13 January - RAIN!

13 January

32 Miles

Kafue – Lusaka

Steph:

Oh my goodness! We almost died today! It started raining very violently about 10 minutes into the ride. And then the road disappeared. And it was uphill. And we were super slow. Needless to say, there are no pictures because our camera would not have survived. Since we're getting close to the capital, the traffic increased significantly. We lost our shoulder and the road was narrow so we were run off the road a few times because of the big trucks. About 10k from Lusaka, it was raining so hard that we could barely see anything. Cars couldn't see us either so we stopped at a Camp ground to take cover.

It was a crazy ride and by far the roughest rain we've been through. I got pretty nervous at a few points but I think overall we enjoyed ourselves :)

Erik:

Rain. No road. Rain. Mud. It poured. We rode super slow for as long as we could. When we got to Eureka Game Camp, we stopped to wait out the rain. We saw zebras, giraffe, and impala. We met a weird american who was "chasing a crook". But in no officail capacity. Aka, loser. After a nice burger and about an hour, the rain subsided a bit. So we rode on. We got into the city very quickly and a heart-pounding ride through round-abouts and busy streets. Nothing too harrowing, but it got our blood flowing.

We made it to to Yuyu and Gigi's at around 1pm. We looked and smelled like wet dogs. A nice hot shower and a change of clothes was very nice. They told us about how they met in Cape Verde while Gigi was there as a Peace Corps Volunteer. She's been in the foreign service ever since and they lived in Guinea Bissau for years in the jungle. Very cool couple. Very nice of them to let us stay here.

Only photo we took today. See the rain? That was our day :) Pretty fun

12 January - HILLS!

12 January

51 Miles

Mazabuka – Kafue

Erik:

Today was a good day.

It started steep though. There was a good 16 miles to get out of where we were. At about 20 miles, we hit a massive downhill (after a pretty long uphill) into a valley. We went pretty fast for a while. It was hot and sunny until around 11am. So we pulled over at "Aunt Lilly's Rest Stop" for a coke and some samosas. While we were in there, another customer told us he saw a cyclist coming our way. So we relaxed for a while and then headed out. One km down the road we ran into Jeremy from France. He has been going since the beginning of September. He went through West Africa (Morocco to Senegal) and then took a plane to Lusaka. He's been here in Zambia for 2 days and already ran into 4 other cyclists. Us and a dutch couple who seem to be going our exact route and are about 2 days ahead of us. Now he's headed down to Jo-Burg.  

After we talked to him, we made our climb out of the valley. We also started playing with the video camera. Stephanie's ipod also has a recording feature and it's pretty good. After the hill another long down hill. Really long actually, with some beautiful views. We headed straight into some super pelting rain (steph doesn't think this qualifies as a sentence). Super pelting rain. We were only about 3 miles from Kafue. Haha! So we were soaked, but the town was perfectly dry.

We walked around, got a sim card and found some food. Now we need to stretch. We're falling apart. Cycling is fine but everything hurts after only 5 minutes of walking.

Steph:

Today was beautiful! I love it! A lot of hills but the views are breath-taking.

I think the highlight of the day was buying some incredibly delicious bananas on the side of the road. Ten bananas for a dollar. What a deal. We inhaled them in less than 5 minutes. We finally got some sleep after two rather rough nights. The little hotel we're in is clean and pretty. Tomorrow we arrive in Lusaka at Gigi and Yuyu's house! I'm really quite excited about it.

An older gentleman looking towards the sunrise on our way out of Mazabuka

Looking back at the first killer hill of the day

The valley we rode through

A nice long, steady downhill with some nice cloud covering. Awesome

Incredible bananas. 

Another awesome downhill. Look how pretty. Totally worth the brutal climb

11 January - Bike races and Farm land

11 January

38 Miles

Monze – Mazabuka

Steph:

The landscape is changing again. It is becoming flatter again and farm land is taking over everything. It was cool. We had a bit of a race with some locals who were transporting big bags of coal on the back of their bikes. We rode together for about 15km and I was trying to shake them the whole entire way. We lost 3 of them but the last one just wouldn't let up. His bike was not as good as ours and he would just not fall back. I think it was as important to him to not let the 2 lakooa beat him as it was for me to outkick him. At the end, we all waved at each other and smiled though. See? All in good fun.

We found a hotel that was nicer and went to find something to eat. At the meat pie place, I saw another lakooa, or mizungu (whatever it is now) and said hello. It ended up being the nicest family. Her name is Gigi, she is an american who has been living in Africa since 1991. Her husband is Yuyu who is from Cape Verde. A very cool couple who recently moved to Lusaka from Ghana with their two beautiful boys (Leandro and Alex). Gigi works for the embassy there and after talking to them for four whole minutes, they generously invited us to stay with them at their house. They gave us their number and we agreed to meet up at the capital a few days after. People are so nice. I love it!! We're so lucky.

