Our Wild Journey Travel diary

ZAMBIA

Saturday 2nd May - Sunday 10th May 2009

...from the Tanzanian gates till the Zambian gates it was just a "hawker's nightmare"! They followed us everywhere and stuck to us and our car like duct tape! On every border they usually want Dollars, but here they insisted on Kwacha. Normally the black market is always better than the real bank rate, just here they were even lower! But of course, here, where there is nothing for miles, they have the monopoly! In a city you have hundreds of changers so you can choose the best rate, here not. Anyway we managed to buy kwacha for the rate we wanted and proceeded with entering Zambia. Except running here and there everything went relatively smooth and around 16.00 we left the border.

Our first stop was going to be up in the North of Zambia, in Chimfunshi close to the Congolese border, so we stayed on asphalt, but soon had to find out that Zambia is "pothole country", often there are very deep and very big holes in the middle of the road - one can't really go around them. What a nightmare! And we even paid road toll for that! Except for a few trucks the roads were entirely empty, only around bigger towns there was more traffic. The landscape was at first just like in Tanzania, the sides of the road were lined with high elephant grass and all sorts of trees - candelabras, acacias, sausage trees, mostly with big termite mounds below them. There were goats and once in a while little compounds of red/clay colored huts, all very clean and some even with flowers around the house (the first time we saw this!!!).
The people seemed a lot friendlier and were smiling a lot. Mostly it is enough when you just wave at a grim looking man and he will frantically wave back with a big smile from ear to ear on his face! Our first night we spent somewhere in the forest and even the next morning, passers-by only greeted and then minded their business.

Then we finally came to the junction to turn North and in Ndola we found cheap diesel and also bought some typical local food off a mother with her little baby on the side of the road - "flitas", some sort of doughnut-ball. On the way out of Ndola we stopped at a roadside shop, a Bemba-man sold handmade, carved masks, which were really lovely. We promised him to stop on our way back and continued North to our destination - the Chimfunshi Chimpanzee orphanage. Of course we came later than lunch so after a long talk with Sylvia we unpacked our camp for the night. The camp was right next to the river and at night it was cold, damp and full of mozzies. (Fortunately Rene doesn't need to worry about bites - he's got Andrea as a very effective repellent!) :o) In the camp we found out that we had a puncture in our rear tyre, it was completely flat...later on we found out that even our rim had a crack from these damn potholes! The alarm went off very early the next day. We had 5 mischievious little creatures waiting for us - which? Well, we had followed a hint of 2 Germans we met (DT800) and so we found ourselves in a chimpanzee orphanage. :o) Here they take care of around 140 chimpanzees, which were taken away from poachers, run-down circusses and illegal owners. The chimps come from all over the world, but mainly from Congo and central Africa in general (that's why they understand Portuguese, Spanish, Bemba, Swahili and English!) In the orphanage we not only met chimps, but also turkeys, geese and even a hippo lady - Billy. With her one really has to be careful not to get run over when she's on her way from her "pool" to her food pot. And there were also cheeky vervet monkeys and beautiful gray parrots. And the best we saved for last. We went for a 2 hour bushwalk and play with 5 chimps. Well, finally only 4, one didn't feel like walking! :o) Dominik, 3 years, Deedee, 4 years, Karla, 5 years and Cindy, 12 years. This was an unforgettable experience! Karla always wanted attention and straight away fell in love with Rene, Cindy offered Andrea her half chewed ball of grass, Deedee always hung at someone and Dominik was always up to some funny mischief! :o) We couldn't forget that these chimps are unsurpassed thieves - we couldn't take any camera, jewellery or even hair ribbons. Karla tried to scratch off Rene's tattoo and got grumpy that it didn't work - she gave him a good smack! Dominik, while hanging on Andrea, tried unsuspiciously to somehow reach into her pockets and check its contents or even try to find out what she was doing with that chewing gum! Always his hand was somewhere under her overall! :o) And when noone looked he even tried to take her old rubber out of the hair! Exhausted after playing with them (swinging monkeys around!) we left the orphanage with a really good experience in our heads.

