When we arrived in cape town, we got a taxi to the hostel which was on long street, the main party street. When we got there were people from project trust were already there. We had all chosen the same hostel so there were volunteers from all over southern Africa. Two from Botswana two from Namibia the rest were from south Africa apart from the six of us from Zambia. They had already been there a night and were going out on long street but all but one of us were still tired from the bus journey so decided to stay in. The dorms were nice they had triple decker bunks which was quite cool. The kitchen was really quite small for the size of the hostel the fridge was always full to bursting and there was only one oven/hob with 4 rings. It did have a balcony which looked over the street which was nice. The street was very loud in the evening every evening, not just the weekend. For some reason our room had no curtains which made it very bright in the mornings. The loud music from the clubs outside made it hard to get to sleep although most nights I was so tired that I went to sleep straight away without even noticing it.
The first day we had was the day before Christmas eve and we all went to the V and A waterfront which is an area of the docks with a large shopping centre. We all needed to get our presents for secret Santa so we all went off in our pairs to get what we needed. It was almost like being in the Trafford centre. South Africa was very much more western than Zambia it made me feel a little confused to begin with as I hadn’t had such a variety of shops and activities since I left the UK. We went to the cinema there the next day to watch Bohemian Rhapsody which was really good. We also got our food for most of the week as well. On Christmas eve we had to go back to the mall to get food for Christmas day and watched the We all went out on Christmas eve and got back quite early in the morning.
Christmas day was kind of strange the South Africans had cooked a proper Christmas dinner for around 20 of them with most of the trimmings. We had quite a few of the things we would normally have but not so many as there were only 7 of us. Phoebe’s friend from the UK Chris was with us then making it 7. We ate after them as there wasn’t enough space in the oven. It was sad not being with family but being with lots of other volunteers made it easier. I spoke to my Mum, Dad and grandparents which was really nice to hear from them.
Some activities we did in cape town included visiting the Castle of Good hope, boe kaap, Boulders beach, Muizenberg beach, camps bay, climbing table mountain, climbing lion’s head to watch the sunset, Ethiopian meal, bus tour of the peninsula, visit to an aquarium, Kirstenbosch botanical gardens, a Jeremy Loops concert and a tour of Robben Island. It was a busy holiday as we were only there for 12 days!
I’d never used Uber before Cape town but it was very handy to be able to call for a taxi anywhere and it come in minutes. Many of the fayres were less than a pound or two which, when split between four or 6 was very cheap. A dangerous extension of Uber is Uber eats where you can order a takaway from normal restaurants and the will deliver it to your door. We did only use it a few times but decided it was a very good job that it didn’t exist in Zambia or we could have spent a lot of money. The food in cape town was amazing it was mainly due to the availability of a variety of foods. We ate a lot of cheese as the cheese in Zambia is not only expensive but also very poor quality.
It was sad to see everyone leave as we had all made some new friends as we hadn’t met the south africans before then. Unfortunately due to Zambia being so far from south africans we probably wont be able to meet up with them again. Most of the south africans left a day before us but we weren’t the last to leave urban hive backpackers. We got on the bus at about ten in the morning. To add to the stress of leaving I realised I had bought some flipflops that were a bit too big so I wanted to go to the mall to swap them as there are no shops like that in Zambia. Uber was a very useful thing in to make it possible to go there and then to the bus station. We got on the bus which would take us to Johannesburg and there we would change to go to Gaborone.
The only annoying part was that we would arrive in Johannesburg at 3 am in the morning and have to wait until 12pm until our next bus departed! We arrived all very tired as we had just been asleep. We ended up having to wait on the floor of the bus station as we decided it was easiest and safest to stay there rather than leave the station to go to a hostel. I didn’t mind at the time I just got my sleeping bag out of my case and used it as a blanket and went to sleep for a while while someone else stayed awake to watch the bags. It was a long wait but it wasn’t too bad in the end. The bus to Gaborone was fine a relatively short one of just 7 hours. We passed through pretoria which was an interesting place to see from the window of the bus. When crossing the border into Botswana they check your bags for fresh fruit and vegetables so when we got there we had to take all the bags out of the bus and have them inspected. Fortunately, unlike the last time we went into Botswana on the first long bus to Namibia, they didn’t want us to take every pair of shoes out of our bags to dip them in disinfectant for foot and mouth disease. On the first journey through Botswana we were caught out as we had a big bag of apples to share for the journey so we had to eat them all really quickly and we shared some with other passengers.
When we arrived in Gaborone it was late around 8pm we got a taxi to, what I think, is one of the only backpacker hostels in Gaborone called mokolodi backpackers. It was one of the more expensive hostels despite us being campers and it wasn’t even near the city centre. We set up our tents and made some tea and went to bed. The next day we went out to the main road to get a bus to town to buy some food. We ended up being picked up by some white locals who took us on a bit of a tour of Gaborone for free and took us back to the hostel at the end. They stayed and had a few beers which was nice. The day after we went on a small safari in the local nature reserve having been lured in by the chance to see a Rhino. It was a nice safari but the most exciting things we saw were a Wildebeest, tortoise and a dung beetle. I had seen zebras, elephants and a giraffe on the bus into Botswana though. The day after we went back to the shops to buy food for our last long bus journey. after that I wanted to climb kagale hill which has really nice views over Gaborone. I went on my own as no one else was up for it. I climbed it quite fast as I was worried about it getting dark or the buses not running that late. On tripadvisor it said it could take around an hour up and an hour down but I managed it in 25 minutes. The views from the top were amazing! As I was coming down there were many people coming up before I had seen nobody. They were probably climbing at that time as it was starting to cool down. I probably didn’t need to rush in the end but I still enjoyed it.
Our bus journey back to Lusaka was quite eventful. It left at around 7pm in Gaborone the capital of Botswana and was meant to take 24 hours and cross one border. Fortunately this time it did only cross one border. Just as we were all getting to sleep at about 1am there was a huge thud from the bus and the driver stopped very quickly. We all wondered what it was apart from Mhairi who managed to sleep through it. I thought that maybe one of the tyres had blown. As we got off the bus with many others as it was too hot we realised what had happened. We had hit a cow that had been on the road. It was dead around 50m behind where the bus stopped. I didn’t make too much of a dint in the bus and it seems only to have caused cosmetic damage removing some of the bumper plastic. We had to stop at a police station afterwards to report it so it delayed us by about an hour.
We crossed the Zambian border at Kazungula which involved crossing the Zambezi on a ferry(although they are building a new bridge). By this time we knew the drill of crossing borders, it being our sixth border crossing that holiday. The bus was held up for an hour for some unknown reason so we had some time to kill at the border. It immediately felt like Zambia when we got back as there were people forcefully trying to sell you carved elephants again. The street stalls and mannerisms of the people were once again familiar.
We all enjoyed our holiday but agreed that it was nice to be back in Zambia. When we got to Lusaka we went to our bargain accommodation £5 a night for a dorm in Flintstones backpackers made some tea and went to bed. For Andrew and I we got up at 3am to board the bus at 4am back to Mambwe.
Jack in Zambia 