Erik:

We got up at 6am not rested at ALL.It was also a very hot day. Not a cloud in sight. As we approached Mazabuka, it started getting quite dense with villages, farms and people. It's sugar fields about as far as the eye can see. Lots of bicycle traffic as well. At one point we were riding 5 in a line, 3 locals transporting char-coal were keeping pace with us. It was quite a storm of people and kids all yelling mizungu/lakooa at us.

Just 5km outside of town we acquired a friend (also on his bike) that talked to us (I understnad less than 1/2 of what he said) for like 20 minutes. What I got out of the conversation is that he and everyone else were shocked to see "the white man walking on bikes". By walking, he meant riding. So basically they never see white people riding bicycles. It took 20 minutes to get that across. Haha!

The hotel we found is a little more expensive than we normally pay, but after last night I think we deserve it. Meeting Yuyu and Gigi's family was great. They invited us to stay with them before we even knew each other's names. Awesome.  

Some nice people working on their fields, with some crazy skies in the background.

Nice huts

Again, people working and taking pride in their land

Laundry time! Woo! I will never take a washing machine for granted again.
EVER.

10 January - Mosquitos

10 January

64 Miles

Choma – Monze

Erik:

Easy ride today. Went through a few towns. Got mangoes. Got rained on. Monze doesn't seem as friendly as Choma did. The guest house we found is very lowball. Not impressive or worth the money we're paying ($16usd). Needless to say, I don't think we'll stay here one minute longer than we need to. We did have an amazing dinner at a place called Food Royale, which we're pretty sure is owned by the same people as Food Palace in Livingstone. It was excellent. Meat pies. HUGE ones.

I felt great on the ride today. The scenery is great. Rolling hills of green fall away from us on every side. After the rain, there was this cool layer of steam covering the road. It looked like a B movie special effect.

Steph:

So I'm going to tell you about the night we had in Monze. By far, the least amount of sleep I've gotten in a while. So the room wasn't great. It was big and had more than enough room for our bikes, which is good. We agreed to pay K80 purely because we were tired and because there was a shower. We paid and I went to shower but there was no water. Boo. The nice lady said, "ok, I will bring you water". Five minutes later, she knocked on the door and came in with a bucket of hot water and a bucket of cold water. Haha! Good enough! We went to bed around 10pm and put the mosquito net down. All beds have had mosquito nets so we don't get eaten alive at night. Since the sheets did not seem or smell clean, we slept on top of the bed cover and covered ourselves with our travel sheet. I couldn't sleept though. Everything was itching and I felt like there were bugs crawling all over me. At one point Erik got up to get the anti-itch cream because he felt the same. I kept thinking, crap, there are bed bugs here, I want to get out of here. I also figured we could just get up and leave since I was sure it was around 5am. Well, no. It was 1:30am. Erik turned on the lights, I looked up and almost screamed. The inside of our mosquito net was COVERED with mosquitoes. COVERED. There must have been at least 20 in the bed with us. Ugh. So gross. These guys had been sucking our blood for hours. I spent the next ten minutes killing every single one of them. But even after we re-secured the net, we didn't get any sleep at all. As soon as the sun came out we were out of there.

Good riddance Monze!!

A healthy Erik leaving Choma

Some hills to spice up our day :)

9 January

9 January

0 Miles

Choma

Erik:

Whole lot of nuthin!

Slept away the rest of my cold. Woo!

All of the staff was very concerned about my cold. They kept giving us free coffee and asking if I was ok. Very sweet group.

Steph:

While Erik slept, I watched 127 Hours.

That movie is crazy. I don't know if you've seen it but I'm sure you've heard the story. It's about a normal guy who gets himself into some trouble when he goes mountain biking/hiking/climbing by himself. His arm gets stuck when a rock falls on it as he's climbing a canyon in the middle of the wilderness. For 127 hours, he tries to get out until finally he is forced to cut off his hand in order to not die of dehydration. It's intense.

It made me think a lot of my family and friends at home who go out into the desert to work out and enjoy nature all the time. Please remember to tell people where you're going and try to go with someone. SAFETY FIRST PEOPLE!!!

The lovely staff at Racheal's Lodge in Choma.

8 January

8 January

Choma

0 Miles

Steph:

He woke up with a sore throat. Boo. It's not really a big deal though. We're not in a hurry to get to Lusaka and this place is a good place for Erik to recover. Sixty Five miles is a long way to go when you can't breathe, need to blow your nose every two minutes and are in pain. It's actually been nice to really get to know a place before moving on.

