LIVINGSTONE, ZAMBIA

After all this travel we were really happy to stay anywhere, but the hostel in Livingstone was incredible. It had everything you could ask for. We decided to not rush to Mozambique and stay for as long as we could without Leah missing her flight.

We stayed in a dorm with a Frenchie Romain, who was willing to put up with our antics and was a lot of fun. We went to see the Victoria Falls on our first full day there and signed up for a white water rafting trip that night. We ended up in the same boat as Romain and with three students from Germany. The Zambezi has 25 rapids ranging from a scale of 1-5. Our boat flipped at rapid four which was a grade 4. I for some idiotic reason couldn´t keep a grip on the rope and ended being a ‘long swimmer’. Basically you just get let loose on the rapid. I was scared out of my mind after spending most of that rapid being trapped underwater and not able to see where I was going or what I was near (like rocks). Luckily they tell you to just wait it out and you will come up for air, so I just tried to do that (all the while screaming bloody murder in my mind). I was pulled into another raft and settled in for a hot minute before that raft also flipped on a smaller rapid. Only three boats flipped that day and I was in two of them. The rafting gods might not be smiling down at me but they sure as hell were probably smiling at me. After that it took a bit to stop fighting the urge to jump ship and walk the rest of the way but luckily I stayed in. We didn´t flip again but we did jump off the rocks (semi-cliff) and decided to swim a few of the rapids instead of staying in the boat. Awesome day.

The next day I did something mothers across the world tell their children not to do. I jumped off a bridge. At 111 meters, it´s one of the highest jumps in Africa. When they told me that I absolutely had to jump forward 3 meters, I got pretty nervous. Your feet are tied together and it’s hard enough to walk (had to more or less hop to the edge), let alone jump. Regardless, I did it and then proceeded to flex my feet hardcore because I had an irrational fear that I´d slip out of the foot apparatus (towels and a not so strong looking clothe cord).