Next stop: Zimbabwe. Well, that was the plan until we got to the border and tallied the costs up. Tourist Visas, car import tax, return local council duties, and most interestingly a carbon tax – the costs seemed to be never-ending, and only for a planned 2-day visit to Mana Pools approximately 20km from the border. So we kindly informed the Zimbabwean immigration officer that we would not be entering the country after all and were headed back into Zambia. The Zambezi River
After a lengthy discussion on what to do next, we settled on camping along the Zambezi River. The fourth-longest river in Africa, the Zambezi flows through or across a number of country borders from source to mouth, including DRC, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Mozambique. Parts of the river along with their corresponding banks have been designated as national parks or reserves in most countries.
We chose a campsite, Kiambi, about 50km west of the Lower Zambezi National Park. No risk of being mauled by lions here, only by visiting German children who caught Charlie unawares in a game of hide and seek through the campsite showers. Ha.
We didn’t end up heading into the park, instead taking it easy after two days on the road. However the local wildlife on the banks and Zambezi island was rich. The most rigorous activity was a sunset cruise, spotting a number of hippos and elephants feeding on the river grasses and watching the sunset over the river and baobabs.
Observations on Zambia
This was to be the end of our week in Zambia. I learnt a lot, mainly just by observing the locals, their interactions with each other and their environment. Zambians are a friendly people, despite a diverse ethnicity across 70-odd native ethnic groups, and a handful from elsewhere in the world. The majority of the population remains reliant on subsistence farming, leading to near misses on the highway with every domestic animal imaginable: cow, donkey, goat, sheep, chicken, dog and cat.
Zambia remains rather undeveloped, although the investment in primary and secondary education cannot be missed with schools at every turn. The growth in the tourism industry, particularly in the Luangwa Valley and along the Zambezi, was also notable with new lodges becoming online, although partly at the expense of the struggling Zimbabwean economy.
What also cannot be missed is the crazy number of Kingdom Halls of Jehovah Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventist churches – more than one in a tiny village was not a rare site. Nor were the European or Chinese-sponsored road programs and trucking outfits, which I can only hope will have positive outcomes for the country and not merely the mining, commodity and transportation companies driving this growth. It will certainly make the drive to South Luangwa more comfortable!
After two days of relaxation along the Zambezi, it was time to follow the river upstream to Livingstone and Victoria Falls.
