Livingstone, Zambia and Taita Falcon Lodge

One of the hardest decision that I had to make when visiting Livingstone, Zambia was where to stay.  Accommodations, service, and comfort are vitally important.  No disrespect to Zambia, but the country is developing and making travel arrangements are not as easy as developed countries.  For instance, I had not trouble make hotel reservation online for Cape Town and Johannesburg, but for Zambia, I had to wire funds to the hotel.  Yes, I am a suspicious American and like to use credit cards because it is easier to get your money back from scam artists.

So, after as much investigation as I could do online, I decided to go with Taita Falcon Lodge.  I debated about choosing the lodge over the one 5-star hotel in Zambia, but decided that a lodge would be more authentic and something different … we stay in 5-star and 4-star hotels all the time, but this would be our first lodge and why not Africa.

Here’s how our stay started:

We land at the airport and pass through customs and immigration and our guide, Bryan, is waiting for us.  This allayed some concerns that I had not wired my hard earned money to some phantom lodge.  Bryan greets us and loads our bags into a well used van.

As we are driving from the airport through the town, Bryan tells us that we will be our guide during the stay and he points out different features as we make our way to the lodge.  He does warn us that the drive will be a little bumpy.

Once we turn off the main road, it seems as if we drive forever on this dirt road to what seemed like no where.  The lodge is truly in the bush, but it overlooks the Zambezi River.  We enjoyed the soothing sound of the river.

Now for bush living, this is luxury.  The lodge is made up of individual free-standing units.  We had a large sitting area bedroom combination [we had a netted bed], a dressing room, bathroom with a fully functional toilet, shower, and a large enclosed outside sitting area.  The one surprise was that the unit was not fully enclosed from the outside.  So, there’s no heaters or air conditioning, which was not a problem for the time we were there — June.  But other than that, the room was nice. 

    

Because the room is not fully enclosed and Zambia has quite a temperature range, the early morning cold temperature, made it hard to get out of bed!

Once we settled and unpacked, we met Bryan and the owners of the lodge to discuss our itinerary.  We were staying at the lodge for two nights and three days, so we had three activities that we could choose.  We selected the fully inclusive option which includes a guide and activities.  Our itinerary was flexible to the extent possible. 

  

So, we decided on a Zambian village tour, a safari drive, and of course, Victoria Falls, our main reason for visiting. Is Victoria Falls worth it to make a special trip to Zambia? Yes, totally!

Our stay at the lodge included three meals, we even had a picnic one day by the Zambezi River.  The food was excellent as was the service.  In the evenings the family who owns the lodge had a table and ate with visitors.  Food is served buffet style.  I have to say again that it was really delicious!

Each day, when we left the lodge, the staff cleaned our rooms and in the evening they prepped our room for bedtime, which included a hot water bottle in the bed … believe it or not it works!  We even has a mild incense for the bathroom.

Last words, these people understand the concept of service.  They really try to meet your needs and accommodations.  The Lodge is not going to be the same as Livingstone’s one 5-star hotel, but if you want a different experience without giving up too much in the way of comfort, I can attest that Taita Falcon Lodge is a good way to go! 

One word of caution, for the all-inclusive package, domestic beverages are included; however, if you drink international alcoholic drinks, even from South Africa, it will cost you. 

Remember, you are staying in the bush, there’s no TV or radio, but do you really need one?

See our Zambian photographs.

Visiting developing countries

Among our travels, we have been fortunate to visit two developing countries:  Zambia & Ecuador.   While these two countries are quite different, they share similarities:  poverty, inequality, and disparity.

Zambia, which is in the southern part of Africa, is a really poor country, but one of the observations that I made about businesses is that they seemed to be owned by whites, while the blacks are the employees.  For instance, the lodge where we stayed was owned and operated by whites from South Africa.  Ecuador is similar to Zambia in terms of those with resources and those without.  The indigenous Andeans are similar to the blacks in that they seem to be the most disadvantaged.

But not all developing countries are the same.  Ecuador’s infrastructure, at least Quito and Galapagos, seem much further advanced than Livingstone, Zambia.  Quito is a large sprawling city of between 3-4 million people and from a distance the city is colorful and attractive … until you are actually in the city.  Livingstone is much smaller and more or less lacks a transportation infrastructure.

The big factor to consider when visiting a developing country is that services and infrastructure are weaker than what we developed country dwellers are used too.  Hygiene is another concern.  My travel physician advised me to avoid eating fresh fruit and vegetables that could not be peeled.  Oftentimes, developing countries use waste as fertilizer.  What may not bother natives may make us deadly sick.  So, I am a more cautious about what I eat and where and I always carry an ample supply of anti-diarrhea, antacids, ibuprofen, aspirins, motion sickness medicine, and the like.  Ecuador was different and perhaps more developed, although I was never able to find eye contact solution.  What about service … western-style service will cost you.  But even here, there are some things that are just unavailable.

The one stable across developed and developing countries is people.  There are decent people across the board and there are haves and have nots, except in developing countries the magnitude seems to be exaggerated.

As an aside, one of my irritations is when people refer to Africa as if it were a homogeneous country instead of the large diverse continent that it is.

Otavalo Indian Market

Yesterday, we visited the Otavalo Indian Market and surrounding areas, which is definitely going to be a highlight of the trip to Ecuador.  This is where indigenous people sell and show their trade.  Part of the experience is to bargain and negotiate with the vendors.  I do not really like this part of the experience, because we have so much, they have so little, and because of this,  the negotiation is unequal … much like our experience in Zambia.

We had to take a private tour to the area, which is about 2 hours north of Quito, but it was totally worth it.

By the way, we did buy a lot.

Staying in the bush … a Zambian experience

We visited Livingstone, Zambia June 2007 and had a little concern about where we would be staying.  Making lodging reservations for Zambia is different from our experiences in the United States Europe, South America, and other places.  I must admit that I am addicted to Expedia and to a lesser extent Travelocity.  To my dismay and chagrin, I could not find any lodging to reserve online …  I like to use credit cards, because it’s easier to get refunded, if you are scammed.  [This is another blog.]  To make a long story short, I finally found a lodge on a tourism site that I sort of trusted and took a chance on Taita Falcon Lodge.  The Lodge had a website (which doesn’t mean anything) and I couldn’t find any blogs criticizing the Lodge (which doesn’t mean anything either).  After I wired a lot of money to the Lodge (their form of payment), I fretted for several months hoping that everything would be fine, including staying somewhere nice while staying in the bush. 

Staying in the bush was one of the highlights of the trip.  While I say we were in the bush and we were, the accommodations were quite nice and modern … toilet, shower, running water, comfortable netted bed, sitting area.  We were also at one of gorges where we could hear the rushing Zambezi River.  To get to the Lodge, we had to drive through a real African village, which we visited and purchased a couple of craft items.  This was awesome!

More about the Lodge later …