| | |  Travel & Outdoors 
World Cup Travelog Part 3
 Peter Engel - PVNN
November 26, 2010
| | Zambia to Livingstone Falls and on to Botswana | |
Our first night in Zambia we spent in the only hotel in town, and the owner was also the chief of the local police. I did not want to ask how a policeman could afford a hotel, but at least we felt safe in his place.
The next morning, we caught one of the many buses going into Lusaka, the Capital. Zambia also is a big country with 752,000 km2 but has only a population of 12 million. It is clearly the poorest of the 5 countries we visited. Their currency is called "kwacha" and was 4,900: 1 against the US dollar. It does not take much to be a millionaire in Zambia because one million "kwacha" represents just over $200 USD. The country exports mainly cotton, sugar and minerals.
Lusaka, with about 1.3 million population, is smaller than Dar-Es-Salaam and has no traffic problem and by far not the same pollution level. There are clearly less vehicles and the streets are wide and can absorb the traffic as of today.
We also felt safe in this city but could not miss the much stronger presence of police and military forces throughout the city and country. We were astonished how well they spoke English. Unlike Tanzania the younger people in the streets were talking in English to each other.
Most of the people were dressed in western style with suits and tie and women in the city did not wear their traditional African dresses. Before 1964 the country was known as Northern Rhodesia before it changed the name to Zambia.
The day we arrived in Lusaka there was a big international conference of the UN forces and it was very difficult to even find a hotel room. They were going for as much as $300 dollars per night, a price we were not willing to spend. So we had to install ourselves somewhat outside the city center.
Like in all those countries there are many taxis and they like to transport foreign customers because most of them leave a good tip. We had our personal taxi driver for $20 dollars per day and he showed us around and was waiting while we were doing our sightseeing.
You might think that $20 dollars is not very much per day, but a teacher makes about $60 dollars per month! It is obvious that these people can never do their shopping in a shopping center. Alone this name guarantees for very high prices because of the rents in those plazas.
If somebody looks for a good restaurant of western style they will always find it in a shopping center plaza, but their prices have not much in common with any other restaurant in the country. Shopping plazas are gathering points of the white people as well as the rich and famous of the country.
After just 2 nights in Lusaka we took a bus south to Livingstone, the city named after the Scotsman who discovered Victoria Falls in 1855. The bus station did not look like one in a third world country. It was very clean, vendors were not allowed inside the station and there was a huge sign hanging, indicating the fines for at least 10 offenses like public urinating, throwing garbage on the floor or washing the face in the toilet.
When traveling by bus we were always looking for a big coach. They are a bit more expensive but have toilets, TV and the drivers are obeying the traffic signs and don't speed. On previous trips I have traveled in smaller buses and they always overloaded their vehicles and drove much too fast with their poorly maintained small buses. I stopped doing this because I do not want to put my life into the hands of a crazy local driver.
After an 8 hour bus ride we arrived in Livingstone. This is the getaway point for the world famous Victoria Falls and this city has more hotels and guest houses than any other place I have ever been to. As we were out of season it was easy to find a good accommodation at a modest rate.
The next day we hired a cab to go to those famous falls, the largest in the world by the quantity of water flow. The Sambesi River is about 1,700 meters wide when it drops 100 meters into a gorge. I read that 10 million liters of water fall over the edge per second.
At the time of our visit the water level of the river was extremely high and the foam rose about 200 meters into the air, which made the visibility very foggy and we were unable to see the whole falls. It is possible to walk down to the gorge through a rain forest, which was really worth the effort.
My friend had the great idea to bite into an apple when we made a rest and he could hardly take one bite before a big male "baboo" attacked him and he had no other choice than throwing the apple to the monkey. He grabbed it and took his time to eat it right in front of us, at least allowing some pictures.
There is a huge bridge over the gorge and in the middle is "no man's land." We visited the falls on the Zambian side; on the other side of the bridge is the border to Zimbabwe, the former Rhodesia. We did not enter this country as it is not recommended because of the unstable political situation.
Adventurers can make a 98 meter deep "bungee jump" from the middle of the bridge if they are willing to spend $120 dollars. As always, our taxi driver had been waiting for us and when we returned to his car he had a flat tire. He explained to us that he had left his taxi territory and somebody did it on purpose to warn him; tough life!