Again, he slept forever this morning and I pondered a lot of things while staring at the ceiling. One of those things was what to hang on our huge turquoise wall. Ha. How silly. After breakfast we headed back into town to pick up cough drops and check out the market some more. The owner of this hotel offered to give us a lift. We gladly accepted. Her name is Susan. She is a very fashionable woman who really likes the color purple. Her build is tall and large and her hair matches it. She drives a very fancy mini-van that looks slightly silly driving down a dirt road covered in pot holes. She played very loud gospel music on the radio while telling us about how they came to own Racheal's Lodge. Rachael was her mother in law who sadly passed away due to a heart condition. As we turned into the main road she explained that a lot of neighboring smaller villages come to Choma to do their shopping which is why it is getting so congested. It's true, there was quite a bit of traffic. We got dropped off, got the cough drops and walked downthe muddy dirt roads to all the smaller shops.

Most shops are repair shops, pare parts, bicycle repair, farming supplies and equipment, seeds... that kind of thing. Almost everyone stares at us, some say hello, others just smile. Most people just mind their own business though, which makes it easy to observe. We walked by one shop that had a table in front of it with two baskets filled with small little balls. One basket had white ones and the other beige-ish colored ones. They looked like quinoa seeds so I stopped to look. A big man quickly came forward and asked how much I needed. I asked what they were and he said they were for the maize.

"Oh ok, what do you do with them? Do you boil them? How do you eat them?" He looked at me like I was stupid so I added, "Sorry, I don't know what they are."

Laughing, he said, "Oh! You do not know? No, no, you do not eat, if you eat, you will die."

Haha! Oops! Now people around us were laughing at me too. He kindly explained that you store them with maize to keep it fresh. But never eat them, because they are poison. I thanked him and as we walked away, he said, smiling, "See? You come to Africa and you learn these things".

We've decided to stay yet another day. When we got back, Erik passed out again for a few hours. There's really no point to cycle when we're like this. The staff here are now all aware of his condition and have been very kind. We had a kettle with tea, coffee and sugar delivered to our roon earlier. I'm sure it was on Susan's orders. Everyone keeps asking me how he's feeling. It's very thoughtful and we're quite comfortable here.

Downtown Choma

Watching the clouds roll in

Sitting in the garden updating the journal

7 January

7 January

Choma

0 Miles

1 Year Anniversary!!!

Steph:

A year ago today we got married in Cuernavaca and had the greatest party ever. I can't even begin to express how lucky I feel. Being here in Africa is a dream come true, especially with the way we're doing it. I have the best family in the world. I have the best friends in the world and I miss and love them all. AND I have Erik, who loves me despite my temper and all of my quirks. We're fortunate enough to be able to take a trp like this for 7 months and we have a home and a life to go back to. What more could I want?

I would actually really like to know what I'm going to do with myself once we are back in real life. But I guess that's minor :)

We slept in today. Or Erik slept in today. I woke up around 5:30am with water dripping on my face. It was pouring all night long and the roof begn to leak right above our heads. I went to tell management and went back to the room. I put our pot on the mattress and turned around to continue sleeping.

Erik:

We treated ourself to brekafast. Also, still sick. It sucks. Wandered into town to get supplies and explore. We had about 10 kids follow us. After a while we let them catch up. They all came and shook our hands and then ran away giggling. Cute.

Choma is pretty big. The bustle is fun and there are lots of street vendors. Before we could explore too much, it started raining, so we hurried back to the lodge. We had a very nice dinner, Beef Stew and Rice, and called our parents on skype. We'll see if we can leave tomorrow.

One Year!! Woo!!

Oahu, Hawaii 2009

Kamakura, Japan 2010 

Nikko, Japan 2011

Cuernavaca, Mexico 2012

6 January

6 January

Kalomo – Choma

41 Miles

Erik:

Uneventful ride. The scenery is very beautiful. It is green and hilly. Very much a jungle. The bush is thick and wet and the weather is either chilly and rainy or bloody hot and humid. Luckily, we have caught the in-between phases to cycle through.

We came into Choma around noon and started looking for lodges. Our third inquiry (Racheal's Lodge) turned out to be a gem. Cheap, very well kept, it has great food and a great staff. We basically checked in and slept. I am feeling worse than I thought.

Steph:

The weather was so nice today. We have been prety lucky in catching the good stuff. This morning it was sprinkling a little but proceeded to be overcast and cool for the whole ride. A few miles out of Kalomo a blue van pulled over in front of us. It ended up being two guys that we met the night before at the Guest house. They had tried to teach us some Tonga. It's a really cool sounding language but I had to get them to write it down because it's pretty much impossible to remember.

