Zambia!

Monday morning I was the first to arrive at Kiboko. I had planned to go to the grocery store, but of course it wasn’t open, so I went off later while waiting around to get some breakfast and bug spray. I was surprised they actually had some bug spray there and that it was a decent price. I was joined by a mother and daughter from Iceland, a trio of medical students from Holland taking vacation time before going to work in Mangochi (I’d had this weird feeling the day before that I would be stuck in a car full of Dutch speakers), and a carload of Canadians. One of the Canadians re-enacted that SNL skit about the people with unpronounceable names with the woman from Iceland, whose name I think was something like Hroen, but with more funky things over the vowels identifying exactly what kind of sneezing sound to make. We had to wait for Kiboko to swap out one of the cars because it was leaking oil; we ended up with a smaller car with less nice seats. Holland and I were the only ones in there so we all had window seats, except when the moving seat that opened to the back wouldn’t go down properly and then one of the girls had to sit in the middle seat next to me for all the most horribly bumpy parts of the drive.

Best road sighting from Lilongwe to Mchinji: Chibuku Hangover Bar!

I had never gone in the Mchinji direction before; it’s flat but nice and gets hilly toward the border. At the gas station in Mchinji we were greeted by demanding street urchins who wanted alternately some of our cookies and money and who hadn’t really learned to say please or to be polite in any way. I eventually scolded them and told them to go to school and had to do the same on the return also.

We soon reached the border, which was stupid. Instead of having one building representing the border, there is a Malawi building and a Zambia building. You exit Malawi first, filling out an exit card and getting a passport stamp. Then you pile back into the car, drive 50 feet to the Zambia building, and enter Zambia, filling out an entry card and book with the exact same information and getting a visa stamp. On the way back we actually figured out that the people who finish first could just walk over to the other building to speed up the whole process. Anyway, all the passports and Visa waivers were easy and fine, but at the Zambia office, they said they didn’t have a record for whatever tax the vehicles require. The drivers had receipts showing the payments, but the officials seemed to want to delay us as much as possible to see if they might be able to get additional payment. Hilariously, on the exit side of the building we saw this great poster that was all, it’s a crime to give money to immigration officials! Don’t do it! It’s like, don’t bribe us, but occasionally, we might ask to test you and see if you’re a criminal. Whatever. Finally they let us go.

We had lunch at Chipata, and then we drove seemingly forever. Much of the road past Chipata is dirt, and the last leg toward Mfuwe is not so great. Once in Mfuwe it’s paved to the campground turnoff, and then it’s insanely bumpy due to last year’s floods.

We arrived at Track and Trails River Camp, which is right on the river. While hippos made crazy noises in the background, a very cute Dutch boy explained that Kiboko rents the campground space from them and has an agreement that we can use the facilities, which included a quite nice bathroom area (with occasional visitors like giant spiders and frogs in the toilet); a lovely pool with gorgeous wood steps up to it, a nice deck full of chairs and sunning pads, and a stunning view of the river; and a really nice bar and restaurant with attractive Dutch people serving up the drinks. The tents were awesome: huge walk-in tents with twin beds, a night stand, a canvas shelf thing and an electric lantern. They also gave us towels, although they were quite small. But quite nice accommodations for camping. The camp also has chalets, for those who like to stay in buildings who have more money.

We had dinner in the dark, as the power decided to go out for only the duration of our eating. We had tomato soup, spghetti with meat sauce (marinara for the vegetarians), salad, and bananas. The stars were lovely, and I saw the Big Dipper! I didn’t think it was visible from the southern hemisphere. After dinner most of us went straight to bed, given the 5 am wakeup call, and I slept okay until the hippos really started making a lot of motor-starting noises toward morning. I guess there was also an elephant in the camp sometime overnight. Later in the season I guess there are lots of animals, since the river gets so low and the animals all want to be closer to it.

Tuesday morning the wakeup call was a timid, “Hello?” waking only those of us who were already half awake. I took an unpleasantly cold shower which fortunately was not repeated as the hot water decided to work the other days. For “breakfast” we had tea/coffee with bread and butter/jam/peanut butter. At least they could have gotten the bread from Foodworth’s if that was all they planned to feed us that early in the morning. I had tea and coffee both, which was a huge mistake, as I had to pee all morning. During the break in the ride, I also opted for coffee, which meant that when we returned from the drive we had to stop at the main gate so I could pee. In the latrine. Which was an outhouse with a concrete floor featuring a hole. Yuck. But I had to pee that bad. I had to pee again after the short remaining drive to camp I was so full of pee. There was no way I could have made it over the crazy bumpy road with my bladder the way it was.

