Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did.
So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. --- Mark Twain

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Zambia, Lusaka

Day 310
Written in Zambia, Lusaka

In fact this post could be titled as "relationship with wildlife , as probably there is much more wildlife here than in Europe.

Some examples:
I am about 100 meters away from the car and suddenly I hear a very familiar signal, the signal of my own car. Well, the driver's side window was wide open, and someone gave the signal. We all know who that someone is. Anyway it is the someone who briefly stepped on the signal button, hastily came out of the window again and climbed on the roof. I took the camera out of the car and turned the window up so that the monkeys could not get inside again. Then I walk around the car and see that my guest is engaged with the window again.

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The antenna has been bent as well. The trouble with monkeys is that they are a kind of big thieves. Edible things will be stolen within seconds even when you are only a few meters away and sometimes something is left in return.


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In response of driving them away they climbed a bit higher.

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These warning signs are not posted for nothing. And the picture of the elephants has a reason as well , because they also like to visit this camping site. And so it happaned. In the evening, a couple of hours after sunset there were suddenly six elephants moving in the camp. They walked around, rattled with branches, but were not aggressive. An hour later they disappeared into the darkness. According to the locals they sometimes go to some nearby village and vandalize with buildings. In their opinion elephants are quite bad animals.

And it was mentioned immediately on arrival at the camping - do not leave food out or into the tent because of the elephants. Good - that I had left nothing out near my car. At least I thought that I had not, but however, my plastic water canister was, for some reason, about a few meters away from the place I had left it, dented from one end and the plastic tap was missing. The first idea was to check whether it is watertight and get the dent out quickly, and later I thought that I should have taken a picture as well, so - perhaps the next time.

Anyway, snails are fond of this canister as well.

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And beside larger animals there are moving around and flying lots of smaller insects. And the main purpose of their existence is probably to turn the life of human beings into as hell as possible. And the result of the attack of some unknown insects there are 4 traces of the bites on my left leg. Today I put some tea tree oil on it, so tomorrow let`s see if gets better.

And thanks to the rainy season and the everyday rain there are less mosquitoes, so that there is something positive in every situation or every cloud has a silver lining.

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Chipata - a town in West Zambia

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Another picture of Chipata. On the way ahead there is a lying policeman and just in front of it a bag of white goods, which has dropped off from a passing truck.

Typically, don`t succeed to capture this kind of moments, although the camera is at hand in the passenger's seat, but it also takes some time to turn it on .

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Nature in Zambia, green and slightly hilly.

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Buying bread by the road. And the hairdresser is on the right.

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The Great East Road. From Chipata a very decent road takes Lusaka.

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And this is that the previous road looked like. Old Great East Road. Surely it would have been interesting and adventurous to ride around here at this time, when the road was still new and in everyday use.

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Lusaka. Entrance into the city.

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In the center. Cairo Road. According to Wikipedia the population of Lusaka is 1.7 million.

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To be able to get quickly to the next house.

First impressions are very positive in Lusaka. The city is clean, at least the center is. Shopping malls are great, as in Europe. And the prices as well. Taffic is rather sparse.
Next day after having arrived I went immediately to the Zimbabwean Embassy to get visas. Because, as always, the visitors of this country as well are classified into three groups. Group A - admitted to the country without any visa. Group B - who receive visas at the border, and group C - who must apply for a visa before the trip.

It does not take long to think which group Estonias belong to and at the Embassy I got the answer, that the visa could be obtained from there, yes, but it would take a couple of weeks, because the application and other supporting documents (hotel reservation, the copies of the passport photo and the page of the Zambian visa) will be sent to the capital Harare and then from there comes the answer. Just in case, I printed out and showed them a couple of photos from the guest book of the South Sudan Independence Day.

There was the entry of the President of their country

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and my name too.

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But it was of not much help. Anyway, the papers and money (45 USD) were accepted and I was told to come again after a week, maybe by that time the answer is there.

And don`t like to miss Zimbabwe , because of Great Zimbabwe Ruins and Victoria Falls, and on the whole this country was supposed to be unique and cool .

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I thought that I'll end this story with the pictures of lion pups but the blog did not want to go up to the Internet at once and in the meantime one more representative of the wildlife appeared. So I got it in the picture and here it is.



1 comment:

rory said...

lovely to see what your up to we are back in the UK for a couple of weeks before heading to the US.
Rory and Lucy