Livingston, Zambia

What an amazing 3 days! 

We arrived in Livingston and drove directly to the Victoria Falls, which is the end of the Mighty Zambezi River.  These falls, are understandably one of the 7 wonders of the world!  The amount of water crashing down and the force in which it does so is unbelievable!  There is nothing like the Maid of the Mist (at Niagara Falls) because the boat would get smashed to pieces.  The water hits so hard, that what they refer to as "mist", I can only describe as torrential rain!  The minute you start walking towards the falls, you are soaking wet!  I wore my rain coat, that worked pretty well, nothing could keep you perfectly dry.  I did risk bringing my camera.  It was in the camera case, that had a waterproof cover for the zipper, and in a plastic bag.  The bag got wet, the outside of the case was wet, but the camera was a.o.k...phiew!   It was all worth it for the rainbow picture that I got in the 1 of 2 places that it was dry enough to pull it out. (when I get home, I'll inset pics into the blog).

For dinner, we tried an African restaurant.  I liked the food.  I had a fish in a coconut sauce with nshima (aka ugali) and pumpkin leaves with nuts and sweet potato leaves. I think I wrote about how to eat ugali before, so I wont get into  how to eat the meal.  I was one of the few people (out of 15) who liked the food, but I that was because I was more accustomed to African cooking. We got back to the campsite around 11 pm because it took almost an hour to get the bill...TIA!(This is Africa).

When I woke up the next morning, I got dressing neutral colours.  This was a requirement for the Lion Encounter.  That's right!  I walked next to, held the tail of, and pet 2 17 months old lionesses in a partial wild setting!  I couldn't believe that I was so close to such magnificent creatures!

We had this opportunity at a conservation group.  The have a 4 stage program.

• Stage 1: Cubs are brought up in captivity, but in a natural type of setting.  They are exposed to people and taught some of the basic survival skills. These are the lions that we see.

• Stage 2: They no longer have any visitor contact.  They begin learning to fend for themselves in a controlled environment. 

• Stage 3:  They begin to hunt in a controlled environment, but not as controlled as before.  Their pray is around for them to hunt, but so are other competitors.  It is also the stage where they will start having cubs, who are then brought into stage 1.

• Stage 4: A pride of lions are released into the wild together.

The lions that we pet are wild animals!  They were not tamed like at the zoo.  The only difference is that there was staff there who had a relationship with them.  The never hit the lions but would push them like a mother would.  They made sure that we were safe because they knew how to read their behaviors.  It was fantastic!  We also had 3 people walking ahead of us (that we didn't even see) because there were apparently wild elephants on the premises and they were scaring them off so that we'd be safe.

After lunch, we went for a 15 min helicopter over the Victoria Falls.  We saw how the Mighty Zambezi wound through the rock.  Apparently the falls have moved over and each turn of the river was originally a waterfall.  We saw the Zimbabwe boarder and drove over a national part where we got a birds eye view of a wilder beast and impala.  I couldn't believe how beautiful 15 minutes could be! 

That night, we went for dinner at Armadillo's...sooo good!  I shared some Indian food with 3 other people.  Everyone was happy with this meal!  After, a few of us went to see a live band at a bar called Makumba.  There was a basist, drummer, 2 guitarists and a bunch of singers that kept rotating.  Until about 11:30pm, they were playing The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Tracy Chapman, etc...but once more people came, it was all local music and lots of dancing!  We danced with everyone.  Nobody cares how anyone dances, everyone just moves and has a great time...but I still really need to learn how to move my booty!  I am such a white girl!

WHAT A DAY!  

Today, I took it easy and walked around the craft market.  I may have gotten someone arrested, but that's another long story and I'm not even sure that the guy who wanted make the arrest was an actual cop.  As mentioned above...TIA!  When interacting with locals, there is always something interesting that happens.