africa-overland

18th December

What a remarkably crap day today was. We left Lilongwe in good spirits, having only 120km drive to the border. A visa for Zambia costs 60$, which makes it the 2nd most expensive visa after Sudan. However, if you are booked to stay at any registered campsite, lodge, hotel etc they can send a visa waiver form to the border stating that you are a tourist and therefore you don’t have to pay for a visa. I had arranged all of this with Flatdogs campsite, where we were headed. So we duly turned up at the border only to be told that because they hadn’t received the waiver with the due 48hrs notice we would have to pay. I argued that they had the waiver, surely that confirmed our booking etc and the extremely surly and rude immigration woman wouldn’t have any of it. When I explained that I only had 100$ on me and not 120$ she said that I wasn’t allowed into Zambia as I didn’t have enough money to support myself or my a visa. She kept on asking how was I going to put diesel in the car with no money, it’s already full I said, how would we pay for food with no money she said, we shopped in Lilongwe and the car is full, how were we going to pay for camping with no money, I have 100$ to pay for that but you won’t give me a free visa and so that money has now gone! The long and the short of it was that she said that unless we went and got 120$ to pay for the visa and then another 100$ she wouldn’t let us into the country. She then turned her back on us and said “I’ll be waiting for you when you have the money” and sat down and read the paper. So we then had to go back to the Malawi border post, explain what happened, get them to allow us back into Malawi without having to go through stamping the car in etc and go to the nearest cash point. The Malawi guys were really helpful and just rolled their eyes when I told them about the Zambian officials. Luckily for us the nearest cash point was only 15 miles away. So we went there got the money in Malawi kwacha, went to change it to USD, the bank has not dollars left. That meant we had to find one of the black market guys and haggle like hell to get a remotely good exchange rate from Malawi kwacha to USD. This done we went back to the Zambian border. Only to be told that by the woman that she wasn’t going to accept some of the dollars we had because they looked old. I nearly punched her at this point! She then, very graciously, “allowed” us to make up the difference with Zambian Kwacha. This is against the rules because they don’t normally do it but she would let us on this occasion. So she very kindly allowed us to pay the difference at an exchange rate of 5000kwacha to the dollar when the real rate is only 3750, the rest went in her back pocket! After a couple of hours and feeling extremely angry, to put it lightly, we were finally allowed into Zambia. The woman’s final comment was that if we showed our receipts for the visas at Flatdogs they would refund us the 120$. This perked me up somewhat, and we set off to do the 150km to the campsite and South Luangwa National Park.

Our first view of South Luangwa Np. Below are storm clouds gathering over the park. I'm a geographer, i like clouds!!

Elephants crossing the Luangwa river right next to where we were camping.

We duly arrived at the campsite, handed over our receipts, to be told that they don’t offer refunds for visas, they never have and that the Zambian officials always say that so that people won’t kick up a real fuss. I’m now thinking about taking up black magic, making voodoo doll of the border official woman and persecuting her for the rest of her life. The upshot of all of this was that we were now seriously short of money; we had only just enough to pay for park entry fees and camping. We went to pay the fees but again as we were paying in local currency not USD we got stung with another crap exchange rate, 4500kw to the dollar. This meant that we paid about 15$more than we should have done for entry and totally cleared us out of all our cash, we were left with literally about 10p in our pockets and no money to pay for camping. When we explained this to the campsite they said we could pay by card for a 5% commission, having no other options we had to accept. So by the end of the day we were about 150$ down, skint and mightily fed up!

An enormous baobab tree. The trunk was as wide as the landy is long!

The reason we had gone to this particular campsite and park was that everyone we had met said it was one of the best national parks on the continent. They weren’t wrong. After we’d sorted out all our money stuff we went to set up camp. The pitches are set on the banks of the Luangwa River directly opposite the park itself. Not a bad site I thought, grudgingly allowing some of my anger to vent. Around the site there are huge baobab trees that have ladders and platforms in them so that you can pitch your tent in the trees if you want. Pretty cool we thought. We then noticed signs all around the site saying that if any elephants come into the campsite you should quickly climb up the ladders and wait for them to go. We weren’t really sure whether to believe that or not until……. We were setting up the camp and heard a load of splashing in the river. We had already been down to river, about 10m from the car! and seen loads of hippos and crocs in the water. We just assumed it was a hippo in the water making the noise. When the splashing continued we went to look and saw a herd of 15 elephants swimming across the river. Once they got to our side the climbed up the bank and ambled off. All this was within about 20ms of our car! Maybe the signs about the elephants were true! Amy and I both agreed that this was one of the most amazing sites we had seen for the whole time we’d been in Africa and completely dispelled the bad mood we were both in (by we I mean me! Amy is far better at being stoical about things than I am!). We cooked dinner a little after this and went to bed, in preparation for a 6am game drive the next morning.

