Fade Out

Kigoma, Tanzania

The MV Liemba arrived in Kigoma harbor around 2am on Sunday morning and we had a simmering night while we awaited the port to open. We disembarked into Kigoma around 9am and made our way into town. We have decided to splurge and stay at the Kigoma Hilltop Hotel given the lack of sleep for the past three nights and the fact that we spent three nights on the boat instead of the two that we had planned.

Tomorrow we are going to Gombe Streams National Park to view the chimpanzees. :) Unfortunately we are not sure if we will get to watch Jane Goodall watching the chimps as well. I am positively giddy and the weather, knock on wood, seems to be quite good. Though as hot as it is right now, I cannot imagine having come here, to Kigoma, at a time of the year that was not winter.

The train from Kigoma to Dar Es Salaam is fully booked and therefore we are going to be unable to see the entire country by train as we had hoped. I had been warned that the train requires a booking weeks in advance, but of course when we tried to call weeks ago there was no answer... So instead we are going to fly to Dar as bus transport is sketchy at best.

Go Black Stars.

Zambia --> Tanzania

We survived the MV Liemba. Welcome to Tanzania. More tomorrow. :)

Lusaka, Zambia

Lusaka (here at left) is a weird city and I think that the weirdest part about it is our inability to put a finger on what it is that makes Lusaka so random.
Attempted to eat some Ethopian food, only to find that the restaurant had moved, back to its original location... But of course this was after we had taken a taxi all the way out of town to the "new" location. SO we ended up eating at a restaurant in the Lusaka Club mostly because I wanted to be geriatric and eat at 5:30 so that we could get back in time for the second half of the England match... Well of course that did not work out, though we did get back in time to catch all of the Sweden - Paraguay match.

So today is our last full day in Lusaka, tomorrow we board the bus for the great trek to the north and the wasteland that everyone in Lusaka wants us to believe Mpulungu is. Though to be fair our taxi driver was pretty excited about mutating fish in Lake Tanganyika and so I will be too. Oh and the pictures don't look too terrible. :)

Scribbling Volume Two

Monday we went to the falls, Mosi-oa-tunya, and I attempted to drown my camera. The falls were spectacular and definitely deserve the billing as a wonder of the world. That afternoon we enjoyed a nice cruise on the Zambezi River which included a sunset and an elephant.
Tuesday we boarded the 9am bus to Lusaka, which surprisingly enough( read with sarcasm) did not leave until half past ten, putting us in Lusaka just before five. I, being the extremely intelligent traveler that I am, attempted to leave my cd player in the seat back pocket and we only recovered it after our courageous taxi driver risked jail time to stop the bus in the street before it could hide in the overnight bus parking lot. All goods were recovered and we are now staying in the lovely Ku-Oomboka Backpackers in Lusaka with an entire college of Americans.
That evening we watched the Brazil-Croatia match in the company of some superbly friendly Zambian business men including one fellow had been to Ohio. Of course he had. All of us thought that Bruce Arena had shown a disconnect on Monday that was not going to do the Americans any good in the next two matches. Marion and I, being completely out of touch with what has happened in the world for the past two years, especially regarding sports, mostly nodded our heads.

Scribbbling Volume One

Here we go. We drove up to Jo-Burg after taking about 3 hours to exit Lesotho. 15 minutes before we arrived at the Maseru border post the South African side system apparently went down, placing us roughly twentieth in a queue that was now going to be processed manually… After standing around for 45 minutes with absolutely no progress we decided that if we were to make it to Jo-burg before midnight we would have to go to a different border post. Yeah, thanks South Africa. However it did enable me to say a random goodbye to Ntate Thapelo at the border post as he was apparently doing some sort of random long distance special.
Sunday morning we arrived at the Jo-burg airport after staying up way too late watching the Cote d’Ivoire match. We stayed at Shoestrings Airport Lodge again and for some reason its parking lot contained a Lamborghini Countach in the space next to us. I have no idea.
Given the demise of both pairs of my flip flops, or slip slops if you let the South African’s have their way, in Lesotho I had to purchase a new pair of them. So I now the owner of a shiny new pair of Reefs, not shiny for long though. The flight to Livingstone was fine and Nationwide Airlines worked out quite well, though all of us attempted to tip the plane in an effort to get a glimpse of the falls on our fly over.
Our good friend Chris picked us up from the airport in his apparent role as Fawlty Towers airport liaison man. Together we lamented the strength of the Argentines and hoped that Angola would not lose in the double digits.
Fawlty Towers was huge but relatively uncrowded for our two nights there. I met a nice kid from California who was waiting for his friend to return to find out if he was the one who had been involved in the WWI biplane crash that had occurred that day. Later it was found that he was not involved.
Marion decided that a sinus infection was in order and so decided to call it an early night. Nevertheless we found ourselves awake at the end of the Angola match, as it seems to be impossible to miss any match involving an African nation in this World Cup. I believe that Akwa’s all bicycle kick game could be, if it is not already, the best thing to happen to the 2006 World Cup, even more so on the good side if he is able to connect on one of them.

It's All Over

Well kids it has been great. My time as a PCV in Lesotho has come to an end. Time for a bit of travel then I will see you all in the land they call America (they, obviously not being anyone from Mexico or Canada).

Peace