Hello all me again!

We are having a very interesting time so far nothing has really gone to plan other then arriving in the country.

The flight was brilliant KLM, good food (even for a vegi) and because the flight wasn't full I had 3 seats to myself and mum had two. Mum had 2 for 2 reasons 1) shes smaller than me and 2) she insisted that she wanted to look out of the window for the entire flight - 5 hours of sand staring later she wasn't as impressed.

The films on the plane were excellent infact i had so many to choose from I got tired reading and had to have a little nap. It would have been great lying over 3 seats nice and flat had the arm rests actually moved up - so I had to slide myself under the arm rests and into place - it was slightly painful and i possibly looked mad strapped to the chairs but i had a lovely two hour nap.

Then we arrived at the airport and had to wait for about an hour to go through pasport control for our visa - where we were questioned by the most unfriendly and pan faced zambians ever 'put your fingers on the screen I take picture!' well anyway after some Lucy and Val wit we left them with exactly the same faces as they'd greated us with - WELCOME TO ZAMBIA!

Out of the airport and a lovely little man was waiting in a mini bus for us - not sure how many cases or quite how fat he thought we would be but it was certainly nice to spread out again. Mum said 'he's sooo black he's almost shinny - this was not meant as a racist remark i promise!

Once back in the hotel we were informed that we didn't have a twin room but that a spare bed was being provided - we got to the room the bell boy showed us how to use the electricity (very difficult - off/on) and the mini bar (very important) There was no bed provided extra in the room so we called down and they said it's on its way - we have to remember that we are on African time now so 40 mins later a small bloke strolled into the room with what can only be describled as a large lilo, threw some sheets at it and left - mum said 'Will you be ok on the floor?" so, looks like I have a few nights on the floor.

We woke up and had a lovely breakfast on the pool terrace in the sun - beautiful then began our interesting unproductive day.

After spending about an hour sorting flights out with a chinese lady who kept answering her mobile we found that they wouldn't take card payment so sent us 100 yards (100 yards my arse) down the road to the petrol station - which wouldn't give us cash. We went to the bank round the corner where we were given a number 138 and told to sit and wait to be called - the first number was 1 then 2 and we though s*** wer're gonne be here the rest of the day - well we might as well have been!

After several attempts at different ATMs after mum had told our life story to the woman in the Bank we still had no money so defeated we walked back to the chinese lady in the hotel. She suggested we went into town which we did - we tried the train station to book our 19 hr train for tomorrow but when you turn up to a station where there is no one but a elderly toothless cleaner you do start to wonder if this really is such a good idea, anyway from what we could tell we're not going to be able to get a train, i think she was talking to me was difficult to say with her eye pointing in the other direction.

Anway we thought sod this lets get some lunch, cuz by now it was 2pm - Mumb our taxi driver took us to the mall, obvioulsy we couldnt pay him we had no money so we asked him to pick us from the mall after lunch and we had been to an ATM.

We went to spur for lunch, some of you will remember me talking about 'sperm' in my Botswana blog - same splace. We had been and got some money and thought we were walking round with millions and the Zambian moneys is like in 1000's - when we went to the bank and found out how much we actually had it worked out as about 75 pounds so we didn't really need to worry about being mugged so much.

Anyway now back at hotel on a computer thats powered by a coal, slow slow slow!!! Off for dinner soon, pissing about certainly does take it out of you - anyway hopefully tomorrow will be more productive.

To do list:

Book bus, book planes, sort emails and Car hire.

Thanks for reading

Over and out x