We slept not too far away from the mask seller somewhere in the forest. In the morning we found him there, Likalatu from the Luvali tribe, who made us really good prices and even exchanged one of his masks for a chisel Rene still had in the car. If ever one of you goes up towards the Congolese border to Chingola, just behind Ndola on the left side you will find him - 2nd last stall. On the right side the last stall belongs to Edwin who makes nice arty pictures using elephant grass, banana leaves and other materials. He has small and big pictures and good prices. Photos you can see in our album.
On our way to Lusaka we had a few checkpoints, but police was not troublesome. The night we spent somewhere at the edge of a field in a sort of riverbed. The next morning we arrived early in Lusaka - not a very special town but ok and not, like warned, full of criminals. We applied for the Namibian visa for Andrea and late afternoon already left towards the Kafue National Park. We went on a small road, again a time when our arms hurt from waving the friendly locals, till we came upon a sign saying "Blue Lagoon National Reserve". We decided to go and have a look there because anyway we were looking for a place to camp. Well, we unpacked our tent in the middle of the road in the park, which seemed very little frequented. There was, as usually in Zambia, no one around and even at night we only heard one hyena from far away. The next morning we drove around the park a bit, found a big herd of Impala, some vultures, fish eagles and diverse other birds. Well, as Kafue was our destination we moved on and again in the late afternoon arrived at its gates. This park stretches out on both sides of the main road and even goes till Angola. Shame was only that most of the roads were at this moment closed due to heavy rainfalls and floodings. So unfortunately we would not be able to have a look at Africa's biggest baobab approx 100km away. :o( The first night we bushcamped in the forest and the next day we spent just driving on all allowed tracks, but we didn't have much luck. Between the boabs and acacias we only saw 2 elephans and 2 buffalo, we didn't count all the impalas we had seen as well as warthogs and pukupuku. Only in the morning Andrea was lucky to see at least the ass of a lioness crossing the main road.
We cooked our dinner in the vicinity of a lonely elephant who apparently tried to rip out a tree in his way. Was a funny sight! We went back to the same bushcamp for sleeping. At night Andrea got woken up - there was something rumaging around close to the car. She woke Rene up and both stared out of the tent just to find out that there were about 5-7 elephants cracking branches and making a lot of noise nearly right next to the tent. Fortunately they were not interested in the car! In the morning we found tracks of a lonely hippo and a lot of elephant feet. Our last day in the park was much more successful. Right in the morning we went to Kaoma, 80km towards the Western end of the park, where we took diesel. It seemed like no one had ever seen tourists here before, and again we saw that unmistakable "ear-to-ear-grin" on some peoples' faces. On the way back we saw quite a few animals - warthogs, oryx, sable antelope, kudu and just in front of us a huge herd of buffalo crossed the dusty road. And on the way out of the park we still "met" small herd of elephants with babies. Cute! We went back to Lusaka on the same way...

Monday 11th May - Sunday 16th May 2009

On the Botswanian embassy we had to find out that there are still officials who want to make stupids from us and give us a lesson on tourism and how it works. So we decided that we would spend the money for the visa somewhere else. Around Lusaka it's impossible to bushcamp and so we went into the Eureka Camp about 12km out of town. It's a nice campsite in a park-like area with hot showers, a swimming pool and even wild animals around. There were some overlander trucks with mainly British people. We camped close to a powerpoint with a little hut and bbq and had nice chicken breasts and a pot full of vegetables for dinner. Before we went to bed we still saw a few antelopes grazing in the camp. At night it got quite cold, the thermometer dropped to 12 degrees! In the morning we picked up Andrea's visa for Namibia, had a look around town and changed kwacha into Dollars for Zimbabwe. Then we went back to the camp, there was a lot of washing to do and some work on the car. When Rene went to the bar, he nearly fell over some zebras grazing the lawn close to our spot. Cool! We could approach them till 3 metres and take a few beautiful shots of these 3 adults and 2 young ones. The evening we started with a nice chicken bbq and a bottle of South African Rose.

