Unique Places in Zambia

4 more images

There are some houses and roadside shops on the Great East Road. A small community is located close to Luangwa Bridge, in the middle of the wilderness areas. The place is a popular pit stop on the road from Lusaka to Chipata and Malawi. You can buy food, fruits, drinks and also straw hats.

Sporting Guns, Livingstone is an Olympic-standard shooting range. Their new Baretta shotguns are fantastic weapons to take down the clay pigeons with. All equipment and ammo supplied, as well as hotel transfers. Cold drinks at hand. Beautiful big space of African bushland not too far from Vic Falls.

Feel like a big game hunter without wounding anything (well, maybe your pride when you get your score card back!)

If you have a rental car and are heading down the Cape to Cairo highway between Mpika and Chinsali try to make the drive in to Shiwa Ngandu and Kapisha Hot Springs. You can camp at the hot springs, or stay in a room at their little lodge. They have a kitchen and bar. The Shiwa House is amazing. Check it out online.

This was "somewhere" between Choma and Botoko.... after the town of Choma we found a little road that looked interesting and took it..... and boy was it interesting, despite the "repairs" to the bridge, this thing had yer foot wobbling over the throttle with every creak you heard.
As you can see in front and to the left of my left wheel about three metres, someone had already dropped a wheel through the wood...
Imagine what his car seat must have looked like.... hahaha!!!

While on honeymoon near Victoria Falls, we came across a whole string of abandoned steam locomotives. It was quite a sight! These Garrett-type locomotives have been used at many locations around the world. I just received a report (July, 2003) from VT-member 'Margi9' that a couple of these particular locomotives are now housed in the National Railway Museum at Livingstone. That is good news!

The road from Lusaka to Monze, Zambia has no potholes, two lanes, three police check points, one town near the Kafue river and lots of life, including people walking, riding biclycles and chasing their cattle.
You pass the sight where Livinstone is said to have stopped, looked into the distance and seen the the great falls he would later visit. I never made it to Victoria Falls - it was another 4 hours down the Cairo road, (also known as The Great North road), from Monze and we had little time as it was. It was thrilling driving on this great road. The name is rich with images of late european empires and conjured up the vastness of Africa. The road from Cairo to Cape town was not completed and may never be. It runs out, turns to sand, twists and wanders into the wilderness. But this stretch through Zambia is the real thing - and as easy as it is to feel dwarfed by the scale of the African continent, this road provides a genuine link with the rest of it.
The road is also dangerous. The grades are steep at various points (such as the crest of the hill where Livingstone spied Victoria Falls) and trucks will be stalled just short of the peak of each of them. You may see nothing but a triangle of sticks or worse, you may not see the basketball sized boulder the driver placed in your lane as a warning that he was stopped ahead. Driving at night is not an option so enjoy it during the day. And get out into the countryside and see this beautiful part of the world.

One of my volunteer contacts was a fishery patrol officer on Lake Mweru, in northern Zambia on the border with Zaire. He took us out on an overnight patrol of the lake (see photo for our departure) on the 'Ikana' patrol boat. It was very interesting to see how they checked out the Zairean fishing boats and the sunset on the lake was spectacular as we slept on-board.

Wonder Gorge on the Lunsemfwa River is a sight to behold. This tributary of the Luangwa River is located east of Kabwe and was created by the river cutting through the escarpment. There were no facilities of any kind when I was there in 1973 - it is in the 'bush' outback. See my next tip in this section for another unusual outing.