Travel Day...Again.

I wish I had more exciting things to write about today (especially after yesterday's exciting post from South Luangwa) but today was a full on travel day. As such, we slept, read, ate, stopped for lunch (mystery meat sandwiches...I've taken to eating cucumber and tomato salads on those days and then scarfing down chips on the bus...), anddddd drove onward.

I can honestly say that most of the roads we have been driving on between locales have been pretty good - paved, straight, not many potholes. But then we come to one like the one we drove on today. And you just think WHYYYYYYYYY. To be fair, the government is in the process of paving the road (and it was looking pretty good when we were driving next to it), but the "service road" they've created was such a mess that when we first got onto it all of us came off our seats a good 6 inches!! Again, they are working on it, and it's clear to see that it's going to be a great road once it's finished, but I maybe wouldn't recommend visiting Petauke, Zambia for about another 6 months until it's complete :-p.

We arrived at our hotel around 4, which gave us time to just relax and repack our bags (since they basically become a mess every day).

In our room, we also found...the Zambia phone book. As in, the phone book...for the ENTIRE COUNTRY of Zambia:

It is really incredible to think that in the US these are sent out by COUNTY, and our Suffolk County phone book is nearly twice as thick! (Not to mention the White Pages in addition to the Yellow Pages that would nearly quadruple the entire country of Zambia's phone book!

This is one page of the phone book. It shows ALL of the business phone numbers listed in EIGHT AND A HALF different towns!!!

After showering (in the worst cold shower EVER - very similar to my shower when studying abroad in Rome...) and repacking, we headed to dinner, where Mark cooked us a traditional African meal: meat sauteed in spinach with tomatoes, and pop. Pop is a side dish made of maize meal (ground up maize), which has the consistency of instant mashed potatoes (in fact, after learning of pop, I'm pretty sure that's what "instant mashed potatoes" are actually made of since they both cook in about 90 seconds.

Now off to bed for an early start tomorrow for...MORE DRIVING!

Jess' highlight of the day: I've been choosing to be an optimist but today kinda sucked. The best part of my day was discovering the Zambia phone book. That's not saying much.
Jon's highlight of the day: none. womp womp.