Two days of driving

Here is two days of driving in one go...

FRIDAY 5/1

Hi all,

Last night after I wrote, we had our pre departure meeting for the rest of the tour. We met our new guide, Elton, and a few new tour members. We lost eight passengers and gained seven new ones. Our guide seems pretty good, but maybe not as organised as Justin. 

As we were having breakfast this morning, the Vervet Monkeys at the campsite circled and tried to steal stuff out of our breakfast crates. They scare me, and with good reason! One lunged at Michael. I was glad to get away from them. Horrible little things. 

Today we left late (8.30am) so that some new people had time to go and see Vic Falls before we left. We drove for 9 hours and annoyingly made quite a few stops at shops along the way. We are hoping Elton now has a good amount of food so we don't have to do this much in the coming days. 

As we drove I noticed there were more fields in the areas we passed. Lots of people were out working and farming, and people were even mowing the lawn with basically a blade that they were swinging around. It looked like it would take a really long time!

They can't take boards down very frequently here, because boards for 2015 and 2016 elections were still up in various towns! We saw lots of colourfully painted buildings in the towns too. 

Between towns we saw small rural villages. These were either huts similar to the villages in Zimbabwe the other day, or small ones made of bricks with tin roofs being held down by rocks. Some peoples' houses had been painted with advertising and I think maybe companies offered them money to do this. 

People waved and smiled as we went past, and I couldn't help but feel guilty that merely because of my location of birth I have access to basic things like healthcare, somewhere secure to live and clean food and water, while all these people don't necessarily. But as we had already noticed, everyone here is so happy. Kids are outside playing, talking and laughing. Kids at home just sit inside playing video games now (mostly - not all!). 

As the sun fell towards the west, Rob and I copped it on the left hand side of the bus. I cured this by wearing his towel over my face, leg and arm. I don't want to get burnt and it's so hot in the sun! Bonus is it dries my towel too!

I stood for a couple of hours of the journey. Unfortunately our new bus, Chobe, isn't as good as our previous one. The lockers are slightly bigger, but we have no overhead racks or arm rests, and the seats are super uncomfortable. We copped some pretty awful potholes today too that saw us shaking from side to side, these will probably get worse as we head towards Malawi in a few days as it's quite a poor country. 

Finally around 6pm we made it to our campsite outside of Lusaka. I'm still having a good time, but I wish we got to see the places it lists on the itinerary. The itinerary describes what the cities are like (eg Lusaka is very cosmopolitan and is the capital of Zambia), yet we never get to actually visit. Never mind, I suppose I'm mostly here to see animals anyway!

Our camp is really nice and has tame zebras and giraffes. It's got a cute bar. 

SATURDAY 6/1

Hello all,

Slept pretty well last night - I went to bed at 9pm! It was the first night of the trip that it's been cool enough to sleep inside my sleeping bag properly. 

After a monkey stole a load of bread off us at breakfast, we drove through Lusaka on our way to South Luanga National Park (not stopping in Chipata like our itinerary says, we have an extra night in Tanzania somewhere instead). There were a few big buildings, lots of shopping malls and lots of Chinese companies. 

We stopped briefly in a town called Luangwa, right near the Luangwa River. As a result a lot of people were selling dried fish. It was pretty busy as there is a bridge nearby that's a pretty big connecting thoroughfare. 

Today's journey was a massive 12 hours and I'm really glad it's over. We passed the time by sleeping, eating snacks, talking, and I watched five episodes of 'The Crown' (season two is great!!). No other bus day is as long as this for the rest of the trip. And thank God, because by the end of it I could barely sit down anymore my hips/back hurt so much. The seats on this bus suck!

Tonight and tomorrow we are staying in an unfenced campsite at South Luangwa National Park. Elephants, hippos, lions, crocodiles and more wander free and might be right outside our tents later on. I'm pretty nervous and think I'll be glad when it's over!! We saw some elephants on the way into the camp, as well as some huge footprints in the sand. Eek!

Love to all

Claire

Xoxox