Wednesday 20 July 2016

Our journey through the Zambian boarder went reasonably well yesterday for Yanni and myself, although our driver was held up for 3 hours because the border control car computer was down.  We only needed a very simple certificate as the car had all its paperwork and regularly travels between the two countries, but again Malawi’s are very patient and will just stand in queues the heat calmly for any number of hours without complaint.  I, of course, was an angel of serenity, but Yanni was a nightmare, all impatience and foul language and suspecting all and sundry of making our lives difficult just for the hell of it.  Fortunately I managed to calm her down, and we left far later than we should have and arrived in Lusaka at about midnight.

Our stop over hotel was a backpackers one with shared flushing and, happily, reasonably clean toilet.  There was a shower although the water was cold and we decided to wait until we hit our hopefully slightly nicer hotel after traveling today.

We quickly learned to avoid any toilet facility and just relieve ourselves in carefully selected sites along the roadway.  The toilet facilities in most places were unspeakably vile, the worst one being a drop toilet that I very nearly dropped into when it came to me as a revelation that I couldn’t stand up after a prolonged - squat.  With literally nothing to grab on to or lunge at for a handhold to pull myself up, I found myself sinking irresistibly into the hole as my legs gave up, and had to try as an act of desperation, throwing myself forward and found my calves entirely unequal to the task.  I only very narrowly missed loosing my leg down the drop, and that was the last of trying them for me.  The flush toilets we met at service stations were even more vile though, as they seldom had toilet seats, and when they did, it was clear at times that people were standing on the toilet seats and naturally the results were pretty disastrous.  I can see how baffling the toilets must have been to those who had never seen one before, probably alarming too when they flushed.  If they flushed.  Still, in the end we decided we preferred to find a quiet bush as a less alarming option and a much less stressful one.  Obviously, it would be silly to bare ones butt to a snakes or scorpions or spiders or something of that nature, so caution was required, but still infinitely the better choice in my opinion.

We arrived in Victoria Falls at about tea time and booked into a nice hotel just a few kilometers from the falls.  Goodness knows why being driven in a car makes one tired, but it does, so we decided on an early night so we could be up bright and early for our first visit to the Falls tomorrow.