the Journal 7 Christmas was looming and we wanted to make sure that we were not just on the road in the middle of nowhere on the day. Victoria Falls, on the Zambia-Zimbabwe border seemed a reasonable place to aim for, but it meant a three or four day drive along a road whose quality we had no information about. Zambia charges $80 / person for visas and has a fairly hefty road tax to boot and so we were expecting to cross the border with considerably lighter wallets. Pre-arranged accommodation at Fawlty Towers, Livingstone, however miraculously waived the visa fees and the bus again qualified for a cheaper vehicle category because it has only five seats remaining (capacity in London is 77). It sounds odd but after 4 months behind the wheel of a double-decker you really know how it handles, and avoiding potholes is a hassle but easy enough to do. They make their potholes large in Zambia, many larger than a clown’s trouseleg, and we weaved our way down through Lusaka and on to Livingstone without incident but still attracting plenty of stares. The growing number of sponsors has made the outside of the bus into a multicolored patchwork of logos that confuses passers-by even more. We had a slight culture shock when greeted by the sheer number of white people in Livingstone, Zambia’s tourism capital. The festive season was taken seriously here and involved a potentially hazardous mix of adventure sports and alcohol. The gorge swing was a real highlight, where three and a half seconds of freefall seems like a century. The madman who took us rafting on Christmas Day itself ensured that most of the time we were swimming down the ‘Mighty Zambezi’; crocodiles visible on the banks. We began to suspect that he might have been trying to punish us for turning up for breakfast in a 5-star lodge with a drip in our veins, squeezing in saline to counteract Christmas Eve’s hangover. The falls themselves were a truly stunning spectacle, even in low water, with a haze of spray water shooting high above the lip of the falls creating permanent rainbows. It is very evident that Livingstone has a great deal to offer a visitor but is a shame that the lion’s share of the money spent here leaves Zambia immediately without benefiting the locals. The border crossing to Botswana indicated a ferry crossing and our hearts sank. A double-decker has a ground clearance comparable with a Ferrari and the 9m long wheelbase means that entering and exiting ferries on ramps is risky. We inched onto the ferry with little problem but grounded heavily on the exit. This partially sheared away the chassis from the stairwell but we had yet to get it fixed after thieves broke in en route to Mombasa using heavy equipment, so no real permanent damage was sustained. The kind owners of Thebe River Lodge in Chobe, Northern Botswana, allowed us to park up in their compound after we tried a couple of other places that were prohibitively expensive. Botswana is relatively affluent due to its mineral reserves and the BMWs and Mercedes on the road were a marked change from dilapidated Toyotas that have characterized the other vehicles on the roads since Sudan. Game-viewing, bird-watching and deserts were on offer but we made the decision to push onto Johannesburg for New Year although it seemed a lot too soon to be entering our last country. A recap of the route from London so far: England, France, Germany, Czech Rep., Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana and finally South Africa. top of page |
