Livingstone

Hi all,

So I've figured out a hack. Sit so far up the bar at our campsite that you're just about in the next one, and you can use their free wifi. Huzzah! Please see the posts below this one for rhino and Victoria Falls photos :)

We slept ok last night, and woke to pack up our stuff from our current bus. Livingstone is a central point where all different tours branch off, and we are starting with a new guide and bus tomorrow. 

After we were all organised, we got the free shuttle bus into Livingstone. We are having a very stressful time accessing money. We brought enough USD for our visas and a little bit more, but have run out. We were told it was fairly easy to get money out at local ATMs, but in Nelspruit last week one ate mine. The driver stopped us at one in Livingstone and I got the same message again - incorrect PIN. Some other Aussies were behind us and theirs wouldn't work either. In the bank the man told us they couldn't give us money, so the lovely driver (who had waited for 15 minutes at this point!) drove us to Barclays. By this point we were too nervous to use the ATM so we went inside. Here we had to get a ticket, and upon entry 23 people were in front of us. We had to wait in a queue, with the problem being that we had no water and $10 to our name. Not funny at the time, but I'm sure a good story to look back on. If you're ever coming to Africa, bring lots of USD! I wish we had brought more but I was apprehensive about carrying a lot of money around. 

Thankfully somehow it only took 40 minutes and we were able to get out a bit of money. We should be ok for a little while now but then we will face the same problem. We will have to find another Barclays!

After this we walked through the Curio Market. It was like a Zambian version of the Grand Bazaar in Turkey, we stood out like sore thumbs and everyone wanted us to look in their shop! Everyone wanted to know where we were from and shake our hands. It's sad because it's so hard to tell who's dodgy and who's genuine these days, but most people here seem lovely and are just trying to make a living. I wish I had more money available to spend so I could buy more and support them because their art and crafts are beautiful. I bought a necklace from a lady called Mary, who was really lovely and brought out lots of colours for me to look at. The one I chose is the colours of the Zambian flag - black, red, yellow/orange and green. 

We kept walking and ended up in some pretty interesting looking streets with lots of colourful buildings and some colonial looking buildings. At this point we had had no water for a couple of hours so started to struggle, but took comfort in knowing we had water purification tablets Mum and Dad gave me if we had to resort to using a tap. 

Relief wasn't too far away though - we found a supermarket and bought 6L of water each, then found a nice cafe where we sat for over an hour. They had air conditioning, lovely staff, good wifi (I was able to upload some photos from the last few days!) and delicious food. We had a chocolate milkshake each that was incredible. 

Then we walked up the road to the Livingstone Museum. We kept being accosted by people asking us to buy their products. Again I wish I had more money to spend and support them, but it certainly makes you appreciate how fortunate we are at home more every day. 

We spent about an hour in the museum looking at artefacts and reading about the indigenous people. We saw some stuffed animals and then went into the David Livingstone Gallery. 

David Livingstone was born in Scotland in 1813. He grew up wanting to spread gospel and help people in foreign lands. He was meant to go to China, but the opium wars started so he headed to Africa instead in 1840. During his time in Africa, he created missions and endeavoured to stop the growing slave trade here. He also did work for Queen Victoria exploring waterways of Africa to find more efficient routes for the English to use. 

Due to going through swamps in his explorations, he succumbed to illnesses such as malaria, dysentery and haemorrhoids. He died in 1873 and was buried 11 months later in Westminster Abbey. 

We also learned that Zimbabwe gained independence on October 24 1964. Then we headed backwards outside and walked back towards Barclays. The lovely man on the bus had offered to take us back to the campground along with staff he was picking up at 2.30 because he knew we didn't have much money. So kind!!

We did our washing, had a swim and then had dinner with some of our remaining group members (some jumped off here) in the restaurant at the campground. I had a yummy traditional beef stew. Lots of people were wearing their new tour T-shirts (I've attached a photo of mine - it's really cool!). 

Devil's Pool tomorrow, swimming on the edge of the waterfall. I'm a bit nervous!

Love to all

Claire

Xoxox