Hello - KABWOMBA

Welcome – MWABONWA

How are you? - MWA BUKA BUTI

Fine – KABOTU

Thank You - TWALUMBA

Anyway, they stopped to wish us a safe journey. Very nice.

We're waiting for our dinner that we ordered earlier, for a very reasonable price.

I am starving. I'm always hungry nowadays. Always. I finish a meal and automatically start a count-down to the next meal. It's a little ridiculous.

Sika Guest House in Kalomo

This is what I like to see. It's what Bridget and Matt are trying to promote in the Okavango

A family plowing their field

Bread and jam break time. 

More bicycles!

5 January

5 January

Kalomo

0 Miles

Steph:

Erik got the same cold I had :( Boo. At least I was in Fawlty Towers for mine, instead of on the road. Poor thing. We decided to stay here for the day for him to rest. He slept most of the morning and then we sat around and watched movies all day. At one point we did emerge for a while to go back to town and explore and find some lunch. I really do like the villages here. People have things to do and are working. It's funny how I see that as a sign of a functioning and productive town. It's even funnier how shocked we are to see it. It also rained most of the day so we were lucky to have an hour or so to walk around.

We saw another white person. Ooooh. We think he was peace corps. He sounded american when I said hi. He didn't seem at all interested in talking to us though so we moved on. After lunch we retreated back into our little hole. We did come out to make dinner on the front porch with our little stove. There was a boy with his bicycle standing right in front of our gueat house selling fresh milk out of a big container. We bought a few cups for about $0.20. It was delicious. There were a few women standing around talking. They were very friendly even though they kept making fun of our little stove. Pshhh. One of them did ask us if we were sick. I don't know if she asked because we both looked horrible, because I'm still coughing up lungs or because we had been locked in our tiny little room all day. But yes, yes we are sick. Thank you.

The man who watches this place at night is a sweet, wrinkly, smiley beautiful old man. Seriously, all he does is smile, tells us to rest and says, "you are welcome here". I wish I had taken a picture of him. I need to stop being so shy about photographing strangers. Argh.

Hopefully, Erik will feel better tomorrow.

4 January

4 January

Zimba – Kalomo

31 Miles

Erik: 

Slept in a bit again. The weather is cooler with all this rain, so we can afford it. We got ready fairly fast this time and were on the saddle by 7:30am. A gentle mist covered everything, it was very cool. The hills were less up and a bit more down today. Good news. We bought mangoes from a lady by the side of the street for breakfast. We really only bought one for 500K (about $0.10) but then the lady smiled, called us back and gave us 4 more. Sweet.

We got to Kalomo at 1100. It is a pretty big place. Kind of. We a guest house room a bit away from the city center since we don't want the Friday night parties to keep us up all night. (steph: how old are we? -eyeroll-)

The center of town was very cool and alive. It reminds me a bit of Mexico. We had two really crappy burgers. So very bad. Live and learn. Not everywhere can be as good as Food Palace.

I think I caught Steph's cold.

Darn it all.

Steph:

Oh man, I love this place. We didn't go very far today but it was far enough for my throat. I'm still coughing and I'm sick of it. This town is pretty cool. You can definitely tell that Zambia is more populated than Botswana based purely on the fact that dots on the map are more than just three straw huts and a green water tank (jojo?). There are guest houses and stores and a gas station and people! It's great. Oh and they play music on the street, it rocks.

Just a few thoughts on some other things:

• THE ROAD!! Oh my goodness! Best road we have been on, by FAR! Ultra smooth, ultra clean with a ultra, giant, clean shoulder. We can almost ride next to each other without having to worry about cars. Lovely.

• THE PEOPLE!! It's crazy how a border can make such a difference. It's not the people. The people are just as friendly and awesome. Really. It's more a difference in language I think. Setswana (from what we've been told) is very much a "command" language. Words like "thank you" and "please" are not words that you usually add to anything. So when people say, "give me that", the "please" is just implied. We heard that if you literally translate "please", it is seen as almost begging and kind of frowned upon. When they translate it to English, it comes across as harsh and slightly rude. It's not that they are rude, obviously, it's just that one has to get used to it. But here in Zambia, people say "thank you" for EVERYTHING! I get thanked for saying "hello". It's very friendly and very pleasant. I like it.
  
  

  

  foggy morning

  
  

  

  Hills, hills, hills.

  
  

  

  Woo! Like my hat? Yeah, you do.

