coffee

A note on accommodation in Zambia. In my opinion it all comes down to the coffee! If a lodge or hotel serves coffee in a lounger then it’s going to be OK. We did find 1 exception to this rule and that’s the lodge in Livingstone which is in a beautiful setting with lovely furnishings but only instant coffee. I did hear an American enquiring about filter coffee and was told that there was only instant but it was Nescafe! We have just sat on an amazing balcony at the Royal Livingstone hotel (the most expensive hotel in Livingstone) and the kids were served lovely fruit cocktails and we had instant coffee, so even if you pay $400 per night you still can’t expect filter coffee!

 

I am also becoming a bit obsessed by double beds, so far we have not had a room with a double bed which I find a bit strange.

open road

Driving in Zambia I find myself comparing it to Malawi. The roads are much more empty, there’s less traffic, no minibuses (except in Lusaka) and far less pedestrians and goats meandering across the highway. The whole country is more sparsely populated and the roads are truly empty. Generally the roads have been ok apart from the road to S Luangwa. This was terrible, part of the problem was that much of it is being rebuilt so cars were directed off onto dirt tracks alongside the road. Navigation has been straightforward, usually there’s only a couple of roads to chose from and despite the lack of signs we’ve been ok. The dearth of signs and villages means that we often had little idea of where we were until we reached our destination.

car troubles

Halfway through our road trip and we have had a few technical problems. At our first stop after leaving home we discovered that the catch which secures the boot shut was broken. We tied it together with string and then persuaded a friendly welder in Lilongwe to fix it back on. So far it’s still ok but it will need a new part eventually. The drive from Ntchisi into Zambia and onto S Luangwa took 9 hours and the last 3 were on dirt tracks. Some stretches were on road but for much of the route the road was under construction so we were directed off the road onto dirt tracks. This was made worse by heavy rains and enormous puddles. We noticed a strange noise as we turned off at the first sign for our lodge and further investigation by the mechanics at the lodge suggested that it was probably the bearings on the front right wheel. He assured us that we would be ok to drive back to Chipata, where he knew a garage we could take it to. The drive back was very slow and a bit stressful!

At Chipata the doc left me and the girls at a very odd motel and went to find the garage. All was going well when they found a 2^nd hand part, but it turned out to be too long so he removed the broken part and told us we’d be fine so long as we didn’t need 4WD! He’s hoping to have the part ready for when we come back through Chipata on our way home.

frustrated

It’s good to be home. We arrived in the rain last night, have had a power cut for much of today, have made a mistake with the accounts so our Malawi bank account is overdrawn and a cheque bounced, another chicken died (apparently we have been over feeding and allowing them too much exercise!) and I have lost the power cable for my laptop. There are more holiday blogs but we have had some technical problems with the ipads so I am having to rewrite them!

no lie ins but lions

Holidays on safari are nor for those who want to sleep. The first leg of our Zambian trip was to s Luangwa National Park. It was amazing. It’s green season (so called because the foliage makes it difficult to see the wildlife) so we weren’t expecting to see much, just looking forward to watching any wildlife that came our way. We arrived at the park after an epic 9 hour drive and decided to go for a game drive. We set off at a cracking pace because the word was that there were some lions finishing off a buffalo. We made it and watched a pride of lions lounging around after their festive meal.

 

The park is on a different scale to those in Malawi; we’d seen elephants, giraffe and zebra as well as lots of different antelope in Malawi but not all in one place and no big cats. We saw lions on a second occasion but not within photographing distance and the kids couldn’t see them. We were hoping to see leopards and our eldest will tell you that while on a grow up night drive I saw the back legs and tail of something that might have been a leopard!

 

The park is so huge the wildlife sort of spill out into the areas around it, this must make daily life for the local people quite hard elephants could wreck crops and houses. They also hate bicycles so if you meet an elephant while cycling you should always dismount.

christmas in Malawi

Our first African Christmas; we stayed at one of our favourite lodges where we knew that the food would be good and enjoyed lovely walks through the rainforest on Christmas day. It was slightly surreal singing Christmas carols and eating mince pies in the warm but it was definitely easier trying out the new presents in a warmer climate!

filling forms

We are heading off to Zambia next week on a crazy road trip adventure, crazy because of the enormous distances we plan to drive, with 2 kids. Anyway we need an awful lot of paperwork to cross the border, including yellow fever certificates, car insurance (for Zambia as well as Malawi) and an export licence. I went to acquire the latter this morning.

 

The directions to the correct office were to go through Limbe, go round the roundabout at the end and ask for directions at the Petroda petrol station! It worked perfectly and I found the right office where we had a conversation about who owned the car (it’s in the doc’s name) and who would be driving it, the implication being that the doc was the owner and driver so should have gone to do the paperwork! The policeman wasn’t too sexist and eventually agreed to do it in the doc’s name as I had his passport number, if I wanted the paperwork in my name I would need a letter of authorisation from my husband! We then went to check the engine no. on the car and then I went (as is usual to another office) to pay the bill and then back to the original office to collect my paperwork.

 

I am certainly not missing the bustle of the shops and the busy-ness of organising food that I usually find myself embroiled in at this time of year. There’s things to organise ready for leaving the house with lodgers, sorting out staff and heading off on a road trip but it’s very different to Christmas at home. I do miss the opportunities at this time of year for catching up socially, reading newsletters and cards and seeing all the family in one mammoth journey.