And finally, some observations I made in Zambia. I saw many solidly built western style houses. All of them were empty and abandoned. I was told that a British help organization built them after 1964 when they separated in order to provide them with better accommodation. But people from the tribes don't want to live in those houses; they prefer to stay in their traditional huts and environment.
Like in Tanzania, the rural area is very poor and all the field works are done by hand. The mother carries the baby on her back, the 6-year-old takes care of the 3-year-old and the 10-year-old takes care of all of them. There are no day care homes or similar institutions.
Children who do not go to school stay either with their grandparents or are taken along to the field. Even though the public school is free they have to pay for the books and many families can't even afford this. I can't remember having seen one single dog in Zambia; Viva Mexico!
We mistakenly thought that major credit cards would be accepted world-wide, but not so in Zambia. There are of course some places which accept them in Lusaka, but we happened to be in Livingstone on a weekend when all our local cash was gone. No more US Dollars and Euros in our pockets, no bank open and no money machine was willing to accept our Master Card, because Visa cards are much more common in Zambia. My friend still had some cash in Swiss Francs and we tried to change them in the street. At first nobody was interested in CHF and later on we were approached by two guys who said they would exchange them.
The exchange rate seemed a bit low but we had no alternatives. So we accepted the deal and they gave us the counter value in Kwacha, their currency. My friend was counting the money and it did not match with the amount they were supposed the pay us. One of them asked to count the money into his hand to verify and this is when I knew that they wanted to cheat us.
Indeed, he let some bills disappear in his palm and we were lucky that we had not given them our Swiss francs yet. I read about this trick in a travel book and street changers are well known to use some illegal methods. We did not lose money that day, but we still had no local money to go out. However, this was the only time we had a bad experience on the whole trip and I would return to Tanzania and Zambia any time.
Arriving from Zambia, there is only one way to enter Botswana. The mighty Sambesi River is about 4 km wide and builds the border between Zambia and Botswana. An old, run down ferry with a stinky engine makes daily trips as long as there is daylight.
The ferry can only carry one truck at the time and there was a queue of at least 150 trucks on both sides waiting to cross the border. Asking a truck driver, he told me that the waiting time generally is 10-14 days. The ferry is not only old and slow, it often breaks down and there is no alternative or back up ferry to cross this river.
Botswana has a surface of 603,000 km2 but only 1.6 million people. The Capital Gabarone with a population of 210,000 is on the southern border to South Africa and there really is no other bigger city. Their currency, the pula, is linked to the South African rand and about 7: 1 to the US dollar. Botswana is one of the richer countries in Africa with many mines and game reserves all over the country.
Those parks, whether national or private, have heaps of wild life. The Central Kalahari games reserves is Africa's largest protected region covering an area of over 52,000 km2, which is bigger than Switzerland. The Okavango Delta is one of the world's largest inland water systems and the Chobe National Park has one of the largest elephant populations.
We had reserved a luxury lodge about 30 km from the border, and this was a wise decision because once we got off the ferry there was no bus, train or taxi available. A driver from our lodge in a little town called Kasane picked us up and drove us to our accommodation where we stayed 4 days. This lodge was placed just outside the national park on the shore of the Chobe River, a stream which runs into the Zambesi River shortly after.
Like in all those private guest houses food is included and our lodge had an excellent German chef and fine tasting South African house wine. As I mentioned, there is a good number of lodges and game parks in Botswana, but none of them are cheap. I often asked myself who is paying that much money to spend a night in Africa's nature?
Our lodge had the advantage that we could go for game drives in a jeep or by boat on the river. Towards dusk most of the animals come to the Chobe river for "a drink," just like people going to the bar for an "apιro." We did twice a sunset boat tour and I have to admit that we could observe wild life much better from the boat than in the dense bush. We saw just about all the animals during our stay, except for lions.
The little town of Kasane is located between the Chobe National Park and the Chobe river, but there is no fence at all. Many of those animals cross town when walking to the river. One day I went jogging and ran into two elephant herds, monkeys, warthogs and many impalas, we would call them deer. Where else in the world can you do this than in Africa!
During our time at the lodge we learned that getting around in Botswana is not easy without a rental car. There was none available were we stayed and there was no bus or plane available on our departure date. Therefore we decided to enter Namibia directly and rent a vehicle there. We had to call a taxi from the closest city in Namibia, 230 km away, in order to get out of Botswana.
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