Africa Day 6 Cape Town to Livingstone Zambia 11 July 2018

I have been waiting for this moment,  yes here it is “Livingstone I presume”, yes folks today we have flown from Cape Town South Africa to Livingstone Zambia. (well Livingstone international airport anyway). In days gone by this area was part of “Darkest Africa”, the vast uncharted area in central Africa that was the playground of many famous old world explorers (Livingstone and Watson come to mind).

But I got ahead of myself.

We had an extremely lazy morning, checkout was due at 11:30. I took a last walk around the V & A to loosen up a bit, then we had breakfast, packed and checked out at 11:10am. Our transfer car was already waiting for us, so we got away early and were at the airport, checked in, through security,  immigration control and in the Kenyan Air (shared lounge) before midday.
Something we dont see often, ever, was a separate check-in area for firearms!

Our flight got away a little early and we arrived in Livingstone around 5.10pm, and in no time were in our car with our guide Luckson to our way to our Camp. We are staying at the Sanctuary Sussi & Chuma Lodge in the heart of the Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park, our “room” is a Treehouse. We overlook the Zambezi River, and a small creek, with a large tree overhanging our room. There are lots of small Vervet monkeys in the tree outside our room. We have been told that hippopotamus, antelope and baboons may roam around the river banks and under our room at night.

We went for pre-dinner drinks on a deck overlooking the river, and at times you could hear hippopotamus calling out very close to where we were sitting, you couldn’t  see them but they were close.

We sat around an open fire and chatted with a couple from NZ. We were treated to an assortment of local foods as an appetizer. There were about 3 various vegetable dishes, a big bowl of Mopane (the lava of a local moth), chicken and potato. We were told the Mopane were crunchy, but they were very chewy with a cured meat sort of flavour and the texture of well done steak. Unusual, but tasty.

We then went for dinner, soup or salad starter followed by a stir-fry, where you picked your own ingredients and they cooked it for you. We chose well,  it was delicious. Dessert was, well we thought, cheesecake or raspberries, turns out it was raspberry cheesecake or cheeses. Something got lost in the very broad black african accent. 🙂  It was very tasty regardless.

As were finished dinner, the staff came into the room in single file, the first person had a cake with candles and around 10 or so others followed them in singing in a  quintessential african way. So rythmical and soulful. It was so good. After presenting the cake to a young girl and singing happy birthday like we have never heard before, they left the room in such a soulful, shuffling song and dance, it did our hearts wonder.

We were escorted back to our room ( a safety thing with all the wild animals about) and settled in for the night. The sounds of the river are ever present and very soothing.

Adventures await us tomorrow.