The next day we wanted to pack up and leave when Rene met Colin, an older white farmer who lives just around the corner from Harare and who lost his farm to Mugabe in 2002. He was very friendly and we chatted a lot. Short after that we went to Lusaka again for more internet and other things and only finished when it was already dark. So we decided to go back to the camp. When arriving we found it completely packed with more commercial overlander trucks. We met Colin again, who was happy to see us and invited us for dinner and beer - Mosi lager from Zambia. We talked a lot, he told us a lot about Zimbabwe and gave us contacts for his wife and family and told us we must visit them! We went to bed with a little "beer in the head" :o)

On Thursday afternoon we finally left Lusaks for god and drove towards Chirundu, the border to Zimbabwe. We found a quiet bushcamp just behind Kafue on the way to the gorge, When we wanted to visit the gorge the next morning they told us we had to get a permission from Lusaka - damn, tourist guides never tell the full truth, either they are incomplete or invalid! Before leaving Zambia we still had a few kwachas which we used to buy vegetables and fruits and in one curve in Kafue we found a small curio shop with lots of giraffes and other nice carvings. Kids were sitting in the shade working on nice handmade stuff. We bought a little chair with the foot looking like an elephant for a real bargain! Here is the GPS point: S 15°45.384´ E 028°10.927´, when coming from Lusaka towards the Zimbabwean border in Chirundu, maybe 50km behind Lusaka. Go there and have a look, the carvings look like real animals, not like some you find in other places. Brighton surely has something nice from ebony or rosewood for you.
Our last stop in Zambia was the Kariba dam, just before the Zimbabwean borderpost Kariba. On this way we had a look at some signposted "world heritage site", which was a very fat and old baobab tree intermingled with some acacia and a big cave in its stem. We wanted to do some fishing, but the whole lakefront is blocked by mansions and villas. :o( Well...we hope to do more fishing in Zimbabwe. The last night in Zambia we spent not too far away from Kariba in the bush next to the main road - well, main roads here are not like ours, we counted 5 cars and 10 pedestrians in a few hours! We used the time to cook all meat we still had to be prepared. The next morning we crossed border to -as European media says- one of the poorest and unsafest countries in Africa - Zimbabwe. The crossing was really easy and we got the chance to drive across Kariba Dam where we wondered at this huge dam. All in all leaving Zambia took us maybe 10 min! :o)

Zambia was our 8th country on our way to South Africa. We didn't really have that much info on it and too many tourists don't come here (except maybe to Livingstone and the Vic Falls) so we weren't really sure what would expect us. Except the group of hawkers following us the border crossing wasn't too bad, paperwork was okay, it's just that on one border they have different regulations than on another and it could be a bit quicker. Most roads are tarmac but have a tendency to huge, unsafe potholes. Except around towns we didn't meet many cars on the road, sometimes one can drive for an hour without seeing anyone. The population is quite scarce, but of course, with a surface of 752.000 sqm and only 11 million people that's understandable. Finally, one feels free and not harrassed when moving around. We mostly camped in the bush and even if we had passers-by, they would only greet us and wish us a nice day, no one came to get on our nerves.

So what about fuel, supermarkets and ATMs? Well, one can find them everywhere, all bigger towns have an ATM, enough diesel and maybe even a Shoprite. Usually, supermarkets are quite a bit more expensive than at home and the best veggie shopping, as usual, is on the side of the road or on markets, where bargaining is essential. They have some nice sort of "doughnuts", called "flitas", and the same sort of toastbread like south of Kenya. The beer, "Mosi", is quite nice to drink. We went from Tanzania through to Chingola, then to Lusaka and from there on to Kafue, before turning back to Lusaka and then on south to Kariba. Zambia is quite a nice country, people are quite friendly and we enjoyed the national parks, which weren't as commercialised and expensive as Maasai Mara or Serengeti. The parks are not "overrolled" by mass tourism and one can still experience the parks in relative solitude. In Kafue we saw the big main animals in Africa, but still, our favourite was the chimpanzee orphanage in Chimfunshi.

But as everywhere - the big problem here is corruption. We found the police here to be the worst of all the countries we visited. After what we have seen they primarily target on white Zambians and tourists, trying to extort a bribe from them. And if you try to talk to them with reason they just don't let you talk, you only have the right to listen and pay. And often they feel very offended about anything you say. There is no money here for fixing bad roads, but they take 30 USD road toll, and when we, after 2 punctured tyres and one cracked mag went to the road agency to complain they send you through hundreds of offices, tell you that Europe should help but when looking on their carpark and into their microwave and fridge-stuffed offices you suddenly understand where all the money goes...and when asking them why they have all so brandnew cars, they answer "...for our job we can't use any mickey-mouse cars..." :o) But instead they need them to go from their houses to their offices in Lusaka! :o) That's one bad side of Zambia, the other one is poaching, we heard the shots in the Lower Zambezi and the screaming elephants! :o( Sad story!