Wild Life

We arrived in Livingstone a few days ago and have been having quite an authentic African experience so far. In so many ways, Zambia is exactly what we expected, and in so many ways, it's not. We've seen wildlife and been bit by mosquitos, chatted with locals and sampled the cuisine, yet our hostel here is nicer than any we stayed at in Europe.

On our first day we visited Victoria Falls- the largest waterfall in the world. We didn't wear any rain gear, instead getting soaked by the warm spray as it was forced up the canyon walls by the massive quantities of water coming down off the falls. Standing in awe of the majestic wall of water, we did our best to do as Norman had told us, and “feel the falls with our hearts.” Both its size and beauty could captivate for hours, and have brought many visitors back again and again. There's no doubt in my mind that it deserves to be honored among the top ranked natural wonders of the world.

After taking in the view from various points along the path, Chris lead us down a steep path towards “the Boiling Pot”- an area just below the falls where you can gaze up at the canyon walls and watch bungee jumpers as they plummet off a bridge that connects the Zambian side to the Zimbabwe side. Before we began our descent, Chris advised us to grab some large sticks in order to fend off any attacking baboons. The park is full of them and they've become entirely too comfortable around humans, often getting aggressive as they attempt to steel anything that looks like food. He nonchalantly picked up his weapon and we all followed suit, somewhat nervously following him down the trail.

About a quarter of the way down, there they were--a gang of about 8 or 9 baboons and their babies camped out in the middle of the trail. They didn't flinch a bit as we approached, nor as we attempted to scare them off. It took a fair amount of convincing, but eventually, they decided to move along.

We continued following the path which lead us down through the tropical forest and across a stream. When we arrived at the bottom, we perched ourselves on some rocks and Kelsey and I dipped in the water a bit to cool off. As the clouds started rolling in, we decided to call it a day and head nearby to The Royal Livingstone Hotel for “high tea”- a luxurious indulgence popular with Peace Corps volunteers fresh from the villages.

We sat the entire afternoon, thoroughly enjoying pot after pot of tea and gorging ourselves on fantastic pastries and cakes. When tea time finally ended we made our way down to the riverfront bar to take in the view of the Zambezi river. 

When we'd had our fill of that we caught a taxi and headed back toward town. On our way out of the rather massive hotel grounds in the cab, we happened upon a Zebra munching on some grass on the side of the road. Apparently, the hotel has a variety of animals that wander through it's grounds. The Zebra spooked a bit as we went by, and began running along the road a few meters in front of the cab for a ways before ducking into the trees and out of sight. Literally seconds later we passed by a giraffe who was also snacking on the grass no more than ten feet from the road. 'Surprised' doesn't even begin to describe... Unfortunately it all happened so suddenly and was over so quickly, there was no time for pictures, but we're committed to squeezing in some real safari time at some point while we're here!