Water, water everywhere!

Niamh and Cathal, Livingstone Island
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We were very much looking forward to our sojourn in Zambia. Mainly because Cathal was born here and it was 26 years since he’d set foot in the country. The signs boded well, when at the border, the immigration officials welcomed him home and said he was “one of us”.

We arrived in Livingstone at 3 in the afternoon, with our group and as we’d booked a high tea on Livingstone Island we left almost immediately for the grounds of the very posh, Royal Livingstone hotel to get the boat to the island.

Victoria Falls
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We had a tour of the falls – they are very impressive even at this time of the year - which is low water season. We still got absolutely drenched by the spray coming off the water. Apparently in high season volume of water falling over the edge is 9 million litres a second. The falls are 1.7km wide, the spray can be seen from 30kms away. So it’s not surprising the locals used to call it “the smoke that thunders”. However for all those statistics the falls are breathtakingly beautiful and we resolved to come back again and have another look. Then, however our tummies were rumbling and we were keen to have some tea. We had Pimms, cream scones, cake and sandwiches and in short stuffed ourselves silly in very scenic surroundings.

Cathal and the mammy in the hotel grounds... there were zebra too.
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For the next few days we chilled out with our friend Emma, and wandered about Livingstone a bit. In general we were finding Africa much more expensive than Asia had been so that curtailed what we could get up to. We did pack a picnic and head off to the Falls again, paying the $10 Falls Park entrance fee. We spent several hours gazing enraptured at the falls, getting drenched intermittently and we walked down to the gorge to see the boiling pot and watch the bungee jumpers fall. Then we found an area free of baboons and monkeys and had our lunch with a view.

Vic Falls
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We also visited the Livingstone Museum which has an interesting section on Zambian traditions, unintentionally hilariously captioned. For example there was a section on dos and don’t for pregnant women, kind of like a natal ten commandments. One of the commandments was “Do not peep” another was “If you are halfway and forget something don’t go back”. This gave us a bit of a giggle. The museum also has a section on Zambian history and politics and also an exhibition about the life of David Livingstone, including some of his original letters.

Vic Falls
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On the eve we were to say goodbye to Emma, we went out for a very good Indian meal at a place called Ngolide Lodge, which Emma treated us to. Thanks Ems!

We hung around for another few days before heading down to the Zambezi Sun hotel on the day Cathal's parents were due to arrive. We settled in, spent far too long in the lovely shower, washing off the layers of grime that the paltry showers at the backpackers had been unable to shift. So we were very presentable when the auld pair finally rocked up. We had a lovely evening catching up and stuffing ourselves silly at the buffet and drinking wine. Gosh, we'd forgotten what it tasted like. The next day we headed down to the falls again. Turns out that by staying in that hotel you don't have to pay the entry fee. On this day it wasn't as wet as it had been previously, there was slightly less water, but they were still spectacular. It was Christmas Eve and we were at Vic Falls. We had a good Christmas and got lots of pressies, thanks rellies! We both got new clothes so looked very respectable when we sat down to dinner that night. The next day we headed up to Mongu to have a look at where Cathal was born.