Victoria Falls - The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Well, more days of travelling across Africa, and many more interesting stories. Last week we had a rest day in Lusaka, Zambia and spent the days there enjoying a lot of western amenities. We even went to the cinema and saw a movie ("Slumdog Millionaire", which I would deffinately recomend as a must see for everyone. After having spent some time in India this year, it really hit home.) We enjoyed some great western foods and went out to celebrate our friend Mark's birthday. All in all it was a great few days of pampering and relaxation. Andrew & decided (for our sanity & so our butts could have a break) to not ride our bikes for the three days between Lusaka and Victoria Falls. Turns out it was a wonderful 3 days of relaxation and book reading, which is good, because early yesterday morning (April 11th, the first of our two rest days in Vi Falls) our cameras were stolen out of our tent while we were eating breakfast. Quite unlucky really, but also our luck was that we had decided to inventory our money & charge my iPod, so those were not in the tent at the time. Could have been much worse, so we have spent all of yesterday and most of this morning sorting out our insurance claim, trying to get ahold of new cameras (unfortunately to no avail). We also went to the village which is a stones throw from our Lodge with one of the local security guys to plan a 'sting' opperation. He posed as our guide, and we bought a few locals some beers (and by beer I mean the local fermented corn mulch, which smells and tastes awful, kind of like a mix between bad beer and the early fermenting stages of rye). And found a guy in the village who sold cameras. Unfortunately, he did not have ours, but knew a guy who had a few and would meet us later. I think he caught wind of what we were doing however, because he didn't show up at the designated time. Today we spent all morning with the Zambian police, which really was an adventure all unto itself. We went to the police station, only to find out that police reports are only written up on Tuesdays, typical Africa. But after pleading with the guy behind the desk (who did not at all look like a police officer in his boardshorts and hawaii print shirt, except for the army boots he was wearing), he consented to call his boss, who sometimes came in on Sundays anyways, so the boss shows up, looking even less like a cop in a blue jumpsuit and sandals and they chat and so they call in the guy (who's name is Kelvin) that writes the police reports. So he interviews us, calls his partner (named Andrew) and they tell us that they can write a report for us today, but its going to cost 50,000 kwacha (about $10) to write the report, plus the costs of the internet cafe and printing because their police station doesn't own a computor. So off we go with them to the "crime scene" and they interview the security guards at the Livingstone Safari Lodge and nothing surfaces except what we already know, that often cameras and cell phones are stolen from tourists & then sold on the black market. (Infact just outside our internet cafe a guy approached us asking if we wanted to buy a camera, so we questioned him about the brand, but alas they were not our cameras. But I digress.) After that we spend some time with the police officers getting our story straight and they write up a report. Next we hop in a cab to the nearest internet cafe and there Andrew & I type up our own police report (only on account that Kelvin started typing it up, but I anticipated that it would take about an hour for him to do as his keyboard skills were slightly lacking). So we typed our report, correcting the spelling mistakes and making it look a little more eloquent in english, printed it they stamped it with their Zambian Police Service stamp, signed it, we handed over the K50,000 and then we were on our way. We stopped at a few placed and tried to buy cameras (from a store so as not to support tourist camera thieving) but couldn't find anything, so we've resorted to borrowing one from our friend Allan on the tour so we can (finally!) go to the falls this afternoon & enjoy the last few hours of our rest days (which were not so restfull). All in all, it could have been worse, we still have our money and passports and credit cards, and we've contacted our travel insurance company (hence needing police reports), which should cover the cost of our cameras. The sad part is that we lost the last 2 weeks worth of our pictures, which really is the part we are missing the most. Fortunately however, we are travelling with 50 other people who all have taken pictures over the last 2 weeks, so we can always get those. Also quite fortunately we changed out our memory cards 2 weeks ago, so we're lucky we didn't lose more. All in all, we both agree that we still love Africa, and have vowed not to let a few bad experiences ruin our trip. (think back to our days of stone throwing, stick wielding children in Ethiopia, it now seems almost a cute distant memory. *almost*) We're planning on taking a picnic to the falls this afternoon & enjoying the day. Other than that, we're less than a month from Cape Town & will be back on Canadian soil in 31 days. Quite exciting as we are starting to miss home a bit (we've been on the road for exactly 4 months today) and can't wait to see everyone.