Zambia and our Last Days in Africa

Blog By: KZ

Oh my God! Wait, what happened? We’re suddenly back in Dar es Salaam?! Our Africa trip is over??? Noooooooooooooooooo!

SYKE!!!

Aly and I may be leaving the Dark Continent, but we’re headed to the Promise Land, literally--- Israel, to visit fellow Gonzaga alum and friend, Jason Koch, who was with us in Johannesburg during the first part of the World Cup. Jason has spent the past couple months working for Boeing in Tel Aviv and easily convinced Aly and I to make the trip over to Israel. So get ready Israel, here we come!

As for Jen and Danny, they are headed north to the little town of Moshi where they’ll spend five days volunteering and reuniting with the little ones at Light in Africa Orphanage whom Jen sees a couple times a year, and whom Danny met three years ago during our first trip to Africa.

Willy and Stan will make their way back to the starting point, Nairobi, where they will jump head first into Safari season in Masai Mara and Lake Nakuru with Jen and his company, Poa Travel and Tours.

But first, before we all part ways, I have to blog about the last week we spent in Zambia! If there is one place that you must visit when you make it over to Africa, it is absolutely imperative that you come to Livingstone, Zambia, and visit Victoria Falls. Not only is it one of the Seven Wonders of the World, but, to some, it is said to be a sight that changes lives. Now, over the past few months, we’ve seen dirty, ugly, beautiful and breath-taking, but experiencing this one and a quarter mile of natural beauty is truly indescribable. In total, we spent two days at the falls. Our first day was spent facing the falls, seeing the powerful overflow of the Zambezi River crash 160 meters to the rock bottom. When facing the falls, the water is so commanding that it is impossible not to get soaking wet. Willy, Jen and I chose to wear Zambia’s most stylish and popular form of rain protection, a poncho, while Aly and Danny wore their bathing suits and welcomed the mist and rainfall with open arms. At the falls there were different viewpoints where you could stop and take pictures or just stand in awe of what was in front of you. It was a cloudless day, which to me, translated as a spectacular photo shoot for the falls, but the water was in such enormity and fell with such might that it created a foggy mist which made it virtually impossible to capture the beauty of the falls. This was one of those moments where you just had to stand back and take in the beauty solely with your own eyes, surrendering to nature and leaving all technology behind. At one of the viewpoints we were able to see where people bungee jump off the bridge that connects Zambia and Zimbabwe. As we watched people one-by-one fall forward off the bridge, any desire that I once had to jump vanished. I bungee jumped in Thailand two years ago off a 50 meter platform and that was a high enough jump for me. This jump, however, was more than three times higher than the jump I did making it a very easy decision for me to remain a spectator and not a player. Aly and I spent the rest of the afternoon bargaining our money away at a Zambian market for none other but salad tongs, shelled bracelets, wooden bowls and tribal figurines while the rest of the group prepared for the night’s event, a sunset booze cruise on the Zambezi.

On our second day at the falls we all decided that we’d like to have a different view, so that led us to none other than being single passengers on a microlight plane flight over the falls. A microlight plane is an open aired plane which functions like a hang glider, but with an engine. After receiving our ‘boarding passes’ from Botaka Sky Airlines, we zipped up our blue jumpsuits and one by one took our flights. The flight lasted 15 minutes, and at first, that seemed too short for the amount of money we were spending, but looking back on the experience, 15 minutes was the perfect amount of time to spend in the air over the falls. All of our flight experiences were different, but after we all touched down, everyone was raving about the utter beauty that we just experienced from above. Our pilots were extremely informational, telling us how July is one of the best months to see the falls, contrary to October where the river runs dry and there is nothing to see. Aly and Danny even were able to fly the plane themselves. Danny described his piloting experience as feeling like at any point the plane could be ripped out of the sky. Even though you had complete control in the air, the strength of the wind made it feel like you had no control. The plane I flew in did not have handles for the passenger to drive, but to be honest, I was quite content with locking my arms to the back of the pilots seat, breaking away only to take pictures with the camera that was secured on the plane’s left wing. Even Willy, who had trouble driving up and down the sand dunes in Namibia because of the height, loved his experience. Between you and me though, he secretly whispered to Aly and I that he would never do anything like this ever again. The microlight flight was definitely a highlight of all of our trips. To be above the falls and to see everything below, including the Zambezi River, all the animals that lived in and around the river; hippos, crocodiles, elephants, giraffes, etc., the multitude of rainbows that formed in and around falls and flying over Zambia or over Zimbabwe in a matter of seconds was something that will forever be on all of our top ten lists.

The days remaining after Victoria Falls were mostly spent driving. We dropped Robin and Bobby off in Lusaka and continued our drive back to Tanzania, stopping only in the evenings for food and sleep. The days were long, but we passed the time playing Yahtzee, Catchphrase and Scramble.

It’s hard to believe that this month and a half has come and gone. After literally years of planning this trip it is finally over. We came, we saw, we conquered, and we had a whole lot of fun doing it.

To recap, here is a top ten list of the coolest things we did on this trip of a lifetime:

TOP TEN COOLEST THINGS DONE IN AFRICA 2010

10. Visiting Cape Point, the southernmost point on the African continent
9. Hiking Table Mountain, Capetown, South Africa
8. Wine tasting in Stellenbosch, South Africa
7. Sunset booze cruise on the Zambezi River, Livingstone, Zambia
6. Hiking up Dune 45 at sunrise in Sossusvlei, Namibia
5. Walking through the mist of Victoria Falls Livingstone, Zambia
4. Quad biking through the Namibia desert, Swakopkmund, Namibia
3. USA vs. Algeria match (6/23/2010) when Landon Donovan scored the winning goal in the 91st minute! Pretoria, South Africa
2. Microlight plane flight over Victoria Falls, Livingstone, Zambia
1. Traveling 10,500 miles through 7 countries in 4 weeks!!!