Floatin' down the Zambezi!

Well we made it to Zambia on Tuesday and this is the first day we made it into town. We are staying at a camp ground about 2 km from town,but a $10 cab ride. Everything here is super expensive! The internet at the campground costs $6 an hour! By far the most expensive we've seen so far. They suggested not walking to town, b/c elephants roam around and you could get trampled. Well, after spending 3 days at the campground with nothing to do, we decided to risk it. Seven of us took the hour walk to the shops, and here we are. We didn't see so much as a bird, let alone an elephant! I think they just told us not to, to cover their own asses. Anyway, we are still having an incredible time! Since I last wrote (was that Monday?) we took a ferry across the Zambezi River to enter Zambia from Botswana. That was really neat, but we weren't allowed to take any pictures b/c it was a border crossing. Once in Zambia we drove to Victoria Falls and spent a couple hours walking around, taking pictures. It's the dry season right now, so the falls aren't at their biggest, but they are still spectacular! I would venture to say more spectacular than even Niagra Falls. Unfortunately, the best viewsare from the Zimbabwean side, so needless to say we won't be getting to see those. It's actually safe in Zimbabwe at the falls, but it would cost like $150 to get a Zimbabwe visa that we'd only need for a couple hours. Oh well. On Wednesday we went white water rafting down the Zambezi River, starting just below the falls. It was probably the most fun I've ever had!!! Definitely the highlight of the trip so far. There were 7 of us from our group that went. We had to climb down the side of the gorge to get in the rafts at a point they call the Boiling Point. Our guide's name was Baby Face! He was great. After giving us some pointers and having us jump in the water to practice getting back in the raft (the water was actually quite comfortable), we spent 2 hours floating along the rapids. We went through 9 rapids, and walked around 1. There were 3 class 5 rapids which are the highest grade you can do commercially (the one we walked around was a class 6!). It was scary, but so much fun!!! Our raft capsized once on one of the class 5 rapids, but I never fell out (the raft actually fell over me), and everyone stayed with the raft. And on another class 5 our raft literally went verticle and we surfed a wave for a few seconds before crashing down again. We all thought for sure we were going to flip, but we didn't. But our guide was catipulted out of the raft when we landed, so all of the sudden we were floating down the river backwards with no directions! But before we knew it, a guide from a boat that had 2 guides was jumping into our raft and directing us along. So we were all OK (and we picked Baby Face up just a bit further down the river). It was seriously an awesome day! I wish we could do it again! Yesterday we just hung out at our campsite (did laundry), hung around the pool. Livingstone is really very expensive, so we won't be doing too much. We are here until Sunday when we drive into Malawi.