Journey to Lake Kariba
Our bus from Livingstone dropped us of in the pitch black at a police checkpoint somewhere on the road just short of Kafue. Craig was staying on to the final destination of Lusaka so he could continue on to Malawi and the PADI diving course he planned to do. His course will probably last for 4 days and since we don’t want to hang around while he does it and also that we don’t want to rush through Zambia, we thought we’d visit Lake Kariba.
The lake was created by the damming of the Zambezi river in the 1950′s and is one of the largest lakes in Africa. We were heading to Siavonga, what the Lonely Planet guidebook described as a small village. Our onward journey to Siavonga wasn’t planned but our earlier success in hitchhiking and the insistences of the young men operating the bus that we’d be ok filled us with enough confidence to watch the bus drive off into the night.
The police at the roadblock had been instructed to get us a lift from anyone going in the right direction. It was only about 20 minutes before we got into a white toyota corola owned by a local called Agrey. He didn’t take us all the way but instead dropped us at an even smaller police checkpoint. It was another short wait before we were picked up by a ute and driven directly to our hotel, the Eagles Rest Camp.
We’d (well Bhav had) found the accommodation online earlier that morning but due to Bhav’s phone running out of credit just as she was about to confirm the booking, we didn’t know if there was any space when we arrived at 10 pm. Thankfully there was a twin bed en suite semi-detached chalet available but it was rather expensive at 190,000 Kwatcha (£30.50). We’d been quoted 150,000 earlier before the phone cut out but that was before the receptionist realised that that rate was only for Zambians. I didn’t have 190,000 and there wasn’t an ATM for miles so I found myself asking “is there anything we can do to rectify the problem?”. Thankfully all we had to do was give our permanent addresses as being somewhere in the Zambian capital.
View from outside the chalet
hey, what was siavonga like and the eagle rest camp? i was thinking about going there for NYE any decent bars about in siavonga?
Siavonga is quite a small town with a multitude of hotels stretching along the shore tailoring to the tourists (of which there were very few when we were there). Eagles Rest Camp was really nice and was owned by a local. Hotel bars are you’re only bet for a drink. It’s worth a visit!