Zambia journal #1

2-26-14

I feel as though I am watching another one of the hundreds of adventure films that I have and continue to enjoy. I am only semi-lucid as I take my seat on a bus packed to the gills with Zambians and sticking out like sore thumbs, Nick and I. It’s closing in on 6am and the bus we’re on is headed from Lusaka to Livingstone.

Well worth a little lost sleep and a slightly uncomfortable bus ride.

As soon as I shut my eyes the film begins to play, the chaos of so many people in such a small space is the opening soundtrack and the camera begins to pan out from me using my duffel as a pillow on my lap; as the angle gets wider the Ipod I’m plugged into begins to play Gregory Alan Isakov’s Stable Song. Slowly the bus groans to life and begins to plow its way through the hustle and bustle of taxi drivers, waiting passengers, drunks, merchants and all of their friends, a startling three minutes ahead of schedule. Only six hours (hopefully) to our destination, new adventures and who knows what else.

This was certainly one of the best out of body experiences that I’ve ever had, entertaining and perfectly cliché. Certainly what I felt and saw was made possible by the fact that I’d not slept for more than seven hours in the past 72. Game on.

2-27-14

The Green is the path I took over the course of my trip.
Photo: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/africa/zambia/map_of_zambia.jpg

After an evening of drinking and revelry with retirement to a real bed, it is no exaggeration to say that I feel reborn, comfortably waking up a 730 after a solid eight hours of sleep. I enjoy a hot shower (a luxury for the style I was traveling in while in Africa) and sit around the quiet but active hostel to journal, ponder and juice up my Ipod in anticipation of another long travel day ahead. The goal for the day is to catch a free bus in a couple of hours from the hostel to Victoria Falls, wander around, take some pictures and see what there is to see, then return to Livingstone proper, grab our packs  and hitch north, hopefully to Lusaka (the capitol city). Over the next couple days it is my intent to hitch and catch busses from the Southern border up to the Northern border with Tanzania, where Nick’s site with the Peace Corps is. To prepare I have put on my adventure pants and can do attitude, as well as stretching my neck as I anticipate a lot of smiling and nodding over the course of the trip (my go to action when locals talk at me in one of the dozens of dialects that I cannot even begin to understand). 

A two year reunion as Victoria Falls.

That is the spray coming back up, not a cloud on the left side.