The first half of our trip will soon come to an end. Most of our fellow travellers will be leaving after a few days in Livingstone. I and Andreas will continue our journey to Kenya, together with Matt and Nathan, and some new people will join our truck. It feels kind of sad because we had a great time as a group over the last three weeks, but I’m sure we’ll have a lot more to enjoy. We leave Botswana very early to get to Livingstone in time for some people to do some rafting while the rest of us is going to have a great breakfast at the lodge. We’ll be staying here for 4 days. The campsite is waterfront by the Zambesi river, with a pool, a bar and a restaurant in a beautiful location just looking at the water flowing. One of the greatest differences with Botswana is the temperature and high humidity which is also bringing plenty of mosquitoes. Actually, the worst moment of the day is indeed when getting into the shower which is stuffed with insects both alive and dead!

As we are on a budget we decide to skip the overly priced activities and just reload our batteries for the next month. We anyway get the chance to visit the falls which are just few Km from the lodge. Unfortunately I didn’t get really impressed by them, it’s not the rainy season and therefore the falls are rather dry. Despite being the largest waterfalls in the world, in this dry season the amount of water is only about 20% of what it would be at its maximum. It also looks like the Zambia part of the falls are not as spectacular as when you see them from Zimbabwe, but going there is going to cost too much. Also looking at them from the air should be a great experience, but the prices are one more time out of range. Nevertheless, it’s a nice day for us and we have seen what I never though I would see when I was young! Inside the park at the falls it’s full of monkeys. They are are incredibly nasty and advanced thieves! They are so used to the tourists that they have no problem spotting and taking what they like even from people’s backpacks!

We also spend half a day in Livingstone taking the chance to visit the local museum, which is a tribute to the first inhabitants of these lands. We also learn about the history of the explorer Dr. Livingstone himself, reading about this amazing travels around central Africa, trying to find the source of the Nile. Charming!

The rest of the time we are just lazying out at the pool, having some beers at the bar and chatting with the people who will be leaving us soon. When the time comes we are all a little too sad, but most of the people are heading to Johannesburg and all the others are leaving with a great experience in their hearts! I’m convinced we are all going to be back in Africa some days.

For the four of us, together with the new people joining, it’s time to start the second part of the trip, leaving the Southern part of Africa and entering Eastern one. The truck is all stocked up with new groceries, since from Malawi and on it will get harder and harder to buy even the basic things. Passing through Lusaka’s outskirts we drive east and spend two days in the Kafue national park. We take a cruise on the Kafue river moving slowly on a water that is so smooth it looks like oil! It’s really beautiful and extremely quiet, just a few people on the river sides: they wave and welcome our boat. We stop in the middle of nothing where a local group is going to show us some dance while playing their drums. Everybody except us decides to sleep outside under the open sky. I thought it was wise to not be eaten alive by mosquitoes 🙂 The night was beautifully silent and getting up a few steps from the water is always nice. We are having breakfast on the boat and then visiting a family who will show us how they are dealing with the environment these days.

Moving on we can appreciate a new landscape, the poverty which has always being striking is turning into something different. There is a different pride into these markets on the side of the street, into the eyes of the many women who are placing a few tomatoes neatly into a pyramid, hoping to sell one or maybe two. There is so little to sell, and there are twenty people all selling tomatoes in a few meters and when you stop it’s chaos! Some other are selling coal, even just a few pieces for people to be able to boil some water to cook some food.

The kids are always waving at us, they wave at a truck full of people they do not know, but they sure think we are different and maybe weird. They are just having fun smiling and having us wave back at them. It is not easy to describe but something is radically different now, even the color of the plants and the sky looks richer, stronger and deeper.