  
  

2 - 3 January

2 January

Livingstone

0 Miles

Erik:

No money still. We paid the bill with the credit card and our USAA Mastercard debit seems to work. We should have enough cash to get to Lusaka.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

3 January

Livingstone – Zimba

48 Miles

Erik:

We slept in until 7am. It was nice. Took us a while to pack and say our goodbyes to everyone. Fawlty Towers has been so good to us.

We started cycling at like 8:45am. It was a tough but beautiful day. Tons of hills, it was mostly uphill actually. The jungles are great. A bit humid though. Steph is still recovering and coughed up a few lungs along the way, so she had a harder time than I. But it wasn't easy going into hills right after a two week vacation.

We got to Zimba at around 1400. Thankfully it is somewhat developed so we checked ourselves into a shady guest-house (bar/restaurant). Promptly, we fell asleep. After our 2 hour nap we didn't venture out much. Both of us felt anti-social and people at the bar were being really loud. We watched Lilo & Stitch and went to bed.

Back on the road! 

Pretty little villages

Our sketchy hotel room right by the bar. Clearly we're not used to physical activity anymore

Happy New Year!!

31 December

Livingstone

0 Miles

Erik:

New Year's EVE!!! We bought some Morula Liquor and planned on having a nice quiet night at Fawlty Towers. Mykaela and Viktor from Sweden, however, invited us to eat dinner with them and the rest of the Swedish group. Very generous and kind. So we ended up having seafood and learning about swedish culture. Lots of fun and silly songs at the restaurant.

Viktor told me that swedish records of immigration are very thorough. So I see a visit in the future to track down my ancestry.

We watched Disney's Peter Pan until just before 12, then the four of us jumped into the pool as the fireworks went off at exactly midnight.

Hello 2013!!

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1 January

Livingstone

0 Miles

Erik:

Pool day for everyone!!!

The whole hostel had a collective hangover. Haha.

Also, the kwacha ($$$) rebased today, they took three 0's off their currency, printed new money, restocked banks, atm's and stores and now our card doesn't in the ATM for some reason.

No money is an issue.

Steph still feels pretty bad (cough and sinus issues), so we may not leave tomorrow.

Also, because we can't pay our bill.

Steph:

What Erik said.

We were invited to make dinner with the swedes again! I went to the market with Viktor and we shopped for a royal meal of fish, mashed potatoes and rattatoullie (how do you spell this word?).

It was fun. Erik and I mashed the mashed potatoes with the bottom of a coke bottle. It worked quite well. The fish also turned out delicious and the company was very nice :)

Sorry about the lack of photos. We've been slacking a little. We'll get better though, promise.

30 December

30 December

Livingstone

0 Miles

Steph:

Leah and Will left today. We're pretty bummed out about it since the four of us got pretty close.

We will definitely see them again though. FOR SURRE.

Before they left, we went out to get some lunch. We've been frequenting this one place in town called "Food Palace". I know it sounds fancy :) We found it on our second day here and have been eating there almost daily. It's owned by a middle eastern family and they do an outstanding job. It has tables inside and outside and when you look at the menu you get a little overwhelmed. There are so many things on it! Burgers, chicken, fries, kababs, steak, salads, fish, samosas, pop (the maize meal thing they have here), sandwiches, anything, it's on there. Then you look at the price and you feel like it's going to be the kind of stuff they throw in the microwave and serve it soggy. But IT'S NOT!! It's delicious! On our first day we ordered the cheeseburger (we'd been talking about a burger for a while) and it was huge and juicy with a big pile of french fries and a cole slaw salad. Guess how much?

3 dollars. An amazing chicken sandwich, with fries is $2. So yeah, of course we're going to eat there. And we've told everyone about it. The fact that the place is ALWAYS packed with locals is another good sign that it's legitimate.

So yeah, we went to lunch with Leah and Will and said our goodbyes. We will miss them and hope Will has a safe journey back to the states and that Leah enjoys the rest of her time in Bots.

29 December

29 December

Livingstone

0 Miles

Steph:

It's true, I have a cold. Waaah. It stinks but I'm glad that we're here while it's happening.

It was another uneventful day. The sun is out and it's beautiful so we spent a good portion of it out by the pool. Will and Leah are a little beat up from their white water adventure.

