The crushing boredom of my days in Dar came to an end as i eagerly made my way to the station midday Friday to catch the 42 hour train to Zambia. The terminal looked like a makeshift refuge camp with hundreds of people laid out on blankets on the floor surrounded by their possessions and wailing babies. I dumped my backpack and sat down on it, looking around for other travellers. It seemed that I was the only westerner in the entire place and I began to abandon my plans of attaching myself to a cool group of people to make the journey more bearable. Then I spotted two people laden with backpacks walking through a small green door near the front of the crowed. I squinted into the distance and read the sign: "first class lounge". Ah. On entering I realised that this was where the other travellers had stationed themselves and the floor was strewn with backpacks, tents and carrier bags of snacks . Suddenly four breathless Americans burst in and immediately started introducing themselves to everyone in sight. Hearing that they were travelling all the way down to Livingstone I wandered over to introduce myself. "Hi", one of them said, "I'm Rob, we have three bottles of Jack Daniels." I had found my people. And not a moment too soon as the rumour went around the lounge that the train that was scheduled to leave at 2pm would be leaving at six. Six turned into eight. Eight become nine. At half past eleven we were finally allowed to board the train. I went to join the boys in their compartment and we passed around a bottle of JD as what appeared to be an angry mob roamed from one end of the platform to another. We hypothesised that they might be pushing the train. A short walk along the train reveled that there was currently no engine car, thus confirming our mob propulsion explanation.
Finally, at 12:04, they attached the engine and we began to chug slowly out of the station. We celebrated this until about half two in the morning when my day doing sod all got the better of me and I went back to my tiny bunk to attempt to defy the rampant bed bugs and actually get some sleep.
For the net two days I did nothing but wander from my cabin to the dining car, to the lounge car, to the toilet and back to the dining car again. Well that and consume a large amount of Jack Daniels and bond with my new found friends - four Law students from Virginia who were celebrating taking their bar exam.
The train was scheduled to arrive at about 7 am on Sunday. Factoring in the delay we were hoping to get to Kapir Maposhi (end of the line two hours north of Lusaka) at about 5pm. We eventually limped in at 5am Monday morning. Our 42 hour journey had taken 64.
The bus station in Lusaka is as chaotic as any African transport hub and it only become more so as we realised every bus headed to Livingstone that day was booked. We worked our way down our list of recommended companies, including a small altercation with a scarface man, until we found a space on the dodgiest looking coach in the park. It did its job thought and we finally got to our destination 76 hours after the train was scheduled to leave Dar. Arriving at the hostel I pitched my tent (feeling smugly like a real traveller), took the best shower of my life and crashed out to sleep off the miles.
The next day it was time for the falls. I really don't know if I can describe them without gushing. They are breathtakingly beautiful. Miles of tumbling water fall into a gorge so deep that its seems to be a scar on the earth. Had someone shown me a picture of the spray, hundreds of meters high forming a rainbow against the shear rocky cliffs I would have guessed it was a screen shot from Lord of the Rings or a photo-shopped image from a motivational poster. Me, the boys and a new friend called Lala wandered around with unshakable, idiot gins all over our faces. We headed to a place called the boiling point at the bottom of the falls where the water from both sides meets and forms a churning whirlpool before continuing towards Mozambique and the Indian ocean.
The best, however, was yet to come. We had heard of a place on the top of the falls where the crashing water had formed a natural swimming pool right on the edge. We recruited one of the local guides and began our journey walking across the falls, clambering over rocks and forming human chains to wade through fast flowing water not six meters away from the hundred meter drop to gorge below. We reached a rocky outcrop where we could stand, gazing down at the drop below, the water pounding all around us. Ten minutes more brought us to the Angel's Armchair, a small waterfall above a pool cut into the side of the cliff. We jumped in from the rocks and scrambles around the edge, the adrenaline making us forget where we were and just how far it was to fall. Occasionally I would look out and see people watching from the viewing platform on the other side, gawping at these distant, half naked figures frolicking on the edge of the world. Ever grueling hour on the train, every delay, every dodgy bus and cut foot and moment of terror was entirely worth it. I would do it tn times over to have that day again.
Then a Baboon attacked me and tried to steel my bag. Swings and roundabouts ay?
Photography Website
14 years ago
