Livingstone at Last!

Greetings from Zambia

Finally! No more countdowns. Sure you are relieved about that!

It started on Saturday, when Jude’s brother, Rob and his wife, Kara arrived to pick us up to take us to the airport. We were, understandably under a bit of pressure but Rob and Kara, calm and collected, helped immensely by doing last minute hanging-out-of-washing, changing a light globe, and making us a cuppa. Nice. Thanks you two. XX. Dave arrived – he is the fur-kids ‘uncle’ for 3 months living in our home and looking after Patti and Bronte. He is calm and dog savvy so we expect all to be well on the home front! Yay! THANK YOU Dave, your contribution to our “Going for Good” trip is much appreciated. XXX

Off to Perth and we were so excited to arrive at Grandview B&B – a balcony with awesome view of Perth, nestled into bush land on Gooseberry Hill. The B&B was beautifully appointed, Geoff and Leanne our hosts, lovely people – but BEST of all was a deck stretching across the back of the house with a lounge where we could smoke and take in the view.

Amazing and much appreciated was the bird life there. Three Kookaburras came and sat on the rail at the far end of the deck. Beautiful parrots, called locally “28’s” visited the bird bath. Best of all was a lovely young Grey Butcher bird who landed on the deck railing about a metre away and sat and watched us very thoughtfully for a long time, before hopping down to sit on the lounge arm about 8 inches from Jude’s face. Magical moment! Wildlife encounters before we even left Oz! Whoo Hoo! Bodes Well for Africa…

Our trip to Africa started so well – if we were prone to believe in ‘omens’ then our stars had aligned.

The Qantas / share South African Airlines flight was only half full. We asked for an exit seat for Jude’s long legs, but they were all taken. Crestfallen we asked, with little hope, if we could have a row of four to ourselves. Yes! So after a meal, and a wee bit of help with a Serapax we passed out for 6 hours and before we knew it arrived in very familiar territory at Jo’berg airport. After a fight with the reception clerk at the Mondior hotel about a smoking room – we got what we wanted…Up at 3.00 am Monday we smoked our heads off until breakfast at 6.30 and onto our Zambia flight! Whoo Hoo.

The lodge we are staying at is called Bushbuck River House, a lovely semi-self catered place (Breakfast and tea included, lunch not) right on the Zambezi River about 16K’s upstream from the mighty Mosi-O-Tunya, The Smoke That Thunders… aka Victoria Falls.

Today has been an adventure of waiting. We are sure that ‘Africa” in translation means “Wait”. So we are practicing our ‘waiting skills” neither of us having had much practice before. Twenty minutes to buy a scone and two coffees when there were only three people in line, 10 minutes to be served, then 30 minutes to get our burger and chips for lunch. That’s nearly an hour of waiting! The anticipation of the drink and food is much enhanced by having to wait for it, so much so that the goods tended not to live up to the enhanced expectations! :-P

The other adventure is the currency. $1AUD = K4500 such an easy conversion… (The exchange rate for Australians wanting to buy bananas is excellent, though, costing only K2,250.)

We went to MTN (Internet and phone company) to buy a mobile phone and a ‘dongle’, this cost us K855,000. You do the math. God knows Jude tried and did some serious damage to her neuro-circuitry. We will get the hang of it though, for sure. The young women who served us at MTN thought we were hilarious and took pity on us, loading the sim card and the dongle with everything we would need for speed. Well, for a connection in Zambia, anyway. A far cry from the mad dashes, pay by the minute in internet cafés on our previous trips to share our news with you all. We feel incredibly competent having managed to navigate Livingstone, find the MTN store – make our purchases and catch a taxi back to the lodge. Small triumph but heartening for us as we prepare to ‘live’ in rural Zambia on our own account for two months.

A lovely serendipitous moment happened while Kaye was sitting outside Shoprite where Jude was in doing more confuzling maths at checkouts. A white woman walked by Kaye and the woman smiled at her – Kaye said G’day, of course and the woman was overjoyed to meet another Aussie and hear an accent from home. Pippa is travelling on her own, so we have arranged to meet her at the Waterfront Hotel, where she is camping in the grounds there, for lunch tomorrow. Another Africa-Nut who is ready to sell her house and move here lock, stock and barrel. We have much in common!

We sit now on the first floor balcony of our thatch-roofed room with a pleasant breeze blowing from the Zambezi River. We are surrounded by splendid trees – huge cassias other natives. In one a pair of Hooded vultures are making a nest. This is their territory, we wish we could sit and wait and watch for the eggs to be laid and the chicks raised. Not much wildlife about here as they are all skittish from the many pressures of people and poaching ‘for the pot’. We have seen impala and dead waterbuck in a waterhole, which miraculously disappeared overnight – no doubt for the pot. We have a gorgeous foam frog living on the white ‘carriage’ type light outside our room. It is a pure white frog today – they are chameleon-like and change their colour to suit their surroundings. We would love to put one on a multi coloured rug and watch him change! J but won’t because you don’t want to interfere with the wildlife!

Last night just after dinner, during the second blackout for the evening, we looked at the massive dome of the African Night Sky awash with stars – the Southern Cross front and centre. A lion roaring way off in the distance on the Zimbabwe side of the river. Magic! Must be in Africa at long last.

With love and warm waves to you all,

Jude and Kaye

PS: Extra special love to our wonderful Mum’s Shirley and Evelyn XXXX (HUGS)

Foam Frog staking out our balcony light! 

Chameleon like it is white because of the lamp colour.