We did take a taxi to a place called the Royal Livingstone. It is a five star hotel located right on the river about half a mile before the water drops down the falls. Leah told us it was an absolute "must" to go have a drink by the patio and watch the sunset as the mist from Victoria Falls drifts into the sky. It sounds silly but it was absolutely breathtaking. Of course, I forgot the camera so we'll have to wait to steal the photos from Leah when she uploads them. Sorry :/ We had an excellent time though. It was also interesting to see how the "other" side lives. Let's just say the people who stay at this hotel aren't exactly "roughing it". I automatically felt like I had to stand up straighter as we walked in. Everything is white, marble and shiny. It has a very colonial feel. You know, the type of thing you see at Disneyland in Adventureland. The beige safari outfits with the safari helmet and safari boots. The perfectly Victorian tea tray served in the midst of monkeys playing in the trees while people talk about how "ghastly" hot it was during their exclusice game drive today (I'm sure they were served cold drinks and champagne for their lunch in the bush). The perfectly manicured lawns and cobblestone paths with tamed impala frolicking around. The gigantic pool that looks like it was designed to go in the Versailles gardens. The gift shop selling exquisite souveniers directly from the "Heart of Africa". The same souveniers you can get of LITERALLY 1/10^th of the price at the open air art market in town. I wonder if the people who made that stuff see any of that profit. Hmm. What else... oh yeah, the children BORED out of their MINDS playing on their computers in the lobby while their parents have their whiskey and a cigar at the lounge. People wearing brand new Colombia clothing meant for hard core outdoorsy activities that have clearly barely ever seen the light of day. That one is particularly amusing because Erik and I are wearing REI and Colombia stuff that you can barely recognize anymore, that's how dirty and faded everything is :)

I know I sound slightly bitter when I say these things but I'm really not. I just find it fascinating how different kinds of people travel to the same places and have complete opposite experiences. I doubt that they ever talk to a local who isn't bringing them their 5 course dinner or cleaning their room. They have no idea what the local food tastes or even looks like. The Royal Livingstones (that's what I'm calling them now) come to see Victoria Falls and the animals. They arrive via plane to the major cities that offer the amenties they expect all over the world, get private transfers to their hotels, do their activities and then go home and say they've been to Africa.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with all of this. If you have the means, then by all means! Go all out and enjoy yourself! It's great that there are places like this all over the world where you can get a taste of the glamorous. I'm just saying that it's not my kind of travel.

Once the sun went down and we finished our drink (we could barely afford one), we called our taxi and had it take us back to our backpackers (that's what hostels are called here btw). Our beautiful, cheap hostel where we've met tons of awesome people who don't look at us weird because our clothing is slightly worn out. You're right in the middle of everything here. You become friends with the staff who tell you their life story and help with everything. You get the local feel while you talk to people who have gone to the places you're still planning on taking a chicken bus to. Or hitching or whatever. You meet people that are going the same direction and decide to travel together to save some money and to have new company. Adventurers (young and old) walk in every day with a different background, a different story, helpful advice about where to go and where not to. You go into town to explore the night scene or the local markets. You're forced to try the food and you're forced to talk to locals for directions and advice. Whenever you step out the door you're practically attacked by some vendor trying to sell everything under the sun. You learn to talk your way out of it or to bargain. It's the real travel experience.

It was nice to see the beautiful hotel, enjoy the view and to steal some hand lotion from the incredible smelling restrooms. I think it was even nicer to go back to our temporary home, buy a $1 drink, sit under the mango trees and joke around about how broke we all are.  

Stock Photo. The view from the deck. Beautiful!

One of the suites

Entrance to the lobby from the garden

28 December

28 December

Livingston, Zambia

Erik:

    Steph is sick, so again, lounge day. Went on the internet for a bit. Looked up our visa requirements again just to make sure nothing has changed.

Leah and Will went to the Zambezi to white water raft. Super jealouse. They hit several class 5 rapids and had a blast.

     When they got back, they introduced us to Nick, who they had rafted with. He has been going for about 8 months and is from San Fransisco. The interesting thing is that he ran into Jochan, our German tour cyclist we met in Namibia, in Uganda and had dinner with him. Small world.

We have also met a group of Swedes that are interns with the YMCA and working in RSA and Lusaka Zambia. So they offered to take us around to some outreach programs in Lusaka and in Nairobi. Breaking into another network! Woohoo!

     Our plan has evolved a bit. We need to extend our visas here if we want to have time to cycle to the border with Malawi. So we went to the immigration office and tried to do so. We were told we could only extend it if there was one day left or if the time expired. Sounds like a good way to get into some unneccissary trouble here, so we are going to try to take the bus for a ways down the line. That's ok, we are super excited about Malawi. Nothing but great things have been said about that country. We met a Malawian (patrick) who is going to ride with us to the tallest mountain in Malawi while we're there. So that is awesome.

     We finished off our night with some wine and conversation. Very pleasent place here.

Steph:

I don't know if we ever really specified who these lovely people are. Leah and Will.

