Lusaka is the capital of Zambia and the people are quite friendly. This city was just a quick stop for us. From here we plan on going straight to Melawi because we only heard good things about it and we wanted to check out the lake.

After finding a place to stay and returning the car, we had to figure out which bus to take to get us to the Zambia Malawi border, Chipata. But we stayed at a local place, there were no tourists around and the “router” was down (come to discover, this is the excuse most everyone uses about the internet, so don’t bother asking, there usually is none, but there is always an internet cafe around). Usually, you can talk to the other travellers about how to get to X. But it was a little sparse. So we decided to consult our Lonely Planet guide book while drinking a few beers at the hostel’s bar. We met a few locals right off the bat and one guy offered to walk with us to the bus station when the rain stopped. There were a lot of men drinking at the bar, all in a good mood and no one working. That is to say, they all had jobs, but they still met up regularly to have beers during the work day. And they like their music loud. Like a club.

Anyhow, our new friend, lets call him Gary, went on a walk with us to the central bus station. The way was wet, lots of muddy puddles, traffic, people walking around everywhere, and people jumping around the puddles, trying to stay dry. After a 20 minute walk, we finally made it to the busstling and chaotic bus station. Thankfully, we had a local with us, who knew the ropes and the dialect. He found the correct bus for us and also negotiated a good price for us. 🙂

This is one thing we learned thus far during the African portion of our travels: always chat up the locals because they can always get you a better deal. Tourists always get charged a way higher price, while locals pay local price. If you have someone else do the negotiating, you will still pay more than what a local will pay, but you will pay less than if you did the negotiating yourself. And locals are always more than happy to help and to interact with you. So don’t be shy!

Going to the bus station in an African country (ok…I am generalizing a bit since I haven’t been to every African country, but this experience is the same one we made in all of the African countries we have been to on these travels…minus South Africa. So when I say “Africa” it is only limited to the countries in Southern Africa.) is quite the experience. It’s overload. The minute you step into the premises of any kind of terminal, big or small, people start approaching you and start yelling out stuff to try to get you to get on their bus. Adn then there are people selling their food and drinks for your bus ride.  Don’t listen to the ones trying to get you on their “better and faster” bus and don’t pay them any attention and don’t be nice!! Seriously. Being any of those will get you on the wrong bus and paying lots of money for it! Just head off to the place you know, really know, that they are definitely going to your destination. And then once you get there, don’t pay the fair right away. First, you climb into the bus to see how many people are sitting in the bus, if it’s full, pay and stay. If it isn’t full, ask the dude when they plan on leaving. When they say “Five minutes”, don’t believe them. Buses ONLY leave when the bus is at over capacity. Climb out of the bus and look for another one that looks like it’s full and about to take off.

Let’s get back to over capacity. When I say over capacity, I mean to-the-brims-full-of-people-animals-produce-suitcases-and-boxes full. And just when you think there is no way that anybody else will fit in there, then you are wrong. At least 5 more people can fit in there….and they will fit in there. If you pick an empty bus, then you might end up sitting in the bus for the next 3 to 4 hours waiting for it to fill up. Plus, the short distance buses are usually quite small. Thomas often had to sit all scrunched up with no leg room.

Ok, once you have established that you won’t have to wait more than 30 minutes for the bus to leave, you pay the dude (give him only exact change, sometimes they don’t have enough to give you change).

There is so much action at the station, it is literally crazy! It’s quite a scene and I was rather engrossed. Thankfully Gary was there and he helped up through the maze. We found our bus for the next day and we researved our seats (with Johabie, for those who are interested) to get to Chipata. From there, we would have to cross the border and then take some sort of transport from the border to get to Lilongwe, Malawi. But that’s another blog post.

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Once we got all that settled, we went back to the hostel and then had a few beers with Gary and some of his friends. We called it in pretty early since we had to be at the bus station by 6 a.m. to catch the bus and we didn’t want to risk it. But before going off to bed, we had to organize a cab in the morning to take us to the station. Gary suggested that we don’t walk around town in the middle of the night, better to take a taxi. But we couldn’t organize one and I was starting to get a bit nervous about missing the bus and possibly getting robbed in the process. . But Gary came through for us again and told us that someone would pick us up at 5:30.

The driver was late. He came at 5:45. Not cool. I was having a meltdown, especially since I really really didn’t want to stay another night there and I wanted to get to Malawi. But all was good and a short time after, we were on our way to Malawi.