My dad & I drove around 10 hours per day, aiming to cover about 520 or so kilometres to make the distance necessary. Most of the way the roads were fairly decent – for a 4x4. A normal sedan would have bumped and scraped, and probably buckled something eventually hitting through a surprise pothole, and a 4x4 would probably be all decent – but you’d definitely wince as you navigated your way through some of the bigger ones. The truck is great, in that its tyres are nearly 4ft high and weigh around 180kg’s, so when you do (and you will) hit an unavoidable pothole, it’s not too much of a worry that you’ll pinch the tube or put out the wheel alignment … but the slowing down to make the trans-pothole navigation a little more comfortable does take a while! And the suspension isn’t meant for carrying 2 passengers and a luxury house on springs of air across rugged terrain – this thing means business, and is meant to carry 11 tonnes of well-packed cargo through anything functionally!
Tanzania wasn’t a problem at all – there were a few police stops, but they all waved us through happily – the world cup is alive and well all over the place here, and it’s a good smile maker to be able to talk about bafana bafana.
Our drive through the Mikumi Game reserve was a lot quicker than last time as well – we didn’t even get a chance to take blurry photos of any wildlife through our windows as they whizzed past at 60 km/hour … and we eventually finished a big day of driving at TanSwiss resort. We had a good dinner there and chatted to another .. hey! Ive written about this already!
So southern Tanzania the roads were good, less and less potholes. We stayed at Utengule coffee lodge again (Friday night) and man it was perfect! We arrived after a long day’s drive, and sat on the outside verandah eating a good dinner, with exceptionally nice coffee, overlooking the plains below as the sun set! It was seriously good. Also chatted to the guys in the office and it sounded like everything was going really well, so it was a perfect end to a day!
Next day (Saturday) we entered into Zambia, got the “beggars for business” to organise some white reflective tape for the front of the car (which is apparently a good reason to get a fine in Zambia) and then we crossed the border – with a leather coat clad helper (not yet contracted!) and a slightly less organise looking guy with a stack of grubby looking notes in his hands. They followed us through the Getting out of Tanzania process (which was very simple) and then we started in Zambia.
I won’t even try to help you understand the process of getting through the border, but in no particular order: (1) customs for the truck, (2) carbon tax for the truck, (3) council levy, (4) road toll, (5) immigration, (6) border clearance, (7) 3rd party insurance .. and I think that was that – and every place is in a slightly different building in a different part of the complex without any signs, just some queues! Lucky, “Mr Leather Jacket” took us to the front of the queue of every place, and my grubby stacker just handed over the necessary Kwacha to the official … remembering that we hadn’t even at this stage asked them to help! We had roughly checked the price of the grubby kwacha, so we new they were actually offering us some value.
After around USD $120 and some paperwork we drove through into Zambia, expecting the worst: police blocks fining us in whatever currency we had for offenses that we would never be sure about! We had two red triangles in our front windscreen (which we had seen in the other trucks, and for which the police actually did jump up to look at!), we had the white reflective tape on the front of the truck (and the red bits we put on in Malawi after our fine there) … we had the council tax, the toll fee, the insurance, the driver’s licence, the carnet papers and every other piece of paper we got and hung on to!
And there were no issues at all! There were more road blocks in Tanzania!
Northern Zambia there are not many fuel stations – and its very rural. Our little 325km range was becoming an issue in Southern Tanzania, and in Northern Zambia we had to stop at a tiny little village and pay $100 for 60 liters of fuel from some boys with yellow jerry cans! Well worthwhile though … maybe that was our contribution to sustainable tourism?
The roads got better and better, and on Friday we managed to drive 700km’s to arrive at a nice campsite / resort near Kafue, leaving just 400km to arrive in Livingstone.
Along the way (somewhere in Zambia) we stopped at a town with an ATM and a fairly nice looking food place, my dad ate a pie, and I had a Chicken & Nshima. Its served on two plates (sudsa / pap like Nshima in one, and the chicken and spinach in the other) with instructions: “the tap is round the corner to wash your hands” and of course no cutlery! It was the best meal of the journey … absolutely delicious to break the Nshima into small fingerfulls, dip it into the chicken sauce and bit a piece of chicken!
So after cleaning up some of the truck, and having a good early night and late sleep in at our campsite “the Waterfront” on the Zambezi, about 5km’s from the Victoria Falls, we drove to the Livingstone airport and picked up the family! We settled into the campsite, unpacked too many clothes, and had a good night sleep altogether with the mossies.
Today we went to the falls ($20 each), swam in the campsite pool and generally just had holiday. We have also stocked up from the local kwikspar, and are ready for anything. Tomorrow we’re going to try organise a boat cruise on the river – and hopefully see a real crocodile (because we ate a crocodile bread today from the kwikspar – a baked loaf of sweet bread in the shape of a crocodile – but we want to now see a real one!).
Did I mention that we had debonairres pizza for lunch? This is Africa baby…
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