A Baby Boomer in Malawi: Part 2 - Safari Time!

South Luangwa: Arrival @ Track+Trails Camp
The drive: Zambia is a lot bushier than Malawi – people are not as densely situated as in Malawian villages. You don’t see farmland everywhere you look! Makes me wonder if Malawians will just emigrate to Zambia when a land crisis unfolds (maybe this year – famine!). Lots of sunflowers here too, maybe grown for pressing seeds into oil? Border town (after begrudgingly paying $50 visa – I’m a Malawian resident damnit!) was nicer-maintained in appearance than Lilongwe – roads, painted stores, people’s attired, language skills.
The camp: Track+Trail. We live in a heavy duty canvas tent velcroed to prevent monkeys from unzipping the door & raiding our snacks. Facilities are outdoors – cute, nice thatch buildings for ablutions, a bar, raised pool overlooking the massive fast-moving Luangwa River, a gym hut! And a massage area!

2. Game Drives, Day 1
What a great park, packed with animals! Rainy morning drive to start - lots of birding. Park is wet & marshy and flooded due to heavy rains (started 3am til about 1pm) and our vehicle lacks a roof so all were quite wet - but animals were easy to find anyway. Saw lots of: impala, zebra, kingfisher & fish eagle, baboons and monkeys, elephants (small groups of them). Came upon a recently dead hippo that probably lost in a territory battle when it encountered a mother lion and 3 cubs (from a pride of ~17 lions). The hippo became dinner, breakfast & lunch - also for 30-50 onlooking vultures. So cool to be close to brutal nature at work! Gross too - lions ate from the butthole and back of head (neck? brains?)Other stuff we saw: A crocodile, hammerkopf birds with heads like hammers, puku (like big impala), monitor lizard.Night drive: Starting at dusk - a great time to be out - large groups are playing (monkeys - babies falling out of trees, like it's a fun slide, mating, grooming, also impala pre-mating posturing - you're too early, guys!, breastfeeding), and hunters out hunting. The exception: a croc who sat in a stream of water with his mouth open to catch fish, found on the way to see the hippo again. Also on the way to see the hippo, a leopard walked right out in front of our vehicle and stalked back and forth in its disarmingly beautiful way for 15 mins or so. Two feet from the safari car! Awe. Tons of birds and a clear sky, in lovely vivid color contrast to the wet red ground and fertile green grass & trees. Past leopard, we forded a wide flooded part of the road. Water was up past the frame of the land rover - Kristen and shannon in back though they might fly out, we were bouncing and rocking so hard. Those vehicles kick ass and take names. I want one. Hippo covered in flies this time, lions defending the carcass from the awaiting vultures, though they had obviously eaten their full, as they were mostly lolling around in the grass. Saw a crested crane, the crowned and goofy national bird of Uganda. After dark with a spotlight, it was much harder to see anything; you only look for reflecting eyes in the bush. New stuff: waterbuck, a pregnant elephant, porcupine, hippos fighting with wide jaws for territory - the one in the water scaring off the land-approaching hippo; no hyenas yet. Supposedly a genet and bushbaby - both skittish. Frogs that make a song like the claves (wood percussion instrument). Having fun!

2. Game Drives, Day 2
Bit of a been there, done that attitude today. Nice weather in the morning, saw a LOT of lions! Went back to STINKY dead hippo to find a few hyena.. in addition to several hundred vultures. Main places eaten were butthole and brain; vultures fought each other pretty viciously. They're ugly birds - ugly and awkward when landing to get a bite of flesh. Drove around looking for giraffes and buffalo - lots of birds (checklist attached. Some faves: rainbowcolored lilac breasted roller, yellow-billed stork who had a red face, black tipped wings w/white body, and magenta pink legs) everywhere, a few fishing crocodiles, fish-eating hammerheads, puku, a hiwte hyena who resembled a large sleepy dog - he laid down on some grass to nap; twin baby elephants (Mom had big wrinkly tits!), a boomslang (treesnake - very poisonous), zebra, etc. Drove to other side of the park this time - it's more mountainous terrain, less marshy; found 30-40 big thick-skulled buffalo! On a hill across the valley, we found a young male lion with 3 or 4 females - very regal. Unfortunately they didn't kill any impala while we were around even though there were plenty nearby. But thy did sunbathe on a rock, overlooking their kingdom; v. cool.
Afternoon/Night drive: 6-8 shy hippos in a marsh near a big old baobab tree. They surfaced and resubmerged randomly, like whack-a-mole. One gave us a nice big yawn - picture! Saw bushbuck, waterbuck, kudu (after dark), elephant, chameleon, zebras rolling to "cleanse natural oils", a chameleon. Hippos on the way back to camp after dark - munching weeds. All in all, lots of fun 4-wheeling in mud and flooded areas.