19th December

What an amazingly adventurous day today turned out to be! We did manage to get up and arrive at the park gate for 6am (a pretty good feat if ask me). Before we drove in the ranger told us that the branch roads into the park were pretty muddy and we would be best to stay on the main gravel road. I nodded my agreement all the while thinking that saying something like that to me is like waving a red rag at a bull. Mud and landy, who could ask for more! Into the park we went and did about a 4 hour game drive, seeing loads of animals as you would expect but no big cats. This park is renowned for its leopards, which is partly why we had come and so had booked ourselves on a night game drive in the hope of seeing some. As soon as we were out of site of the ranger we dived off the gravel road and into the mud! It was cool, doing loads of off-roading whilst being surrounded by zebras, elephants, giraffes etc! We were being careful not to get stuck and there were a few tracks that we bailed on because they looked a bit too hardcore. Had we been with the boys we would have had a go but being on our own we backed out. Still we had loads of fun and got the car thoroughly filthy. Especially needed after it was still looking too clean after its nasty encounter with a sponge and bucket in Tanzania.
However, we did have one rather tricky moment. I wouldn’t go so far as to say we got stuck. More that our forward movement was temporarily halted for about 30mins! We had decided to do one more track and then head back to the campsite. It was getting hot and this means that all the animals disappear so it was about time to pack up anyway. We headed down this track and came to an innocuous looking stretch of muddy water about 3ms long and 2ms wide. Having driven through far more dodgy looking stuff earlier we thought nothing of plunging in, which we did and came to a shuddering halt. This little muddy pond turned out to be a bottomless pit of clay like mud, which we were now sunk in, at the back up the axles and at the front above the axles. This will only mean something to Rees, but it was pretty similar to what happened to you and me on Salisbury plain. We were well and truly stuck!

What the not so easy looking puddle looked like after we'd mauled it getting out!

Above, trying to get the waffle board out. Left, looking as handsome as ever after suceeding!

As we were thinking about what to do a herd of elephant wandered past the front of the car. It’s a slightly different prospect seeing these beasts when you have no means of escape. Thankfully they wandered off pretty quickly, leaving us to ponder what to do. Winching off a tree with the hand winch wasn’t an option because there weren’t anyway! Also I didn’t fancy up to an hour standing in the open hammering in the ground anchor and then lashing it together, particularly as this would have to be done about 25ms in front of the car and due to my tremendous lack of pace I didn’t fancy my chances of making it back to the car if a lion etc bumbled along (although if being pursued by a lion I reckon even I’d give linford Christie a run for his money!) This left the waffle boards. The large, ungainly, heavy grp boards I’d been carrying for ages and something I’d never used before and was dubious as to the effectiveness of anyway. Using them isn’t exactly complicated. Dig the mud out from behind the wheel, stuff the board under and then try to drive back over them using the grip they provide to give you traction to move. This all very well said, but in the African bush, surrounded by god knows what it’s a different prospect. I had to climb out of the car, onto the roof, release the boards, drop them off the sides, climb down the back of the car stuff then under the nearside back wheel. Climb back over the roof of the car and put the other one under the nearside front wheel.

Then back around the car whilst Amy lent out of her door and position the front one. Once back in the car we had a go a reversing and thankfully got some grip and went back about 30cm before sliding off the boards and sinking again. So out I got, climbed back over the car, reposition the rear boards, then around to the front one, which had completely disappeared into the morass. There was no way I could get it our without getting off the car and into the mud. This meant that I was up to my knees in mud, pulling with all my might to release this bloody board whilst Amy kept a look for any beasties. Now being full of mud the board was so heavy I couldn’t lift it, but had to drag it around the back, put it under the offside rear wheel and reverse again. After repositioning the boards 3 times we finally got out of the mud backwards. The upshot was that everything, including both Amy and I were covered in mud, as was the steering wheel, gear stick, seats etc! I then had to pull the boards out of the mud, which was probably the hardest part of the bloody episode! Check the photos; you can just see one of the boards poking out of the mud! Still, it was amusing after we’d got out. We headed straight back to the campsite and had lots of showers!

