On to Livingstone, Zambia

Hippos resting

We went out for a short game drive in the morning. It started with a puff adder on the road just outside camp, apparently they don't have a good antidote to the venom. Our guide told us about a child in his village who got bit on the ankle, she lived, but can only walk on one side of her foot. We primarily spotted birds, the prettiest being the scarlet chested sunbird. We apparently just missed seeing an elephant (there are only 5000 in this 26000 square kilometer park, so they are hard to find). We ended at the hippo pond where hippos were resting their heads against the bodies of other hippos to sleep.

About 1:30 PM we flew to Livingstone. The pilot got permission to fly over Victoria Falls- what a unique falls. It crashes into a canyon, which causes the spray to fly straight up on the air currents. The natives called this Mosi-o-Tunya, the smoke that thunders. The falls drops 98-108 meters and is 1.7 kilometers or 1 mile wide. Upon landing, we did a walking tour of the Zambian side of the falls. We would see about 1/3 of the falls from this side, though during the dry season, this side dries up. We wore our ponchos to walk through the spray on the jutting peninsula opposite the falls. It was quite impressive.

Victoria Falls from the air

Everyone was nervous about where we would stay, but what a surprise. Toka Leye Lodge is a new (opened in May) wilderness camp in the Mosi-o-Tunya National Park outside Livingstone. Beautiful tens with glass windows and best of all: air conditioning and HEAT! We even had blankets for our legs while eating dinner in the outdoor pavilion.

Zambia is a country of 11.5 million people whose primary industries are copper mining, agriculture (we saw large irrigated fields of wheat, corn and bananas). They can grow 2-3 crop per year. The country has people who speak 73 different languages. But like all the countries around here, most people live in small villages and the unemployment rate is about 75%.