Zambia

---

We made the journey from Livingstone to Chipata 1048 km in three days. The journey can summed up in a few words, bikes, hills and villages. Zambia is Africa’s China, push bikes seem to be the main means of transport, who needs a car when you can fit four people, or a weeks worth of firewood on a bike? We passed a lot more villages throughout Zambia than anywhere else, and the scenery was again beautiful lots of valleys and hills and surprisingly green. The people of Zambia were really interested in talking to us and we now have a few African penpals and some of the children now know how to play noughts and crosses.

Only a couple of hitches in the journey a fuel shortage and a bad road that broke Adam and the Landy. We could not get any fuel for the first 600 km so were getting a bit worried but as we headed further North it was not a problem. It was just a reality check of where you are travelling through….It was the road from Chipata to South Luangwa that made Adam vow never to go off tar for more than 20 km again, it consisted of 240km there and back of roads with corrugations so big they literally shook the landy apart, we had to replace the bolts on the steering ball joint twice! Roads had been pretty good throughout Zambia up until then.

South Luangwa is a national park and wilderness area and is considered to be one of the best in Africa. We limped into a camp called track and trail which was right on the Luangwa river which is the border to the national park. The camp had a raised swimming pool which you could laze in as you watched the animals come down to the river to drink. There was also a huge pod of Hippos and plenty of crocs in the river that were permanent residents.

We went on a night drive and saw a pride of around 10 lions as well as plenty of the other usual animals, by this time both of us were a little bit bored of animals so we only did one drive, sounds terrible to say but we had just seen so many that seeing elephants and giraffes was becoming a daily occurrence.

As we had broken the steering on the Landy we tried to arrange for a mechanic to come out but as it was Sunday we struggled a bit. One turned up eventually but you could tell that he had been drinking fairly heavily as he was all over the place. There was no chance of a replacement part but the drunk mechanic made a bush repair which he insisted was perfect and would get us back to England if we needed, I was a bit dubious but hoped it would hold until I could get back to civilisation (it didn’t hold but we made it anyway) We limped into town and got it fixed then headed for the border, next stop Malawi and some much need R&R on the beaches.

---

Comments

[sarah]

you getting a bit to close to the lions for my liking, but love the fact adam found a hot tub the size of my house!!!

[AdamandLouise]

Hello Sarah Glad you have figured out how blogs work, say hello to the kids for me, did you get the postcard I sent from Botswana?

[Mum and lol]

At last we are following your blog - pictures are amazing. There seemed to be 2 faces from the dim and distant path. Well obviously not is all told when phoning home.

[Rachel Baldwin]

I agree with Sar! (for a change)
Hi Ads and Lou - the photos look fantastic and it looks like you are having an amazing time. I hope the landy holds together for you - do you hate the site of it yet? You did get very close to the lions (this is me agreeing with Sar) - werent you worried they were going to pounce and eat you? Take care and bye for now x