Travel to Vic Falls:
Camping stop @ Bridge Camp by Luangwa River - huge body of water! in a hilly, green valley. Nice bar owned by a bitter S. African lady.Through Lusaka: Reminds me in part of Pittsburgh or Philadelphia Chinatown - colors & signs and traffic everywhere. Paid zk60000 ($15 US) for a new long sleeved T-shirt cause it's cold; 2 new chitenjes. Pretty! Then arrival in Livingstone: a city full of sky blue saloons (the taxi uniform); musanza brewery (you vomit), nice camping place w/bar on the Zambezi river.

Falls Day 1:
To the park in the morning. Blast, can't escape the curio sellers! They are not as Bob-Marley influenced in Zambia, it seems. We follow a wide cemented trail to the edge of a precipice: The Falls Cataract. It is: a thundering force of nature. We wander like ants in and out of reach of the spray that falls in sheets, the condensation that didn't sublime into cloud. Trying to snap photos of a slice of thunder. Knife edge bridge across to another precipice and we are face to face with mist and roar. Joyous, I follow all paths to the view to try to see each edge of enormity, to capture Avalon in my mind's camera. our raincoats and trousers take a few hours to dry afterwards.
Then hiking down the gorge to see the boiling pot: the place where outlet water from the falls takes a sharp right turn. Descending through lush trees and vines and quiet streams along a rocky path, we emerge onto tumbling boulders on the edge of a whirling, wet inferno. A cloud of hundreds of kingfishers swooped and skimmed above the pool where the momentum of jettisoned water is transformed first into a turbulent swirl contained by the gorge walls, then into the hushed exiting river. Such a dramatic change in energy state - no wonder the cauldron frothed and churned like a pot of crabs on full boil. We lunched there while taking in the contained chaos. Then ascent again.
Afternoon around the lodge: laundry, avoiding ant invasion, drinks while gazing at the Zambezi with snacks: biltong, peanut butter cookies, pygmy bananas, Mosi beer, sachets.

Day 2:
Morning: exploring the old capital town Livingstone, search for postcards – success @the pharmacy. Fun chichewa/chinyanja exchange in a quiet Sunday market with amayis and brothers. Not too different from bomas in Malawi - more concrete used in the stalls, more western food - huge bugs of pasta! Got approached by some hawkers who tried the Zimbabwe trick: Madam buy our dollars, flashing ridiculous notes with denominations of: million, billion, hundred trillion. Apparently selling as a novelty can win more bread than the bills themselves - sad for the Zimbabweans, a testament to power unhinged, the African story.

After lunch Dad &I go for a half day of abseiling, prepaid. We arrive and he takes one look down into the gorge and bails on me - fear of heights has conquered him. But he also had a herniated disc recently. So I go alone: face-first abseiling, which is repelling down a sheer wall like Tom Cruise/MI style (or an overgrown gecko). Cool, but hard to master belaying speed (I was too slow) so that I continue to move. Then the hike out of the gorge, 800 ft back up - quite the stairmaster! Zip line superman style to follow, aka "flying fox" - fun and surreal, you run and dove off a cliff, tethered like tinkerbell by a carabineer on your back, and float across into the air, far above the trees. I only had enough speed to reach the middle of the gorge - the speedy runs I did in '07 in the Costa Rican cloud forest were more exciting, even though they are all done seated. Last, the gorge swing: stepping into air, from a ledge, you plummet 53m down in free fall, then the rope tightens and you're caught - swinging forward and back until lowered to the landing pad: Safe. Minor whiplash from that, sore from hiking, but rather unshaken by the whole thing. Was it exhilarating? Sure - but maybe more on the unreal side.What I still can't explain is a total lack of fear. I was a little nervous before the zipline dive off the cliff, but on the whole, there was no adrenaline-pumping inner struggle, no doubt or vacillating, just nothing. Dad is baffled though I have already been written off "as good as dead and lost;" I think the difference between us is a growing shock for him.
Am I broken? Was I supposed to be afraid? Have all my survival instincts been shaken out of me? Am I too depressed to feel my actual feelings? It was weird, there's no explanation for this surprise. But then I though a little bit about what is scary to me in my life here. I have been on hitches, matolas and minibuses where my life was in peril and I had little choice to refuse. I have heard people scream bloody murder in the night, victim to vigilante justice - behaviour I fear and can't understand. My home has been violated by thieves while I was in it. The unpredictable motives and actions of people, trapping me in the middle somewhere, has been much more of a threatening force than some tourist amusement. So no, Iw as not afraid - I have bigger fish to fry. Next on the list: bungee jumping! Need contact lenses first for that one.Choma museum: Tonga culture and beautiful watercolors. Says Zambia underwent economic liberalization: privatization mostly. Maybe that's a clue as to why the towns are in ship shape compared to Malawi!