When the sun came up Zambia was displayed outside my carriage in all its glory. The first thing I noticed was that houses were often round mud houses with straw roofs. They were sometimes on their own and at other times in small groups, maybe an extended family.
Glimpses of the villages and homesteads came through thick bush. Occasionally I could see children walking along the red dust paths by the side of the tracks. Sometimes they were carrying stuff on their heads, sometimes carrying water in buckets or bundles of sticks.
When they saw the train they would wave and run towards it. Every station we stopped at, there would be locals selling corns and bananas and nuts. They would hold them up to the windows and passengers would throw the money down to them.
I liked the look af Zambia. I guessed from the style of houses that it is a poorer country than Tanzania. At several stops, were had about half an hour to stretch our legs as goods were offloaded and loaded into the goods carriage.
Zambian currency is the Kwatcha and I changed some on the border in the middle of the night with a member of te trin staff who tricked me and gave me a terrible rate because I was looking at the Botswana currency on my app by mistake. These people always take advantage of tourists and I don’t usually get caught out but I was taken for a mug this time.
On arrival at the terminus Kapiri Mposhi station it was too late to get down to Lusaka and so I had to stay overnight. The Zambian girl in my compartment had suggested I go to Council Lodge and it turned out to be quite good. I negotiated the price down from 400 to 300 kwatcha which made it affordable.
They were lovely people and let me use their phones to contact the girl in Lusaka who was waiting for me. The following morning I got up early and went to the bus station. There wasn’t a minibus for about an hour which gave me plenty of time to get a SIM card for my phone and be online again. What a relief. I feel disabled without the internet.
The journey to Lusaka was pretty boring and uncomfortable but cheap. I had arranged to stay with a girl I had found on Facebook who was willing to put up women travellers. She was very welcoming and friendly. Her house was very small, the toilet didn’t have a seat and didn’t flush and thee was a power cut which lasted all day until about 6pm.
She took me to a craft village and I bought some tourist tat to give the children in my house in Dar. I was quite pleased to leave the next day for Livingstone and to get out of Lusaka which seemed to have very little offer except shopping malls which were far superior to anything we have in Tanzania.
Livingstone was my destination and I chose a coach because I thought it would be more comfortable than a minibus – it wasn’t. It was 9 hours of not being able to stretch your legs or to sit straight in the seat because the leg room wasn’t enough. On the way back I chose a minibus and had a much better and faster journey. The journeys cost 230 each which was very cheap.
Zambia is a lovely country and the people are welcoming. Hawkers hassle you to buy stuff constantly but they are not unique to Zambia – they are an irritation everywhere tourists are to be found.