Day 42 (12/7/11) Lusaka/Livingston

So for the second day in a row the day was to begin with a long bus journey. I was woken at 6.30 due to an extremely loud radio playing an Airtel ad. We then all climbed out of bed an hour later. I was surprisingly warm all night as I just wore my cloths to bed. The hostel sells food so I ordered a ham sandwich for breakfast and it turned out to be a cold toasted sandwich (weird). We made our way to the bus station with the others squashed into the back with one suitcase. Fortunately today’s driver was much saner than yesterday’s maniac. We got on the bus without too much hassle and set off on our journey to Livingston about 6 hours away. The bus journey was uneventful really (much like yesterdays). On the way I just listened to music (5 albums worth in total). We stopped once or twice on the way and I one point I managed to get a Cadbury’s chocolate bar. At this stop we noticed a sign at a garage for a “lube bay” I don’t want to know what goes on there. Throughout the journey there was this awful succession of crap local TV shows been show. The storylines made no sense and everyone just shouted all the time. One scene involved an ambulance journey and the siren just blared throughout it and the scene lasted ages it was really irritating. Eventually after six and a half hours of sitting uncomfortable in the narrower than normal seats we pulled into Livingston. Immediately it was obvious its much more developed than other places we’ve been (that probably makes it sounds better than it is) but it’s still unmistakably Zambian.  The bus station was a short walk (we estimated using the width of our nail on a map as measurement) from the hostel so we decide to walk. Again loads of taxi’s offered us lifts but we turned them down (one taxi driver asked where we were going and Dan quickly responded saying “we’re going for a walk”). From the second we walked through the door of the hostel you could tell it was nice place. The reception is in a large barn painted red with books and couches everywhere. Behind the barn is a large well kept garden area with a small pool (enough for 5 Pavarotti’s). Our room faces out onto the garden and has too bunks (with one mossy net shared between the two, which will make it awkward when I go to bed as I’m on the top bunk with Jamie below and he’s already in bed and I won’t be able to retook in his section of the mossy net). After checking out the room (its small it didn’t take long) we were starving so need dinner there are 2 restaurants on the complex and we went into one called hippo’s. Once we were in it was clear they had renamed and redecorated the place as an Irish bar ((oh great we travel thousands of miles only to end up in a tacky slice of home). We ordered a burger each from the very unIrish waiter. The place was covered in Guinness memorabilia. The burgers were nice however and the prices were cheap so it’s worth putting up with the tat. After dinner we went on a quick Shoprite trip to buy some breakfast stuff (there was a short power cut while we were in the whiskey isle which could have ended badly). When we got back it was time to select the activities (it sounds childish) we would do while here. It was hard to choose everything sounded cool but expensive. There’s elephant rides, rafting, kayaking, abseiling, safaris in Botswana we tried but failed to cut it down properly so we decided we’ll just visit the falls tomorrow and take things by year. We finished out the evening with a bit of internet and then headed to bed all of us wrecked after the bus journey. So goodnight lets see what the next light brings.