H'moon 16 - Safari 3

Safari Day 3

We were up early again, packed up all of our bags for our trip home later, and headed out on a drive.  After about 90 minutes the skies began to get dark and we could see lightning in the distance.  The winds picked up, and within a few minutes we were caught in an African thunderstorm.  It poured and it poured.  We tried to take cover in the truck with ponchos, but didn’t do much good.  We were all soaked, the roads were full of puddles, and animals had scurried away too.  We headed back to camp and decided to call it quits a few hours early.  Luckily they moved all of our stuff under cover to stay dry.  We ate an early lunch, then decided it was time to head home.  We drove out much different than in.  The dry roads turned into challenging puddles, but the savanna seemed refreshed from the rains.  We drove all the way back to the river and again took a boat back across to Zambia. 

Our driver picked us up out of the boat and we headed back into the border crossing.  We had no idea what to expect, and of course it was $50 each to re-enter.  We luckily had just enough cash, but then talked to our driver if we would need more to cross into Zambia next morning to catch our flight.  He said we would US Cash at the border to enter Zimbabwe, so off we went in Livingstone to get $150 more US Cash.

And of course it was a story.  We got into town and first needed to get Zambia Kwatcha, and needed several 100,000s because the exchange rate was so crazy.  We found an ATM, got out an uncomfortably huge wad of cash, and then headed to our favorite border crossing.  I walked in with our guide and he explained in Zambian what we needed and I handed over the wad.  The lady took it, counted it, then grabbed under the desk.  She started counting out US cash!, but it started out as ones.  Another one, another one, this is crazy!  Am I gonna have 150 one dollar bills?  That won’t look shady!  And then came a different bill, yes!, but I looked and it was a $2 bill.  What the?  This is crazy.  Finally 5, 10, and 20s came along, but some of those bills looked like they had been living in the mud.  She finished counting and it was $148.  The stack of bills looked terrible, but what were my choices.  I said thank you and hoped for the best for tomorrow.  We drove back into town, and thanked our guide.  He was very helpful, but was also asking about the $2 bill, he had never seen it before.  As a gesture, we gave him that as a gift/tip, and he was very excited.  We were finally dropped back off at the hostel, and back to pseudo-reality.

Back retiring for the night, we decided walk around the town for a couple blocks to see if we could find anything we liked and to also see the people.  We were the only white people in sight, and people certainly starred at us.  We didn’t find anything we liked after an hour, so we headed back and showered up.  We were joining our friends for dinner.

They knew where to go so we followed them to a restaurant and order local food and cheap drinks.  We had a great time, then headed back to the hostel before it got too dark.  We continued to drink and chat.  Then it was time to say goodbye and good luck!  We headed off to bed too, happy to be back in society.

Nadine then woke up Dave around 4am with a “honey, can come here and look at this”.  Her legs were covered in bug bites.  COVERED!  She had forgotten to re-apply bug spray for the dinner and the bugs ate her alive.  “I kept feeling little things on my legs, but it didn’t hurt and thought it was nothing.  Oh man, it was terrible!

Monsoon rain on our final morning!

Look at the flooding!

River Delta

100+  Bug bites on Nadine's legs!