Our alarm went off at 5:55 a.m. this morning and it was very painful. Nighttime in Africa during the winter is so cold! It gets down to 10 Celsius, which is only ten degrees above freezing! We were huddled in our sleeping bags for a few minutes dreading the moment when we’d finally get up to get dressed. We could hear the distant sound of hippos (a deep chuckling noise like a two ton Santa Claus), hyenas (ooo-woooop, starting low and getting higher pitched towards the end), and an occasional lion (watch The Lion King, I’m not explaining that).
We met Dave and Mike at the main area of the island and had hot coffee next to a fire. We were all wrapped up in layers and blankets and still it was really hard to stay warm. Our river guides arrived and we all climbed into the two canoes, called makoros, and headed down the river to watch the sunrise.
We’d been travelling down the river for about 5-10 minutes when Sarah said, “Did you hear that? I heard something!” None of us thought she was right but then the two guides exchanged really nervous looks and started paddling backwards and pulling the boats into the long reeds. They told us a hippo was closeby and we had to wait for it to pass because if it bumped the boat it would tip over. We sat there for at least ten minutes and didn’t hear or see anything (we were torn between wanting to see a hippo and not at all wanting to see a hippo while in a tiny little canoe). Finally we moved forward a little and one of the guides, Godfrey, used his paddled to measure how deep the spot in the river was where we were sitting. When he saw how deep it was he looked at the other river guide, again with a very scared and nervous expression. It was very intense.
But eventually the sun did rise and it was very beautiful. The river is covered in mist in the morning and when the sun comes up over the trees, it’s huge and bright just like during the sunset and all over the mist reflects the red and pink light. It slowly burns away as the sun gets higher and higher into the sky. We were all really happy that we dragged ourselves out of bed to see it.
Afterwards, we had more coffee and took hot showers in the outdoor shower huts. They’re amazing! They’re all wooden and straw but when you go inside, the decorations are so cute! Each stall has a mirror and sink and even the pipes leading to the shower head are hidden inside hollow sticks so it looks very authentic and natural. The water pipes are heated in a big stone oven behinds the huts. At first, we couldn’t get enough hot water so I ran outside in my towel to save the day. You just have to add more logs to the oven so the fire gets bigger and hotter. I accidentally dropped my towel while I was lifting the logs. Oops. Hopefully nobody saw that haha, but it’s okay because it worked and we took steaming hot showers (and after taking bucket showers, that’s quite the luxury). We were really happy.
After our showers, we just had enough time to pack up our stuff before it was time to take the mokoros back to the mainland and drive back into Livingstone. The bus ride back to Lusaka took almost 7 hours, but we survived and got picked up by our favorite cab driver, Lazzy, when we got back. It was such an incredible weekend!
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