Livingstone - Zambia

Today was Sue's birthday and I had planned a special treat, a flight over Victoria Falls.

We had done the 'Flight of the Angels' from  Zimbabwe in 1986 which was an unforgettable experience but that had been in a six seater Cessna with a closed cockpit, now we would be flying from the Zambian side in a single seater vintage Yellow Tiger Moth Bi-Plane with an open cockpit and nicknamed Rupert to boot!

However, before then we had to vacate our room at Jollyboys, we had had our three nights under the visa waiver package but now the room was booked by someone else, at least for tonight, and no other rooms were available so guess what, we would be camping - in Jollyboys car park, this would certainly be a birthday Sue wouldn't forget for a while!

At 8.30am we were picked up by George the driver from the air charter firm to take us for our flight over the falls. We had expected to take off from the main airport so we were a bit surprised to find the plane was kept at a private airstrip out in the bush but close to the falls.

When we got to there we were met by our pilot, Emmanuel Kalombe, a very nice guy who was a bit of a Tiger Woods look alike. As the plane could only take one of us at a time Sue had the honour of going first whilst I filmed the take off. It was a beautiful sunny morning, blue, blue sky's and not a cloud in sight - perfect conditions.

When David Livingstone reached Victoria Falls in 1855 he wrote "no one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed in England - scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by Angels in their flight" - how right he was.

The flight lasted little more than 20 minutes but it was truly an amazing experience. With the wind in your face Emmanuel made the plane swoop backwards and forwards over the falls - one minute we were over Zambia the next over Zimbabwe. At times it was quite scary as the plane banked on it's side and you realised the only thing keeping you from falling out was an old leather seatbelt!

On the way back to Jollyboys we came across a small herd of Elephants at the side of the road, it was great to see they were still about and so close to town but we worried about them with the amount of traffic going back and forth. The area around the falls is a national park which still has quite a bit of game wandering up and down the Zambezi river, how that will fare as Livingstone continues to grow remains to be seen.

It's not a good idea to eat before doing a flight over the falls so by the time we got back to Jollyboys we were starving, soon fixed by scoffing down a full English breakfast. The rest of the day was spent continuing the re-packing of Rupert then down to the supermarket to get some provisions.

We would be heading Northwards in a couple of days heading through the Kafue National Park so we needed to get all our food/drink/water & fuel sorted out before we left Livingstone. We also needed to upload the latest news to the website but for some reason we could not get this to work from the internet cafe at Jollyboys so we needed to try another cafe in town - if we could find one.

Back at Jollyboys we met up with Ashley and Claire, they had been camping in the car park with their four kids since their arrival. Their Landy had two roof tents so three kids slept in one and one of the kids took it in turns to sleep in the other with Ash and Claire.

Apart from the odd luxury of staying in a lodge or hotel they had been living like this since leaving the UK, almost a year before, as Ash said they didn't need contraception with this arrangement. 

They had kept the parking space next to them free so we would have somewhere to sleep that night. Both ourselves and Marcus and Tanya would be joining them, all of us in our respective rooftents in Jollyboys small car park.

Sue and I were going out to an Indian restaurant to celebrate her birthday tonight but before then we settled down for a few sundowners with the others which if we had allowed it would probably gone on well into the night but at 9pm we dragged ourselves off to go eat. 

By the time we got back the place was in darkness and everyone had gone to bed. As quietly as we could we parked up in the space between Ashley and Marcus and put the roof tent up - an unusual end to an unusual day.

Next day would be the full moon when they open the Falls after dark, the only time in the month when this is done. Apart from the chance to see the Falls by moonlight if your lucky you also get to see a Lunar rainbow.

We agreed to go see this with Marcus and Tanya, Marcus had brought his camera and tripod but we had spent the afternoon at Foley's getting jobs done on Rupert and could not be bothered unpacking our tripod out of the back of the cab so only took along our digital snappy camera - big mistake.

The falls are spectacular enough of a daytime but at night in the moonlight they are something else again, especially when its a full moon. We hoped to see the Lunar rainbow but didn't expect to so we were overjoyed when the moon shone in the right angle and we could see the rainbow clearly. The only regret was the photo's taken with our snappy camera came out like a cheap black and white TV with poor reception whereas Magnus with his SLR camera and tripod was able to get some stunning shots - one of which we show here.

We now had only one thing left to do before heading out into the bush - we needed to extend our visas. Under the waiver package we were given 14 day entry visas which was fine when we first entered Zambia before flying back to the UK but now we expected to stay here for at least three weeks so we needed longer.

Jollyboys said it was a simple matter of taking your passport down to the immigration office where they would be happy to give us an extension, so early next morning we set off to do the business. It was important we did this whilst in Livingstone then we could disappear off into the bush with no hang-ups.

At the immigration office we met an incredibly tall but very jolly lady officer who said she would be happy to help, happy days this should not take long.  We handed over our passports then she suddenly laughed out loud and dropped the bombshell that we still had 10 days to run on our entry visa and they could only extend once we had no more than one/two days to go!

Shit this would mean hanging around Livingstone for another week or more and we needed to be off. We explained our situation that once we left Livingstone we would be in the bush and would not be returning to Livingstone. She was sympathetic but there was nothing she could do except give us a list of towns further North which had immigration offices and to try one of these closer to the expiry date.

This was not ideal as none of the places were exactly on our route but there was no choice other than stay in Livingstone which was not an option.  Marcus and Tanya had left this morning for the Southern Kafue NP where we had recommended they visit a place called Nanzhilla Plains. We had heard about this from our friend Chris McIntyre who writes the Bradt travel guide for Zambia and we planned to make this our first night back in the bush.

We had promised Marcus and Tanya we would meet them at Nanzhilla tomorrow night. Ashley and family had also left to go in the opposite direction towards South Africa via Namibia so there was no need to dally any longer and after our trip to the UK we were itching to get back in the bush so despite the visa problem we decided to push on!

We were also excited as from here we were venturing entirely into the unknown but this was what we had come for, next stop  South Kafue and the Nanzhilla Plains.