Zambia
Trip Start
Oct 10, 2008
1
25
31
Trip End
Mar 01, 2009
Tsumeb,
Namibia
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Zambia is one of the least populated
countries in Africa with 16 people per sq km.
There are vast stretches of country with bush and some smaller
settlements while there are very few larger cities. The northern copper-belt is denser populated with people working
in the mines.
Our travels were through the Eastern
province, Lusaka and the Southern province.
This region has an elevation around 1000m. The capital Lusaka has an altitude of 1200m. We found the main roads were good, well sign
posted. If the road was bad and full of
potholes is was already under construction to be rebuilt by the Chinese.
We spent two nights at Croc Valley Camp on
the Luangwa River, visited the South Luangwa National Park twice on game drives,
seeing many elephants, crocodiles, a family of lions (mother and two 3-4months
old cubs) and hippos. Hippos and elephants came very close to the camp site; we
could hear the noise of the hippos' munching out on the grass and they snort
like big pigs. The camp manager had warned us to be on the lookout for them
during any nightly convenience visit. One hippo even walked through the camp
during the early afternoon changing to relax in the river. Hippos normally walk on the bottom and have
to come up for air every 5-6 minutes.
Even though they are huge animals with very short legs they can move
quite fast on land. We also got served hippo steak one night but didn't know
about it beforehand. It tasted much
like veal. There are normally too many
hippos on the Luangwa River and some have to be culled every year.
The dirt road to the South Luangwa National
park from Chipata was partly in a terrible state; so much so that one of our
vehicle got stuck in a very large and deep puddle. The tow rope had to come out for the bogged car and lots of humorous
comments were made.
As there is so much unused land in this
country Zambia offered land for farming to the Zimbabwean farmers fleeing their
country. Therefore the country is now
self sufficient in food production and exports corn and other grains. But still the country is poor, heavily
indebted, has a high unemployment and HIV/AIDS infection rate. A lot of children and young people are
orphaned. We heard that to become rich fast one should open an orphanage as they
are sponsored by overseas aid agencies.
The majority of Zambians are Christian with
a small percentage of Muslims and Hindu.
Christianity was brought here first by Dr David Livingstone while on his
many travels through the African continent between 1840 and 1874. We visited the museum in Livingstone and
were very impressed how well this regional museum was exhibited compared with
others we had visited in other African countries. We were especially interested in the section on Dr Livingstone's
life and travels.
The town of Livingstone is a hype for
tourists visiting the Victoria Falls also called "The Smoke that Thunders" and
the first white man to see them was Livingstone in 1855. The Zambezi river is
the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe here and offers a lot of activities for
dare devils or not: rafting, valley swings, bungee jumping and lots more.
The Victoria Falls are huge, running very
wide at this time of the year. We spent about three hours walking around and
getting very wet! The falls thunder
into a very narrow gorge and therefore create a lot more spray that shoots up
vertically and then comes down as a heavy rain. Consequently, we all got very
wet but thanks to the warm climate one dries out within an hour! The Zambezi
carries on into three more gorges that are all very narrow.
The place we camped at was called "The
Grotto" and owned by a Kiwi. Originally, this grand house was built in 1927 by
the Knutsen family of Norway (they also own shipping companies) who used to own
the local timber mill producing all the railway sleepers for the building of
the railway line. We camped on a great
lawn under beautiful old trees and Frangipani that were 6-8m high!
Livingstone is booming in business with quite
a few hotels and resorts being built.
Still, at night one shouldn't walk on one's own and our camp was guarded
24/7 by a security firm.
We took part in one activity on the Zambesi
river: a sunset and booze cruise! It was great as there were only a dozen
people or so on the catamaran type boat, drinks were free and we saw quite a
bit of wild life, among it a crocodile swimming alongside the boat waiting for
a bun to be thrown for it.
