough time to go off duty and leave the checkpoint. We got to the border and untangled ourselves, spilling out of the car. After getting our bags, we hand the driver our money. He wants the other eleven thousand. We are slowly attracting a new set of money changers who hang out near the border and have to go through the same negotiation we did before with the first guy. “This is all the money we have and he put us in your car and said that it was fine. If you want your eleven thousand, you should go back and get it from him because that is all we have in kwacha.” I really did feel bad for the guy. He assumed we had the money and his friend didn’t make it clear otherwise. For better or for worse, one of the new money changers understood what I was saying and took our side in the discussion. We gave the driver every last kwacha we had down to the last note. I think it turned out to be 19,400 or something and he seemed satisfied.

We went into the Zambia exit post and filled out our exit forms. “Reason for leaving Zambia:” Chipata money changers. Two of the three of us had enough days left on our visas to get back into Zambia in January. The one other person didn’t have enough and we asked the border person if there would be a problem. He said no and we just had to talk to him next time. Okay, so the next time we go through we just have to say, “oh yeah, that hundred US dollar visa? Paul said it’d be no problem.” We decided we could figure something out in Malawi. So no visa to get one person through Zambia on the way back. And we can’t go around because Zimbabwe is a no-go for PCVs. And we don’t have time or money to go all the way to Mozambique and around through South Africa. I love these vacations…

On with the taxis! We get our passports stamped by the Malawian border post, which is infinitely more friendly than the Zambian. With no Malawian kwacha (yes, Zambia and Malawi both use kwacha, but at different values) and only rand, we have to negotiate our taxi ride to Mchinji in kwacha and then convert that to rand, subtract from the hundred rand bill (which is all we have) and convert the change back to kwacha and then convey all of this to the driver. He’s patient with it as I show him on my cell phone calculator and agrees that the change we get will be correct. Now all we need are four other people. We pack the car much in the same way as before, but this time we have eight people total instead of seven so it’s four in the back and four in the front, two of which are in the driver’s seat. I think the driver was doing most of the driving, but someone else might have been shifting for him. We get to Mchinji and reserve our place in the next bus going to Lusaka. It’s getting dark out now and we’re all pretty hungry. The taxi driver tells us what the correct fare should be in kwacha and I’m trying to do the exchange in my head to rand but not all the pistons are firing and I accidentally offer double what we should pay. It was supposed to be fifty rand for the three of us and I agree to pay a hundred though. We waited for the bus to get full, which took about a half hour and then the ride was another hour after that. We stopped every few kilometers to let someone on or off, which gave me enough time to do the math again and figure out the problem. I don’t pay up front as a rule so as we got closer to Lilongwe I did the math again with the driver and proved that we should only pay fifty rand. Thankfully, money talks and he followed the math as I showed it so agreed that we should only be paying fifty rand with a little bit of kwacha extra. We got to the bus station and had no desire to deal with more taxi drivers so we paid the other fifty rand for a ride directly to Kiboko Camp where we would stay the night. We got there a little before nine in the evening and the desk woman came out to greet us. She verified that we had paid a fair amount for the whole trip. A little over, but nothing to haggle about. After twelve or more hours of traveling, we were ready for a break. The kitchen was closed, but those peanut butter sandwiches tasted so good. We met up with Dani (from Group 24 in Namibia) who was traveling through with her dad and sister on their way up to Lake Malawi and just happened to be staying in Kiboko camp as well. Since we were all going the same way, it made sense to enjoy fun of the minibus transport system of Malawi together, and resolved to go to the buses together tomorrow morning. We set the tents up (on an ant nest, but we’ll realize that tomorrow) and slept.

Next time: we learn the connection between chickens and Malawian buses.