The bridge that you can see from Victoria Falls, with trucks trundling over it and bungee jumpers sailing off of it, is the one you cross to get to the Zimbabwe-Zambia border. We walked there from Victoria Falls Town, and after getting our exit stamps in our passports, we took a $2 taxi through no-man’s land, a half mile or so stretch of road that is consistently being rained down on by the mist of the falls behind you. At first, we weren’t sure if we even needed a taxi–we were pretty skeptical that the border was very far away and couldn’t see round the bend in the road. What if it was only a hundred feet away? But after driving past multitudes of forlorn looking, soggy but determined backpackers, we felt pretty good that our two dollars were wisely spent.

When we reached Zambian immigration, and stated that we thought we’d be there about a week, they stamped in our passports a visa that lasted exactly seven days. Now, since the visas were $50 each regardless of whether we were staying a week or two or more, we could have easily told them were were planning to stay a month, but the passports were stamped and we were ushered on our way, a little bewildered, deadline looming.

We arranged a taxi with the first person we met (this is never, ever a good plan) and he took our twenty dollars and exchanged it with a shady man who was holding the fattest stack of cash I have ever seen. We later found out that it is quite illegal to exchange money anywhere but at a real forex bureau. Oops. Our middle man, who was not a taxi driver as he had originally implied to us, took a hefty cut of the profit and delivered us to a taxi driver, arranged for us to be dropped off at the hostel of our choice and sent us on our merry way.

We took a sunset cruise the very first night we got there, and got to see hippos, crocodiles, and all kinds of wild birds as the captain skimmed our boat up the Zambezi river. The sky was clear and we could see the mist from the falls downstream, and stared at the sun until it went under the horizon, blinking bright circles long after the sun itself was gone. I talked to our guide, Paul, who was maybe more drunk than we were (I learned that “sunset cruise” is synonymous with “open bar booze cruise”), about animals that lived on the river, and I did my best to explain and act out Minnesota wildlife such as bears, moose and wolves.

Paul told me about his Kenyan friend who had brought a little crocodile over the border, and that they had raised it to be friendly, and that they had named it Duncan. (This explained why he called out to one of the crocodiles we saw, “Duncan! Duncan!,” clapping loudly and whistling to summon Duncan. Although he did come when called, we later found out that the croc was too little to be Duncan but Paul explained that he could have been Son of Duncan.) Duncan lived under their pontoon until they released him into the wild, like good parents have to do.

The same evening, we sat and had a sandwich with a Zambian named Cephas staying at our hostel who started a conversation with us about how much he loved Obama. He was 23 years old and a criminal defense lawyer. We listened as he explained that the secret to being a criminal defense lawyer was to create doubt in the mind of the judge. One of his more recent cases, he told us, was of a woman who had been accused of killing her husband by slipping poison into his dinner as she cooked one evening. But how do you know, he asked us, that the poison wasn’t slow-acting and put into his lunch while he was out at work? Good point, we said. He also explained that he would wait until he was at least thirty to get married, because too many people change their minds or say “I love you” when they don’t, which we agreed with. He wanted a wife who was smart and who could be his confidante (and who would not, presumably, poison his dinner). He ended his train of thought by explaining that if you only have one bottle of Coke, and you have to give it to someone, that you give it to your wife and not your mother. I laughed, and then took some of Daniel’s beverage.

I am writing this from home. We arrived back in MSP on April 24th after a flight that went from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Rome, to Washington DC to Minneapolis. It was epic, but we made it.

We are in the process of moving into a cute little duplex with Daniel’s sister and her partner for six months, and are planning on going back to South Pole this fall; we were both able to secure contracts before leaving the ice, and I’ll even be getting a promotion to a better position. But I’ll keep writing posts to catch you up on Africa!