Dear Ricky,
As it rains kitchen sinks outside, we are sipping on macchiatos at our favorite recently discovered Food Lover's Market in Lusaka, which, now that we have a second to sit back and take it in, has quite the resemblance to Whole Foods.
Since you left, we've traveled 25 hours by bus and truck over 3 days across 1,400 kilometers on a loaf of bread, chips, and a 5-liter jug of water. We've sat next to crying babies, behind 6 people sharing 3 seats, and been peddled everything from biscuits, tomatoes, and sugarcane to air time, ladles, radios, and briefcases. They were all hard to resist, but we somehow managed. We visited the Chinhoyi Caves where the water reaches depths beyond 135 meters, producing this beautiful gradating blue of royal to emerald. We camped there and, unsurprisingly, were the only ones. That night after a profound 168 minutes of Interstellar, we fell asleep.
The landscape throughout Zimbabwe is green as ever and the rain won't stop. Yesterday, after a half hour of misses, we hitched a ride north on a packed bus and were thrown into the lion's den, standing among too many distasteful things to recount, but the people were so friendly and the music - oh, the music - was literally the best yet. We were dropped off in the tiny town of Makuti where we came across the most foreigners we'd seen in the country and hitched a ride on a semi-truck carrying a 15,000-pound load into Zambia. It's our most sweaty, smelly, shiny, slow experience so far.
Just as we were settling into the idea of staying at the remote border town of Chirundhu, kicking ourselves for the most burdensome journey ever to Lusaka, we came across the last bus headed there and finally arrived just before 10 pm. Oh, and we managed to get out of paying the $100 visa fees. Total redemption.
We're about to have some fried rice and noodles now and are hoping to find a showing of 50 Shades before the long journey to Malawi.
Missing you and your flannel.
xoxo
P.S. Don't forget to take your malaria pills.
