Livingstone
Trip Start
Jun 28, 2007
1
10
15
Trip End
Aug 07, 2007
Livingstone,
Zambia
Friday, July 13, 2007
Caught the 6:30 bus to Livingstone. This is the first time I've been on a bus with 5 seats across. It is the same kind of nice, big coach that one usually gets in other places in the world. In most countries, though, the bus has four seats across and in Argentina, only three. Here in Africa, FIVE seats across. And packed to the last seat, of course. The aisle is so narrow that it is necessary to go down it sideways. Of the 66 passengers on the bus, I had by far the lightest complexion and blondest hair.
We were treated to a Nigerian movie about a gangster who had the father of his enemy killed - and then the daughter of the man who was killed came back from America engaged to be married to the son of the man who ordered the killing. You can imagine what havoc that played. It was the most convoluted plot I've ever seen in a movie but the Zambians on the bus loved it
01-My room at Fawlty Towers
. Somehow they appeared to relate to it, which caused me to have second thoughts about whether I was on the right bus or not.During the first 3 1/2 hours of the 6 hour ride, I actually had a very interesting conversation with a local gal who happened to be a molecular biologist. That doesn't happen to me every day. If you think that we conversed about molecular biology, you would be mistaken. Instead, she preferred to talk about human relationships - particularly of the kind between men and women. She was recently married and wanted to know my opinion on the subject of marital fidelity and such. I'm afraid that she was talking to the wrong guy if she was expecting a confirmation of the "one man, one woman, happily together forever after" theory of relationships. (I subscribe to the "One man, as many women as possible without getting caught - and if you do get caught, deny it" theory.) Still, we had a very interesting conversation.
We arrived at Livingstone at a quarter past noon and I was able to secure accommodation (at Fawlty Towers - no kidding) for two of the four nights of my planned stay in Livingstone. The first place I checked, the highly recommended Jolly Boys Backpackers, was full, and even Fawlty Towers is fully booked for Friday and Saturday night, meaning that I will have to move to another place after my first two nights at Fawlty Towers
02-Man painting wall at Flour Factory
. It seems to be the highest part of the high season here now, causing hotels to be full and prices to be high. Even my spartan room tonight is costing me $35 a night.In the afternoon, after having a passable pizza for lunch at the Funky Monkey, I visited the travel agent at Fawlty Towers to see if I could join some kind of overland tour through Botswana to Namibia. Unfortunately, the on-the-ground reality that I was counting on did not materialize. There are no such tours passing through in the next couple of weeks, so instead, I opted for a one-day game viewing tour of the Chobe National Park in Botswana. It takes a minimum of two people to do this tour and there were already three people booked for tomorrow (Thursday), but none for Friday when I would have preferred to go. So I just changed the order of things a bit and signed up for the Thursday tour to Botswana and decided to see the Victoria Falls during one of the remaining days in Livingstone before my departure on Sunday.
After booking that tour to Botswana, I immediately went down to the South End Travel Agency to book my bus ticket to Windhoek, Namibia for next Sunday. This bus only goes twice a week so I wanted to be sure to book it enough in advance to guarantee a ticket for myself. The bus will depart on Sunday at noon and arrive in Windhoek, Namibia at around 6 on Monday morning. It's a long trip, but price was right (50 bucks US) and the bus should be comfortable from what I've seen on their website.
