We spent our New Year's breezing down the upper Zambezi river on houseboats. It was a great way to end our five week African safari.
We arrived in Livingstone just in time to celebrate New Year's. Livingstone is the Zambian side of Victoria Falls, which are the world's largest falls. We had a bit of excitement when we arrived because we found out that one of the girl's (Alli) boyfriend was waiting for her in town. We were all a bit shocked because she had just spent the last seven weeks on the safari with Paul, who we all thought was her boyfriend. Paul and Alli quickly headed straight for the Zimbabwe border to get away from seeing him, but we later found out that they ran into him and there was a big blow out on the lawn of one of the nice lodges in town. Lucky for them, they were all booked on the same flight back to the UK on the 1st. That's the last we've heard.
We enjoyed the small and friendly town of Livingstone for a day before getting on the houseboat on the upper Zambezi river for three days. Early on the 30th before we boarded the boat, a few of us went on an early morning Rhino walk in the small local game park. We had heard that we would get close to the white rhinos, but had no idea that we would be about two feet away from them. These three rhinos are the last rhinos left in Zambia. Over the past 100 years, a herd of 60,000 rhinos have been poached in Zambia. They now have armed guards tracking and protecting these three rhinos 24/7. We spent a good hour with the rhinos. We watched them snooze and get up to move one or twice into shadier spots. Ian, our guide, enjoyed giving us the full skinny on their mating patterns and the full dimensions of the males' penises ... 15 kgs. I think he was proud for them! After the rhinos, we went on a walking safari around the park where we came quite close with a group of giraffes. They served us a wonderful picnic lunch on the banks of the Zambezi where we watched hippos and crocs enjoying the cool water on a very hot day.
After the rhino walk we headed straight for the houseboat. We were in heaven on the boat. It had very cute sleeping cabins on the bottom deck and a bar, hot tub, lounge chairs, and tables on the top deck. We were spoiled with gourmet cooking for three days - no dishes to clean and flap (flapping is how we dried the dishes while camping). We travelled slowly up the Zambezi seeing hippos and local fishermen paddling along.
On the second day, we got off at one of the remote fishing villages that was only accessible by water. We were welcomed on shore by the entire village. As we walked through the village to see them cooking fish, making home made beer, and socializing with one another, we had every child hanging off of us. As you would look behind you to talk to the others in our group, you would see four or five children hanging onto them leading them through the village. The children still amazed us even after so many village walks.
Our New Year's Eve party started out quite mellow but around 11pm the party finally kicked in. Our driver, Vanessa, had warned us earlier in the night that when she drinks she likes to do gymnastics. We didn't think much of it until she started hanging from the top bar on the houseboat and then continued to a hand stand on three people who were some how piled up on the lounge chairs. We all welcomed in the New Year and then more gymnastics and crazy dancing continued. That led to a huge water fight with the bar tender and Vanessa and Kirsty. Good times had by all - many, many laughs.
We left the boat on New Year's day after brunch and we headed for Victoria Falls for the afternoon. We had a bit of a shock when we got there because Pierette didn't wake up when we stopped the truck at the falls. We couldn't wake her and thought that she might have had a stroke or heart attack. We were all so worried and scared as they quickly hurried off to the hospital. We were relieved later on to find out that she just had malaria ... if you can say "just" malaria. After spending a night in the hospital she was released and is being treated properly.
It was pouring down buckets when we were let off at Victoria Falls. We still managed to see the falls through the mist and rain and they were spectacular. And at least the rain scared all of the other tourists away so we felt like we had the place to ourselves, which was rare.
We finished our part of the safari on January 2nd. Bow, Susan and I headed over to Zimbabwe for the night since we all had to catch our flights on the 3rd from Victoria Falls, Zim. It was an interesting experience being in Zimbabwe because of the political situation there at the moment. Their President, Mugabe, was elected in 2002 by bribing and torturing people leading to many problems nationally. Other nations do not recognize him as a proper leader and have banned any trading with Zimbabwe because of this. Therefore, there is a serious lack of money available. It was such a challenge to get our hands on any Zimbabwe Dollars to even go out for dinner or to pay for our room at the hostel. If we had changed our money at the banks for one US dollar we would have received 800 Zim dollars, but if we changed it on the black market we could get 4000 Zim dollars for one US dollar, which is what everyone tries to do.
We flew out of Zimbabwe yesterday, Jan 3rd, and arrived in Cape Town last night. We have a week here before we head off to South East Asia on Friday. We plan to hike Table Mountain, go to Robben Island (where Nelson Mandella was in prison), hit the beaches, and visit some familyand friends of friends.
Happy New Year to everyone at home!
Jill