We met Leah at the Peace Corps Thanksgiving shindig. She will be in Botswana, in her village, until the spring of 2014. She's lived in Brussels and Paris and has travelled all over Europe. I feel like we hit it off right away in Maun and talked about hopefully meeting up in Livingstone around New Years. She, unfortunately, was not able to go to the Island party in Sepopa so we were super excited to randomly run into her in Kasane. Complete coincidence. In Kasane, we met her boyfriend, Will, who is visiting. Both of them are sensational people. Very well travelled, exciting, sweet, caring and generous. Will is a former Peace Corps Volunteer. He did two years on the island of Dominica in the carribean. Now he works in international development in Washington DC. They met while getting their masters in Brussels. How cool is that? So cool.

After Kasane, they met up with us here in Fawlty Towers and we've been able to chill here together since Christmas. It's been really awesome having them around.

25 - 27 December

25 December

Livingston

0 Miles

Erik:

    Went to catholic mass in the morning. The music was great. Amazing. That was the first hour of the service was just singing. The kids danced down the aisle with the insence and all that was neat. The sermon (homali?) was just an angry priest yealling the same superficial nonsense over and over. Very strange, completely lacked any depth or meaning. So we left afterwards (it was about to be first communion for some kiddos, and it had been 2.5 hours already) we got the stink eye from one of the nuns in the back.
    For christmas dinner we ate with zach and tom. It was fun exchanging funny stories and interesting travel stuff with one another. We then walked to the take away place to get some ice cream. Zach had to go after we ate, so we said a fond fairwell. We wish him all the best while he is in jo-berg.

Steph and I watched Elf for our christmas movie. When we were headed down to bed, we ran into Leah and Will again! Chilled with them for a bit and then we headed off to bed.


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26 December

Livingston, Zambia

Erik:

    Laundry and pool. The sun is finally out again and we can really enjoy it (cause we arent cycling) we wandered around town for a bit. Very fun. I still love this town. Leah and will convinced us to go on the sunset cruise with them. We were going to go to the Devils pool, which is a natural pool you can go to righ above the falls, but it closed TODAY and was already fully booked. :( that was super disappointing but that's life. We ended up having a great time.  

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27 December

Livingston, Zambia

Erik:

   Totally gave in today. On my way to get lunch for a stephanie with a cold, i ended up buying 2 necklaces for 20 pin, or 4 dollars. He started at 200 pin, and I was not having it, but I learned that if you put the merch in your hand at some point, you are not walking away without buying it. So I got him to drop it to 20 pin and throw in a second for "free". Haha. Lesson learned. I'll be more careful in the future.

24 December

24 December

Livingstone, Vic Falls

0 Miles

Steph:

     I can't describe to you how old I feel when I say this, but I'm so glad they didn't play loud music until 2:30am again last night. Oi. Those young people and their partying. Haha! No, but really. Also, I'm very glad for my sleeping bag. That thing is top quality, but it is waaaaay too hot for these temperatures. Because of the rain, the nights have become pleasantly chilly. Just not cold enough for a -10C bag. It's really uncomfortable to be cold and be sweating at the same time. All night.

That's a little side note for everyone. Hope you enjoyed it :)

    So anyway, the hostel we're staying in offers free transport to Victoria Falls every morning. We hopped on it at 10am along with our new friend, Misaka (from Japan). The first thing we saw when we arrived was a baboon trying to non-chalantly stroll into the ticket office and having to be literally chased away. They turned out to be everywhere. One would just walk down the path right next to all the humans and look at us like we were in his way. They're clearly not intimidated by the fact that we're taller. Why would they be? They've got fangs big enough to rip my throat out in one bite. And they're tushies are shockingly bright red. I'm not sure why that's scary but it's definitely noteworthy. It was cool to see them interact with each other and us. You can really see the intelligence when they look at you.

    The falls were amazing. I didn't really know what to expect because we had heard so many things about the Zimbabwean side being better and that Zambia was just "ehh", and that sometimes there's not really that much water falling this time of the year. But it was grreat! The first thing we did was take a little hike down the gorge to the base of the falls. I felt like Indy at the beginning of Raiders going through the jungle. Beautiful and humid, with the thunder of the falls getting louder and louder. After that, we went around the other side and got our first actual glimpse. It was awesome. We got immediatly soaked by the mist and it felt amazing. I'll just show you pictures rather than try to describe it. Definitely worth the $20usd to get in.

    At Faulty Towers, I took a nice long nap and woke up to find that Erik and a few guys (Tom from Japan and Zach from NYC) had already started the festivities without me. The night was incredibly fun. We had a few drinks, looked at each others pictures, sang songs, told stories, later joined some lovely ladies from Holland, told some more stories and had a great time. It was the first Christmas Eve I spent away from my family, which was a little tough for me. But these people were so nice that it made it a little better :)

Victoria Falls!

