I got up again at 5am this morning, carefully checking for huge spiders as I emerged from my tent. We had a quick breakfast and then headed for Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. I was in the back of the truck today and when we rolled into Lusaka, we parked in the car park of a huge shopping centre, which certainly wasn't there when I was here last.

The group were told to be back at the truck by 3pm and George and I went into the shopping centre to pick up supplies for the House Boat cruise. Once I entered the shopping centre, I was reminded of coming into Khartoum, Sudan and walking into the Africa Shopping centre after five weeks in Ethiopia. Civilization, how I have missed you I thought, as I walked past KFC, Woolworths and Subway, grinning like an idiot.

Our first order of business was to find phone chargers, which George and I both needed. We both had to settle for knock offs, because out of the four places that sold phones, that's all we could find. Even the knock off charger for an iPhone was $40. George wanted to find a battery for his phone, but everywhere we went people kept saying, Is Finish. I remembered back to my days on Dragoman, and the jokes we used to make of that saying, e.g. ME: Can I have some of those Pringles? BREDA: Is Finish. T.I.A, even in the big shopping centre with all the western shiny things.

George and I quickly slammed a drink and then went into Shoprite, grabbed a trolley each and proceeded to load up. I had a bit of a giggle at the fact that even here in Zambia, the shopping centre had its Christmas decorations up and ready for sale, I also pictured the look of disgust my Mum always has when she sees Christmas decorations in October, Oh for God's sake, greedy b*****s its nowhere near Christmas, she would have said. I guess some things are universal. Jokes aside, seeing the Christmas decorations really brought home how long I had been away. I left in February and now I'm seeing Christmas decorations.

After George and I had loaded up our trolleys and George had a panic attack about being over our budget, we went and paid for our haul. We were bang on our budget, so we didn't have to put anything back.

We went back to the truck and proceeded to load up, George told me to go have some lunch. I went back to the shopping centre and sat in a take away joint called Steers and had the best chicken burger of my life. Everything is better with Avocado. It took a while for everyone to get back to the truck and we drove about ten minutes up the road to Eureka camp, which was another one I had stayed in before.

We got set up and I had a few beers at the bar with George, followed by a quick game of pool with Mugo (our driver) and then decided to go swimming in the campsite pool, even though it appeared half of Africa was already in there. I got in and one of the guys was trying to teach two girls how to swim. They kept squealing even though there was absolutely no point in that pool, where you couldn't touch the bottom. It was also pretty funny considering the guy who was trying to teach them couldn't swim himself.

I was doing laps of the pool underwater and one guy on the side was obviously making fun of his mate who was in the pool. It was in Swahili, but I vaguely caught something along the lines of, Come on the Mzungu (white girl/person) is putting you to shame! Followed by lots of laughing from everyone. The guy in the pool, then asked me to teach him to swim, (why can't African's swim, I thought to myself) I then proceeded to try to teach the guy to swim. Breast stroke at first, which all his friends laughed at, I then decided doggy paddle was probably the way to go. I taught him the basics and go out of the pool and told him to keep practicing.

I went and had a shower and then put my stuff back in the truck. I actually got a bit of a freight because there were Zebras wandering around the camp. I followed the zebras around for a while trying to get close to them and thinking how wonderful it was to be able to walk next to wild African animals. I had dinner, which was a really nice chicken curry and then went back to the bar with George for the rest of the night.