Missing the Drop

(though without Christopher Biggins)

As previously mentioned, we managed to get ourselves on an organised safari trip into Northern Rhodesia. This was quite a result, managing to book it up at such short notice. A decent vehicle and a straightforward journey to get us over the border. Of course, it wasn't all good news as it meant that we'd have to share the whole 'experience' with five others. Anyhow, so off we set - along with Jacques Villeneuve, Matthew Kelly, Comic Book Guy and Hank Scorpio from The Simpsons, and one of the Golden Girls (pic to be posted somewhere, at some point). All turned out fine - we even hitched a lift with them on to Lusaka (top world destinations worth visiting: rank number 6,341) but decided to draw the line at launching all the way down to Livingstone with them. Things could have taken a turn for the worse when it transpired that our c0mpatriot was in fact from.........Derby. Well, you can guess the rest, but he was quite civilised about our respective positions. Not only that, he in fact becomes the only person from that city (sic) that I've met that doesn't actually spend his whole time talking about the place.

As expected, getting across the border was no problem at all, although we did fail to sign the visitors book on the way out of Malawi so someone may think we're still wandering around there. Although the other 73 pieces of paperwork one has to complete at immigration may tell them otherwise. As the pictures below show, we did reasonably well on the animal viewing, though we didn't get to see a leopard or a cheetah, even on the night drives.

So after three nights in the park and a night in Lusaka we embarked on another legendary lengthy bus ride, down to Livingstone. This time, the heap of junk we were in actually resembled a bus. Though it wasn't all plain sailing as we still had to endure the 'in-flight' entertainment. The rather curious music played on the Tanzanian buses (imagine someone singing a Christmas Carol in the style of a rap with someone yodelling over the top of it all played at full volume, and you're pretty much there) was replaced with some top draw films, from the Zambian national film no less, which I assume was in fact something from the bussie's home video collection. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see the end of the second of our double bill as we happened to arrive into Livingstone.........