Baboons everywhere. They don't care. These guys were fighting.

Erik and Masaki

It's raining upside down!

Like I said, they don't care

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

23 December

23 December

Livingstone

0 Miles

Steph:

    We're in Zambia! I'm pretty excited to be here. And I'm excited about staying in Faulty Towers for 10 days. 10 days! This place is great. There's a communal kitchen, a lounge, a pool, pool table, there are books! I can read a book. It's all good.

    I also got to talk to the parents today, which is always a nice thing. I can't seem to talk to them without wanting to cry a little bit though. I miss them very much and have been more homesick than usually lately. It sounds like everyone at home is doing well though, so that helps.

We didn't do much today. Just walked around town and explored. This town is fun. It's touristy enough to have street vendors trying to sell everything from fruit to dvds, phones and shoes. It reminds me of mexico a little bit. The people here in Zambia seem very friendly and happy. We went to a craft market that had some really cool things. A downside of travelling on the bike is that we don't have room for souveniers. It also makes for a good excuse when the locals get pushy about buying their goods. "Sorry, we don't have room. It's pretty though!!". 

    We ate at a "take-away" and bought a steak meat pie for about 1800 Zambian Kwacha ($0.40). Pretty yummy. We also got ice cream for a little less than that.

    It's fun to sit and watch people living their busy lives. Especially a few days before christmas. The lines to the ATM's are unbelievably long, everyone is shopping and running around. Kids are on vacation, so they are also everywhere. After riding through one tiny village after another, it feels exciting to be in a city and see a little movement.

    A little later, we met Zach. He's been living in NYC but is currently working in Johannesburg for about a year. Got a cool job teaching english and doing finance research, but for now he is just traveling a bit.

Welcome to Zambia! And Hills! And down hills! This is what I like to see.

The garden at Fawlty Towers. It's really nice

22 December

22 December

Kasane – Livingstone

48 Miles

2007 Miles!!!!

Erik:

    We got up later than we are used to, so we could take advantage of the breakfast they offered. As with most things in bots, overpriced low quality. But we got our fill, I think I ate my moneys worth in just yogurt. So HA! Take that fancy lodge place.

    It took about 30 minutes of cycling to get to the border, the last mile of which had a line of semi's waiting to cross on the ferry. Going through immigration on the bots side took about 35 minutes. A long time compared to every other crossing we've done. After that we rode down to the ferry. Only one of four was in operation. Not good for the truckers, because only one can cross on a ferry at a time. No line for us though.

    We hopped on the ferry to cross the Zambezi. This is where the chaos started. I don't know who we paid to get off the ferry, if it was the right person, or what the heck was going on, but we made it. Between the both of us we paid about 5 bucks, which is less than they said it would be online, so win?

We get off and go over to this cluster and I shoved my way to the desk (no one knows what lines are here) and got our visas. Took about 10 minutes. Meanwhile Steph was watching the bikes out front. Actually for both border crossings Steph didnt present her passport or show her face. I just did the formalities for both of us. Haha.

    Zambians are nice and smiley. There are also other cyclists. Locals that realize bikes are cheaper to ride than cars. In SA, Namibia and Bots bikes are the rich white guy sport. So it is nice to be in an area where we get props for riding bikes from locals. . . as they all shoot right by us :)

We got a standing ovation and cheers from a combi. Hilarious. We havent crossed into an area where we are called Mzungu yet. It is la-koo-a here. In bots it was lakoa. I think north of here it will turn into Mzungu though.

    So it is hilly here. It's very nice to have some down hills again. Up hills I can do without, but they aren't anything to complain about really. Just 2 hours to go and this rain storm nailed us. We could see it coming towards us. It was like having buckets continuously dumped on us. A nice change of pace. Steph giggled for like 30 minutes in the rain.

    Pulled in drenched to Fawlty Towers, a backpackers. Instantly a very cool place. Good vibes, clean, professional, cheap. Hopped over to shoprite, and holy cow. This place is stocked. I feel like we are in the US or something. Fresh veg, yogurt, anything and everything. After stocking up we met Tom (hitomu, Japanese) who is 22 and has been traveling for 2 years, and Misaka (japanese) who has been traveling for about 8 months and met tom in Nairobi. Two very cool dudes to talk to and hang out with. We got lots of info about their perspective of Kenya and Tanzania.

    For dinner a pasta with meat sauce was made. . . and it rocked. I don't expect everywhere in Zambia to be this stocked, but the people here are what is really making the difference.