We spent Friday evening through Sunday morning, as well as the following Friday evening through Monday morning in Livingstone at a Backpackers Lodge called JollyBoys. Jollyboys was the perfect accommodation for us at $8 a night, with free rides to the Falls, and tons of information on activities at the Falls.
Jollyboys had a restaurant/bar that was pretty popular at night. There also was an awesome common area to hang out, read, and talk to other backpackers about travel plans.
Friday night we went into town to get cash, buy groceries, and check out some shops. The currency in Zambia is called Kwacha and has inflated to the point where $1 US = 5,000 Kwacha. So in order to pull out any real amount of money you are going to be withdrawing into the hundreds of thousands... I took out 1.5 million Kwacha ~ $300... To put it into perspective, their smallest bill is 50 Kwacha worth around 1 US cent, and their largest bill is 50,000 Kwacha worth around 10 US dollars. You end up leaving the cash machine with a wallet that won't close and a head full of conversion rates. At one point I had 4 currencies in my wallet: US dollar, SA Rand, Botswana Pula, and Zambian Kwacha... all accepted pretty much anywhere in Zambia.
Saturday morning we caught a 10:00 am ride to the Royal Livingstone Hotel. The Royal Livingstone is an upscale hotel that sits above the falls on the shore of the Zambezi river. From there we took a short boat ride to Livingstone Island, a patch of land above the falls in the middle of the Zambezi, the size of probably half a city block. Once on the Island we met our guide who would take us for a morning dip in Devils Pool. He walked us to the edge to take pictures, have us sign an indemnity form, and give us the safety talk on how to get to the pool. In order to get to the pool we had to swim across a pretty mellow current, stopping several times to make sure we still had everyone, and in about 15 minutes we made it to the pool. Everyone jumped into the 10x10 ft pool literally on the edge of the falls and had their fill of the sublime.
Right about here I understood why we signed an indemnity form, but the current wasn't strong enough to sweep you off where we were sitting.
After hanging in the pool for about 15-20 minutes we waded back to the Island and had breakfast. That Saturday was spent wondering if we started the trip with something that couldn't be topped, which certainly wasn't the case. Saturday evening we went on a Sunset cruise up the Zambezi River where we unexpectedly saw tons of animals. The tour lasted about 3 hours with legit finger food, an open bar, and a beautiful sunset to top it all off.
Sunday morning we woke up early and were driven to the boarder where our Botswana portion of the trip began. We returned from Botswana Friday evening and spent the night cooking dinner and hanging out at Jollyboys. Later in the evening we ended up going out to a couple local bars. On Saturday we woke up bright and early for a day of rafting on the Zambezi. The day consisted of 25 rapids ranging from class 3-5, with lunch at #10 and a braai at the end of the day while we checked out the footage. On our boat with us was a Japanese guy our age named Rio who was also staying at Jollyboys and our guide Babyface. We had a great day and ended up not flipping once despite the 5 or 6 class 5 rapids (pretty much just luck).
Sunday morning we ate breakfast at a restaurant in town and took a taxi to the Falls. After walking around the trails on the Zambian side below the falls, we made our way to the edge of the falls. After poking around for a bit we quickly realized that in order to venture around the edge of the falls it would probably be a good idea to get a guide. We found a group of guides and got one to take us along the edge to a pool appropriately named Angel's pool. Our guide was great, he took pictures the whole way, and let us choose how long we wanted to hang out at the pool.
After the falls we went into town and bought some crafts with the remaining Kwacha we had. Sunday night we went back to the Royal Livingstone for a relaxing final evening. We had some overpriced drinks, watched the sunset, and recapped the whole trip. Monday morning we went back to the craft market to pick up some last minute gifts and took a taxi to the airport.
We had an amazing week and a half that I will never forget.
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