(click on a photo to enlarge)
On top of all this, the Zambian people are incredibly friendly, with one exception that I'll discuss later. I found Zambians, on the whole, to be the nicest people I've encountered so far on my trip. They are very genuine and more interested in learning from outsiders than getting their money. Most of the Zambians that I met live a simple but comfortable life, and while this is by no means a wealthy country, the socioeconoic problems I encountered in Malawi are nowhere near as apparent here. Setting out for the day's cycling with the first rays of the sun, I could often see a small group of people walking along the road to their farm plot with hoes or other tools that are generally only found in museums in the States slung over their shoulders. They always looked very content to me, and I could picture them singing "Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go..." This is the kind of thing that Jack Kerouac was lamenting the disappearance of in the States even back in the 1950s. Getting off the main highways in Zambia is like stepping back a couple of centuries in time.
At the Zambia/Malawi border, instead of "Welcome to Zambia/Malawi" signs, there are two giant signs, one reading "You're now leaving Maximum country. Welcome to Chisvango country.", and one reading the opposite. Chisvango is the national condom brand in Malawi and Maximum is the Zambian counterpart. I believe that the picture on the signs, a guy with his pants down shaking hands with a giant condom and each one bearing the colors of one of the brands, is a symbol of the two countries' fight against HIV/AIDS. In fact, there is a huge public awareness campaign for AIDS prevention all over Zambia. I thought that this was pretty impressive compared to it's neighbors, who seem to be trying to deny that AIDS even exists within their borders.
When I reached the town of Chipata I left my bike there for a couple of days and hitchhiked into South Luangwa National Park. Camping along the banks of the Luangwa River, I could see elephants crossing the river and hear hippos "barking" below. I also joined a group for a nighttime Land Rover trip through the park, during which we saw genets and civets (both cat species), a badger, a porcupine, a leopard, and several other types of animals that I'll probably never see again.
On my way through Zambia I decided to change my route to see more of the nice parts of northern and eastern Zimbabwe and less of the boring parts of western Zambia and Zimbabwe. This meant that Victoria Falls would no longer be on my route. I still wanted to see the falls, of course, so when I got to Lusaka I again left my bike behind for a couple of days to do a side trip in a bus. Victoria Falls was simply awesome, even in the dry season. The Zambezi River is huge, and the gorge over which it plunges at the falls is spectacular. The river is calm, blue and channeled above the falls, while the water appears green and savage and flows in a single stream deep below. With a couple of fellow travelers I walked along one side of the gorge rim to see the falls and get sprayed with Zambezi mist. Then we waded and swam through the river on the other side of the gorge, right along the edge of the falls, to check out the water plunging a few thousand feet below. We were able to get into a small, deep natural pool created by a rock bowl in the middle of the river and at the edge of the falls. There's no way to describe the feeling of sitting in the Zambezi, hanging onto a rock wall only a few inches thick that is the only thing separating you and the forces of gravity, peering down the main cataract of Victoria Falls while a strong current sweeps right over your body. This was without a doubt the highlight of my trip so far. We decided that if such a place existed at Niagara Falls, there's no way the park authorities would allow anyone to go there!
I had a couple of strange experiences at Victoria Falls. First, the World's Strongest Man competition was being held when I was there. I walked onto the main bridge to get a close-up view of Sven Carlsson and the others doing the train pull! The juxtaposition of this event with one of the world's most famous natural attractions seemed bizarre to me. Second, while we were walking along the edge of the falls to the pool described above, some local guys tried to offer their services as guides. We politely said no thanks, but one was particularly insistent and told us that it was prohibited to continue without a guide. I figured it was a tourist scam and told him that I'd take a park official's word for it, but not his. He wouldn't let us by and the situation got a bit tense, with me telling him what an asshole he was for lying to people to get their money when was probably in the park illegally in the first place and him saying "I'm an African, man, you don't know how we operate". Eventually he ran off and told us not to move. I figured he was going to get his fake Guide's License to show me, but instead he came back with a giant wooden spoon and threatened to hit me with it if I kept moving across the river! I didn't feel like getting into a fight with Spoonman about this, so we ended up paying a different guy to walk us to the pool. As it turned out, we never would have found the pool on our own. Spoonman could have just told us this and let us go walking around aimlessly, and we would have come back and paid him to take us, but, as he said, he's African and I don't know how he operates.