Uh, anyway, we went on our first game drive. It was awesome. The weather was lovely and it was only hot at the end. We saw a warthog, several herds of zebras, tons of yellow baboons, waterbacks, impalas and puku, plenty of elephants, a monitor lizard, a fish eagle and several other birds, a funky squirrel (I had thought about asking the driver earlier if there were squirrels, as a joke), a cape buffalo, crocodiles, hippos in the water and on the beach, and two giraffes! The giraffes were most awesome. The first was a female eating off a big ol tree, and the second was a male covered in tiny birds that ate ticks off of him. He wandered onto the road and we followed him for several minutes, like a giraffe parade. He just lumbered along very gracefully, completely unconcerned about us being behind him. He eventually got off the road and pooped. You’d think it’d be like horse poop, but it’s actually a lot more like rabbit poop.

The time between drives was mostly all about lunch, chilling in the pool, and relaxing at the bar. The managers of the camp were being filmed by a Dutch television crew for a show about people who leave Holland for random places like Zambia, so I’ll probably be on Dutch TV sometime next year in the background of some shot.

The night drive was okay. I had sat shotgun in the morning, which is lower and more stable than the actual safari seats. I felt like I was going to get bumped out of the car every time we hit bad road. It’s much harder on the ass, and a bit colder. The weather was mostly lovely, until the end, which was cold. We saw a leopard (after a bit of not-quite-kosher offroading), a hyena on the bridge coming back from town, a pregnant zebra, and two porcupines! Apparently porcupines are a rare sight, so that was cool. They are crazy looking. The night drive is light out for the first half but then it gets dark and a guy (in my shotgun seat) beams a huge spotlight to find animals that only come out at night. It’s not as good as the day drive because you don’t have a full field of vision and you can’t have the whole group looking for things. You have to hope the spotlight guy sees stuff. I also feel like many of these night animals might take a while to actually come out and be active.

For dinner we had tasty chicken with vegetables, rice, salad and pineapple. I went straight to bed after because I was beat. I slept straight through until the morning, “Hello?” For the morning drive Wednesday, we saw a giant horde of elephants (20+) eating their way through a lovely valley, two warthogs, and a male and female giraffe up close (the male peed for us, for, I kid you not, minutes). And we finally saw lions! First thing in the morning we saw a female lion sitting off in a field, and then later on we got word from another driver and found a spot where two male lions were just laying around in the shade. We were right near them, and they couldn’t have cared less.

The night drive was lousy and all we saw were mongoose-type things once it got dark. We didn’t even see the regular animals much. It started promising: we saw 14 giraffes on the way to the park gate, and then we saw a valley full of cape buffalo. The hour before dark was adventurous as we went off the beaten path trying to find lions. We drove on what might have been a road before the floods, but it was now a bumpy dried up pond bottom. There were so many tree branches grown over it that we had to jump down to the bottom of the car a few times to get through without being mangled. After all that there were no lions, so we zoomed insanely through the sandy beach (I thought we were so going to roll over) to a place I think was called a spar. It was a huge open space surrounded by trees. There were all these mangled trees and stumps on it. In the 1970s the elephants numbered 100,000, and they would just destroy whole tree areas by eating them. Poaching reduced their numbers to 9000, but now they’re back up to 17,000. Rhinos fared worse, however, and there are none left in the park.

We saw some giraffe bones that someone had gathered and placed in order. Then the lame night part began and we saw jack. Dinner was good and included some tasty nsima that was nice because it wasn’t so processed like a lot of them. Then I went with Iceland to the bar for some chocolate cake, which was great.

Thursday we had breakfast (real breakfast) and then loaded up and went to Tribal Textiles. They gave us a nice tour of the place. First there was a crafts table where some local artisans made things. I wanted to get one of these cool candle holders made of wire they re-appropriate from poaching snares to get them out of circulation. We moved on to the textiles. First they take the cotton fabric (cotton is a major crop in Zambia), put a design on there, and then outline it with a flour and water paste to make a line between paint areas. Then they paint it with color, dry them in the sun, and bake them in this giant oven to make the paint hold fast when you wash it. We got to see all these steps along with the paint mixer guy and the sewing room.

After the nice tour we had a shamefully short time to shop. Upon further review, this would have been a good activity for the eons of time between drives on one of the prior two days. I was about to give up once the driver of the other car was giving me a hard time that we had to go, but then I saw a really cool wall hanging right at the door, so I got that. Didn’t get to look at the crafts table, though. It’s got a nice design with African flair, without being too kitschy with cartoony animals or people.

We zipped to Chipata, mostly downhill so much faster than the way up. We had lunch, then breezed through the border, and quickly we were back. I said goodbye to everyone, hit the forex, got an ice cream, and grabbed some groceries at Shoprite. It was a lovely trip, and I’m really glad I went. The animals were amazing, and it was a nice little place. I’ll post a more formal review at some point for people who might google about the trip and the tour company, but I wanted to get my storytelling version out there.