VACATION!!!

Joy’s brother, Lincoln, came for an incredible visit to Zambia and we crammed so many awesome Zambian activities into a week and a half that I don’t even know how to begin chronicling them. Lincoln’s plane arrived late in the afternoon, and Joy and I were there to receive him. We didn’t give him much time to get acclimated to the new time zone after his 20+ hours of travelling to reach us; the next morning we were on our way to South Luangwa National Park by 5:00am. An 8 hour bus ride, an overnight in Chipata and a 3 hour bush taxi later, we reached our destination. Mushroom Lodge was spectacular: large and beautiful chalets, great food and a nice swimming pool and dinning area that overlook a river basin – now mostly dry. We dropped our bags in our rooms and tried to go back to the dining area for lunch, but the path was blocked…by a herd of elephants! Seriously, there were 6 elephants munching on the trees no more than 5 meters outside the door to our chalet!!! No big deal. Joy and I took pictures and patiently waited as they moved past. We spent the next four nights at the lodge going on 2 four hour game drives a day, swimming in the pool and eating way too much delicious food. The whole thing was surreal. On the game drives we just about everything the park had to offer. An extensive (although incomplete) list of the animals we saw follows:








Each safari was new and different. We saw lions everyday (the last full day we were there we saw 14). The lions are the top of the food chain and they know it. Our guide let us get uncomfortably close to them and they don’t care much about people in the park. Joy’s favorite was the warthog, Lincoln’s was the elephant, and mine was the leopard. But we all enjoyed the giraffes, hippos, baboons and zebras more than we thought we would. The stripes on the zebras are so vivid and distinct it’s unbelievable. After the first 2 drives we had seen about everything, so for the rest of our time we really took in the smells, sounds and sights.

At the lodge, we were definitely guests in the homes of these great animals. We saw giraffes, warthogs, elephants, hippos, zebras, puku, impala, baboons and storks all from the lodge’s common areas (many from 10-20 meters away). One evening a pride of lions came by the lodge, but we were out on a game drive so we didn’t see them. We did, however, hear them outside our chalet late that night. Any description of the feelings I had while experiencing these animals in their natural homes would not do it justice.

Our last morning at the lodge we went on a game drive in the morning, came back to the lodge for lunch, hopped two planes, and by 5:00pm we were awestruck by some of the biggest and most beautiful waterfalls in the world: Victoria Falls. What a day!

Victoria Falls is gorgeous. The National Park that gives the view of the falls puts you at eyelevel with the top of the falls a stones throw away – literally, I threw a stone from one side to the other – across the gorge that the water falls into. Over our short stay in Livingstone, we spent several hours at the falls taking pictures and twice we watched the sunset behind the cloud of spray from the falls.

The falls were beautiful and everything, but the highlight of Livingstone (and maybe the whole vacation) for me was Livingstone Island and swimming in Devil’s Pool – a small pool of water on the edge of Vic Falls no more than 2 feet from the plunge to the bottom. We had seen pictures of Devil’s Pool on Google and it looked awesome, but fairly harmless. In reality, the pool is a bit overwhelming and a bit dangerous, but way more awesome than almost anything I’ve ever done in my life. I had imagined that it was more like a hot tub on the edge than an actual pool. It turns out that Devil’s Pool is about 150 meters away from anything that could be considered solid ground, so we had to swim to it. Swimming through currents in the Zambezi River about 10 meters upstream from a 110 meter drop? Sure, no big deal. Our guide, Collins, showed us where to swim and where there were rocks to rest on and one by one we followed him through the water to Devil’s Pool. And oh yeah, we had to jump into Devil’s Pool once we got there, as if the swim to get there wasn’t exhilarating enough. Collins stood on the edge of the falls to guard us from going over and we jumped in and posed for pictures. I lifted myself up for about a 2.4 second glance at the edge, but that was all I could take. The swim back felt like a cake walk compared to the swim there, probably because we had already been right up against the edge. When we reached the island again we dried off and ate eggs benedict (breakfast was part of the package) and I drank probably the best cup of coffee that I have ever had. We talked to the guides a bit about how we were surprised at the strength of the current and we eventually found out that it was only the third day of the season that they were allowing swimming. But no need to worry everyone, we were all safe and sound.

We spent another day or so in Livingstone around the falls shopping and during touristy stuff, but for me there was nothing like Devil’s Pool. We boarded another 6:00am bus and 10 hours later we got off in Kapiri Mposhi. A packed mini-bus – I mean PACKED, I counted 16 adults, 2 babies, a sack of potatoes, and our luggage inside a minivan – got us to our turn off the tarmac before sunset and a 2 hour ride in an old pickup got us home. What a day!

The vacation for Joy and me technically ended there as we had meetings and some work to do once we got home, but for the most part we enjoyed having Lincoln in our home and showed him around to most of the sights in and around our village. It felt totally natural having Lincoln with us, which is a testament to his ability to adjust to the different lifestyle here. We all shared once in a lifetime experiences and made several memories that we won’t soon forget. We thank Lincoln for his courage and flexibility in coming here to visit us. It was truly a fantastic vacation.

And now that we are back home with charged batteries, we have more work to do.