Victoria Falls

So the Czech post is extremely long, so in order to save time, I will try my best to describe main points and we'll see how long it gets, we can skype and I will tell you all about it. Photos descriptions are bilingual.

Smiracku, yes, you need to read this one as well, it's gonna be different :)

I met Dorothee and Nanette on the airport in a line to pay tickets, they stole our telephone lines in the compound so I could not fax my cr.card info to the South African Airways (and I forgot to do it too), so they were trying to get on my flight and they told them it was full, so I arrived in Lusaka at 6pm, alone, with 10 empty seets in my plane and they arrived at 11PM after Ashley and I already talked and cooked dinner and watched Gangs of New York, so then we were talking some more. Oh, and then on Monday they had a snake on the loose in the house... Anf yes, Zambia is a malaria country hence the net. After arriving in Lusaka I finally felt like I am in Africa, the years of development (industrial) is certainly visible there, typical 80's buildings and large scale projects and industry sites...

At 5am on Friday we got up and Ashley's nice driver Emanuel took us to the bus terminal to the bus aimed for Livingstone. The ride wouldn't have taken 6 hours if only we weren't driving on local road, sometimes with holes and gravel all over the place, average speed about 50mph. If there was a highway it would have been like 4hrs tops. Well, I have just learned to embrace these things because the negative energy I emanate when I am angry takes too much out of me :)

Anyway, the first day we spent in the lodge, which for a 12$/night was awesome. Ashley knew like 6 people from Lusaka and we also met Philip, our new German friend.

There was a lot of international workers in Lusaka as well as in Livingstone - it makes me want to be one of them, but we'll see. Yes, I did not write this in the CZ post b/c I don't want to freak my parents out. So at night we took a taxi (you have to take a taxi everywhere here) to the falls to see the LUNAR RAINBOW. It was great, except my pictures are not so great, but Nanette has some good ones so we'll just have to wait for her to send them to me. Rainbow at night is like a shooting star, rare and silver and shiny, gorgeous. It is only created around full moon and it was full moon on Friday so we (Ashley) picked a good weekend to go.

So on Saturday we spent the day paddling on the ZAMBEZI and touched the Zimbabwe side with our paddles. The water is warm and there are hippos and corcodiles. We jumped in at one point but then had to get back in... that was a little frantic, I guess because of the possibility of crocodiles ( I could not get ovet the inflated side,and Ash and Potato had to sort of pull me in), something Penny and mom would disapprove. We got some sun and sun burn and our guide Potato (there are a lot of people with strange names here) was awesome. Ashley, god bless her, did most of the hard work in the front while I was trying my best to stir the inflatable canoe. But we did pretty good! We met bunch of Swedish education students, doing their internship in Livingstone (talk about a great spot for a placement, why am I in Lanseria?) Their feelings about the education system down here confirmed my frustrations about edu. of my kids here...Then we signed up for a booze cruise, it was Nanette's birthday, but then i think and Dor is sure of that we got on the wrong boat, either that or they market it to people like us as a booze cruise and to parents and families as the sunset cruise... anyway the drinks were free so we did not mind the bad food. I thought about the CLASS summer staff appreciation cruises from Plum Island up the coast or up the Merimack River(thank you Mindy) not even speaking about the Timberline Christmas cruise from the Boston Harber:) Well, then we went to another bar and finished the night off. Philip moved in with us and dragged in one of the futon matress's from the public space in the lodge and slept in our room.

Sunday we finally went to see the falls in the day light, got drenched at the Boiling Pot and met some more of Ashley's friends from Lusaka. There was a lot of older couples and Japanese tourists who gave us a smile when they saw us drenched coming towards us, them in their little rain coats, those will never protect them from the drenching spray from the falls.

Nevertheless it was fun to watch them smilling at us, you got to love to be a center of attention. Our ride back was a bit longer almost 7hrs, they (the public health dept.) stopped us to spray our hands againts supposedly foot and mouth disease, I thought it was some kind of religious Easter thing and we refused to get out of the bus, but then they threatened not to let the full bus go farther so we got out and let them to spray our hands with some chemical and then pour over them some dirty water from a bucket. My protests that we just washed our hands with a soap did not help even a bit. I just looked up the disease and there is one that is Sheep and pigs only and then one that is different which affects children, so I don't know. Well, my hands are fine, no rash or skin peeling so I guess it was fine.

Aftee arrival back to Lusaka we went to meet Ashley's friend Scott who lives the agent 007 life, in Lusaka, at 27 yo he works for the US embasy, well I don't think he carries a gun but all the perks of a foreign service seem appealing. Except I am not a US citizen.

RANDOM STUFF:

Kwacha - Zambian money. Due to inflation a cup of coffe coasts 7000 kwacha. Bus ride K65000, exhange rate K4000=$1. So yes it is relatively cheaper, but not really. Another thing was that the ATMs in Zambia are set up by some sort of Visa card monopoly system, since Master card was not accepted, so none of us could get any kwacha. So the whole weekend we spent concerning ourselves by who will pay for whom with which currency, because they took euros, dollars and rands as well. Pretty crazy. Then I ended up paying for Ashley to make up for accomodation at her place and Dor got kwacha off of Phillip for euros...go figure. Oh yes, it was Easter so exhange places were closed, should have changed money at the airport, now when I think of it.

Ok, so other than that and a 1000 other little things like the driver with the dead baboon in the trunk (which he tried to give it to us) it was fun trip, no accidents or illnesses, except Ashley's sunburn. The next adventure looks like a beach trip to Mozambique with Dorothee. it's 5 more weeks to go.

Oh, and PS: Ben Harper is holding me together at the many moments of frustration and when I don't want to listen to other people's chatter (sometimes accents are just annoying, I know who am i to say, but whatever)... some of the songs sound better in the Ipod than on the CD. Current favorite - Fight outta you, Lifeline album, the guittar in the left ear makes me want to learn to play it.