Here we are with Raimie and Maria.
Folks, we are stuck at Victoria Falls. Our truck batteries are giving up and we cannot source anything suitable here. We had intended spending a few days in Hwange National Park but it's not sensible to do this in case we have to jump-start the truck. We cannot enter Namibia or Botswana until the 10th, so we will just stay here. It's a bit boring and we are a bit fed up but we'll be OK. We'll try to catch up the blog a bit, although the wifi speed is slow.
I got chatting with a nice South African couple on the campsite – they are the third set of people we’ve met here who are on their way to South Luangwa. The “season” is just starting there as the rains have now more or less finished. They invited us to drop in on them in Pretoria if we are going that way. B spent a good deal of the day working on the bedroom aircon – he succeeded but in the end concluded that it needs more gas.
No word from either ADAC or DHL about the carnet which should have been dispatched today – nothing from Manfred yet either.We've asked ADAC whether it was sent or not..... Dinner at the lodge – portions were small enough to make us want to eat something else later – and the prices are jo longer East African – we’ll be self-catering more from now on. In the night the fridge fan wouldn’t stop running – even after switching it off – so B disconnected it. For exercise we walked up the track for 40 minutes this morning. B had a look at the inverter, opening it up to see if there is anything obviously wrong . It seems to be kaput – we’ll have to source a new one from somewhere before the next trip. I did blogging and some patchwork. We uploaded the mystery photo from the trailcam today and had a closer look at it – looking at the toes I wondered if it could be a bushbaby – B agrees with me. What a pity the camera didn’t capture the whole animal. Oh well. We saw staff carrying off a snake – probably dead – B thought it was probably a puff adder.
B spent most of the morning with his head under the bonnet fixing the belt. The main one had gone. As the others had to come off to replace it, he changed the big fan belt and the compressor belt at the same time. I took a mountain of laundry up to the lodge and when the dry stuff came back it was ironed and folded!
I collected lots of small fire wood from around the campsite and got a fire going on our braii-stand -the potje is getting its first airing in years! We made a chicken stew with onions, carrots, chilli and some of Maria’s lentils. It was very tasty so we felt quite pleased. Enough left over for another meal as well – we had forgotten how satisfying cooking on the fire can be. We’re trying to weigh up whether to store in Lusaka or Windhoek. We’re having problems trying to understand Zambian vehicle rules – particularly the carbon tax. Locals pay it and get a whole years validity – we paid and could only get 30 days, possibly based on our visas. The red tape in Zambia seems to have got out of hand and the Zambians themselves don’t seem to understand the carbon tax rules. This seems a bit risky somehow. We’ve e-mailed Manfred in Windhoek to see if he has space for us – his storage place is a known quantity.for us. We took the morning fairly slowly, chatting with Michael and Ines who are on their way back to Botswana and Namibia. Michael wanted to take some group photos with both the vehicles, as we were getting organised a couple of giraffe came through browsing on the trees. I went off to the ablution block and one of them seemed to be following me. Not keen on a run-in with such a large animal I took a route behind some bandas and all was well. By this time the zebras had congregated to graze between our vehicles, we spent quite a bit of time taking photos and enjoying being so close to them. Finally Michael and Ines really had to go - sorry to say goodbye to them but confident that we will see them again somewhere in the world.
B and I now have the job of deciding where to store the truck. We were able to contact the limo hire people by phone (actually we had bumped into them at Kisolanza – they were driving a couple of classic cars up to Nairobi and back over the Easter weekend) and will exchange emails with them. Then we went off to find the German butcher whom we had first heard of 5 years ago from Lothar, another Unimog owner. Bit by bit B had gathered information about how to find him and today we finally met Josef – an extremely nice man running a seriously large butchery in the outskirts of Lusaka – along with his daughter. We had a long interesting chat about the state of Zambia. He can store the truck, but only outside – and the rains recommence in November – we have some thinking to do. Lunch at Mahak restaurant in Cosmopolitan Mall – a brand new and ugly modern affair – but the indian meal was good. Then through Lusaka to Pioneer camp – it only took an hour to get across the city – mainly we think because we had listened to the advice of the nice Dutch couple at Forest Inn (“don’t try driving between 6-9am, 12:30 to 13:30, 5-6pm). The last part of the dirt road to the camp is in a poor state, we could see why Michael would have had a problem with their low ground clearance. Less than a kilometre before the entrance the dashboard warning lights came on – the belt that drives the alternator and waterpump had gone. Rather than replace the belt there and then (you have to remove various other belts to do this job), we cooled the engine by leaving it off and spraying it with water, and managed to get into thr campsite without overheating. B has a job for tomorrow – and there are Schalow’s turacos on the campsite! Up at 5 and away at 6.50. Pretty fast for us. We wanted to get to Eureka campsite before 5pm so that we could have a good long evening with Ines and Michael.
We stopped at a shopping mall outside Kabwe in order to dash round the big Shoprite for some essentials. It was a bit amazing to visit a well-stocked supermarket with everything we wanted and more. Couldn’t buy Amarula, though, because we were pre- 10am. On towards Lusaka and there were a lot more cars on the road as well as trucks. In order to miss the lunchtime rush-hour in Lusaka, we had lunch at Fringilla Farm (and it’s so much more). B had one of the famous Fringilla meat pies and really enjoyed it. People there were unbelievably friendly and welcoming; even more than Zambians are anyway. At the sausage kiosk (!) we bought some pork sausages and some scrummy-looking fudge. Then on. Getting through Lusaka was not as bad as we expected, except that we had to stop twice for me to dive in the back. I had stupidly eaten the salad at Forest Inn. That’ll teach me! We rolled into Eureka at 3pm, and Michael and Ines were there waiting for us. It was lovely to see them. Ines cooked us a wonderful vegetarian meal, and we had the fudge for dessert. Since we had said goodbye to them at Kisolanza there was quite a bit to catch up on and we sat up talking until well after 9pm, even though it got really cold. Lovely people, and we hope that they will stay in touch. Yet another quick update - the inverter in the truck has failed - the net result is that we can't charge the laptop unless we've got a mains supply, so we haven't been doing blog updates as often as we'd have liked (again). We're on a campsite tonight with the rare combination of power, time and connectivity, so have started by uploading some photos. We should be in Lusaka tomorrow where hopefully we'll find those elusive qualities again....this time for a few days while we waith for the carnet to arrive.
Visited the falls again in the early morning. There was no-one else around at all. The valley below was full of mist or low cloud and we could see layers of hills and mists spread out before us. Slowly the light came in and the monochrome scene became more colourful as the sun lit the trees below.
On the way out of the campsite at Kundalila Falls a yellow mongoose crossed the road in front of us, so that was a nice surprise. Not an especially interesting drive to Mkushi and Forest Inn but sometimes that’s a good thing. We arrived at Forest Inn in the early afternoon. I spent ages uploading our photos onto the computer and then selecting some for the blog. B filled our tank with water, and got chatting to a Dutch couple camping near us. Both in their 70s, they shared a lot of similar opinions to us. They also gave us tips for the best and worst times of day to try driving across Lusaka. Dinner in the restaurant. Quite tasty. B had a nice chocolate brownie. Very mixed clientele, which was interesting. We heard from Ines and Michael that they were back in Lusaka earlier than expected. They had tried to get to Pioneer campsite in case we were there but had found the road too difficult for their vehicle. They asked us to meet them at Eureka instead. We had had a bad experience there in 2013 but decided to chance it in order to meet our friends. |
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