After having some lunch and making fairly useless attempts to clean some of the mud out of the car we set off for our evening game drive at 4pm. As you aren’t allowed to drive in the park after 6pm we had to do it with a proper safari company. As we set off Amy and I realised that now we had become the tourists that we usually mocked in their safari vehicles as we cruised past as self-drivers. Must remember not to be so judgemental next time. Anyway, we headed into the park again and immediately saw loads of animals. Actually having a proper guide is useful. Not only do they find the animals they tell you about the as well. I now know the following:
Male warthogs have 4 tusks / warts, females only 2
Giraffe have only 7 vertebrae in their neck
Giraffe live for up to 25 years
If a baby elephant can fit under its mother’s stomach it means it is less than one year old
A civet cat isn’t actually a cat, but actually part of the mongoose family.
All very fascination, I’m sure you’ll agree!!
The game drive went on until 8pm, which means that the last 2 hours are in the dark. Basically you drive around whilst the guide flashes some sort of ex-WW11 bomber spotlight. The idea is to see the flash from the animal’s eyes and then focus the light on it to identify what it is. My belief is that the power of the spotlight actually stuns the animals into immobility and therefore you can find them. As mentioned earlier the park is known for its large leopard population and finally we saw one! Having been to countless parks all over the continent and not seeing a leopard it was great to finally see one here. It really made the whole trip to park worth it.
The only downside was the fact that the number of bugs around at night multiplies but about a million. As you are driving around the bush at night at 40kmh with no windscreen these things strike with an audible thump. The other rather annoying thing about them is that they were unerringly accurate at smacking me in the middle of my forehead. Now I appreciate that since the hair at the front of my head decided to become acquainted with the hair at the back and began its ceaseless, remorseless and disappointingly rapid march back across my scalp, the bugs were supplied with a large and tempting target to annihilate themselves on. It was still with annoying regularity that with a wet smack they exploded on my head.
The other irritating thing became apparent once we got back to the campsite. This being that since it has now been 7 months since I last had a hair cut I have managed to grow some sort of afro / krusty the klown / electric shock hair that with the slightest breeze stands up on end. Similar to how it would look, I imagine, if I dropped a hairdryer in the bath whilst sitting in said bath. This hair hedge that is growing on the top of head now provided those bugs whose were slightly less accurate than there peers with something else to entangle themselves in. By the time I got back to the camp my head and hair looked like the front of a long distance Lorry drivers cab. All very appealing.

Baby simba in the park.

20th December

We’re now in a campsite in Lusaka after a marathon 9 hour 660km drive from Flatdogs to here. Thankfully the road is in good condition and because large parts of the drive are through a stunning nationally park the drive actually went pretty quickly. On this 660km drive we only went through 1 town. The rest was just countryside. Zambia’s a pretty big, sparsely populated country it seems!! Tomorrow we say goodbye to the truck for a couple of weeks and fly to Cape Town on Friday. I will try to update the website over xmas.

Hippo footprint next to our tent!

7th January

Back in Lusaka now after an excellent Xmas and New Year with my family. The last few days have been spent servicing the landy and generally doing geeky land rover stuff so I won’t go into details, only to say that after 24,000km she’s bearing up rather well I reckon! We are also doing a massive clean out to get the Luangwa mud (which has had 2 weeks to harden and turn into concrete now) and also repack the truck with the mountain of stuff we brought back from CT with us!

9th January

Had a lovely curry dinner last night with John and Kirsten. These are the guys that run Livingstone 4x4 hire and the people who very kindly let us leave the truck with whilst we were in SA. It was at their yard that I got the truck serviced and they were brilliant in helping us. After a later start than we anticipated (due to too much beer last night!) we finally left Lusaka at around 11am to do the 500km journey to Livingston and Vic Falls. This is where we are now. We’re staying at a campsite that Ali and Henry recommended to us and it’s really lovely. It is right on the banks of the Zambezi River (unsurprisingly it is called the Waterfront!). It’s packed with overlanders, however, the campsite is enormous and we’ve managed to tuck ourselves away in a corner and after having a few beers plan to go to bed in readiness to see the falls tomorrow.

10th January

Went to falls today and all I can say is that they are pretty damn spectacular. The scale is hard to comprehend. They are something like 2km long. We didn’t really want to head into Zimbabwe (due to the hassle it involves) and so only saw them from the Zambian side, even so they were very impressive. Even more so when we realized that this is the end of the dry season and the river is about 3.5m lower than normal. Anyway, they are something that you have to see to realize their enormity; the pictures don’t do them justice really.
This evening we went on a sunset cruise up the river for a couple of hours. We were the only people on the top deck and it was really lovely. It was like being the only people on the boat also the booze was free so we managed to sup a few and even get a free dinner thrown it. All-in-all it was a great trip! Very romantic as Amy said, and as those who know me realize, romance is one of my strong points so this went down well!!

Piczo