Pictures, finally

Bwanji,

Well, finally I have internet again...the last day of my trip. I wish I had been able to update you all in Zambia but unfortunately the internet wasn't hooked up at the places we stayed at (most places were still recovering from the rainy season which was especially hard this year). But I will be posting more on here in the next few days and hopefully getting a Picassa web album up soon with all the pictures from all the students that went.

Anyways, Zambia was awesome!! As I said earlier we went to Victoria falls. We spent two full days at the falls. The first was just spent getting accustomed to the falls and to Zambia in general. We were also introduced the VERY pushy shop owners. If they could see you they would try and get you to come to their store, find some hand made items that "their sister made," and then haggling on a price. The second day was spent doing some research and taking a close look at the flora and fauna that comprised the lush gorge at the bottom of the falls.

The next couple of days were spent traveling to Kasanka national park. It took 2 and a half days to get there in our bus (we called it the Mosi wagon; Mosi is the Zambian beer). At Kasanka we saw a ton of wildlife from antelope (Sitatunga and Puku), to birds (Kingfishers and Bee eaters) to spiders and we even saw hippo tracks. The picture to the right is near the place where we camped in the park and in order for us to travel to the other half of the park, we had to load the car on a pontoon raft and float it across the river.

However, the best portion of our trip was in South Luangwa National Park. We took a total of four Safaris into the park over the course of 4 days (1 daytime drive, 1 daytime walk, and 2 night safaris). It was on these treks that we saw tons of animals. The picture of the lions to the left was taken from the truck we rode in that was completely open. I was only 10 feet away when I took the picture. That is the way it was for the rest of the animals we saw there too. They had grown up around the safaris and were not scared when the vehicles drove up. We saw lions, elephants, hippos, impala, giraffe, hyena, and even two leopards at the same distance. Along with all these pictures I also have a lot of movies I took.

I can't wait to get back and show you all the rest of the pics I took and stories I have. What I have here is just the tip of the iceberg of what I saw. I will probably post a few more blogs here just to get some more things up but until then,

Zikomo,

Allan