Blog Post 22 – Mike goes to Lochinvar

Sunday afternoon I visited the internet cafe, and even managed to get free internet. The owner was so happy that I had a free anti-virus on my flash (yay Antivir, glad I downloaded you before I left) that there was no charge. Before he could only protect 3 computers because of the Norton license, but now they are all safe. Stayed with my counterpart Willard that night, and at 5:00 AM we got up to go to Lochinvar.

We reached the gates about 7, he paid the regular price and I paid the tourist price (about 4 times higher) and in we went. We took the road to the Kafue river and on the way we saw Zebras and a herd of Impala crossing the road. At the road we met a friend of Willard's who took us to see the hippos. Apparently it was safe to get close because they were in the water and we were on land... but I was still not convinced and kept my distance. Because it was a Monday, the people from the islands (about 3km offshore) were coming on boats with fish, and people from Monze were coming in trucks with food and drinks and ice and clothes. Transactions ensued, boats were overloaded, trucks were overloaded and everyone went their way.

Possibly more interesting was the Ila people (a Tonga tribe) bringing their cattle to cross the river. There are greener pastures on the other side, so they bring the cattle by the thousand to the edge of the river and then some men beat drums really loudly. Some people pile into boats, others grab the tails of their favourite cattle and the cattle all swim about 12km to the other side. Supposedly this happens once each year, so I was pretty lucky to see it given I didn't know about it until the cattle arrived en masse.

On the way back to the main lodge, we saw more impala. Willard remembered a great view from the lodge, but now it is pretty run down, and the trees are too big. Instead I managed to find a suitable view from the top of the water tower, it was a pretty magnificent outlook over the park. We also checked out some local hot springs (sorry no pics, the bathers may not have been too happy) and found hundreds of baboons running around. All in all a really cool visit, and I got to go on a Safari in Zambia, which is pretty sweet.