Another long day of driving with a few distractions along the way

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We set off again early after it had rained hard all night and was still going when we left. The road was good and tarred with only a few massive suspension breaking potholes and we made good progress as the weather improved (i.e. stopped raining).

The landscape was not that exciting – endless agriculture and woods along the road and surprisingly few people. We eventually made it to a major town where we spotted a Toyota spares dealer and amazingly he had some replacement rear shock absorbers we could use. Do take a look at the shock absorbers we removed in the photo. The long one is what it should look like (full of gas to absorb the shocks) the short one is what is technically known as utterly-broken. The new shocks were easy to replace and unfortunately in doing so we noticed the naughty CV-boot had wiggled free and gave it some attention.

Once back on the road the difference in the driving was immediate and those in the back felt less sea-sick. All good until we were stopped by a traffic cop for not having front reflectors. By offering them a cheesy wat-sit (type thing) we were able to appease them and avoid a fine. To be clear whilst we were getting the shocks changed Dan and Toby went off to do the shopping and came back with (amongst other things):



1 litre of Yoghurt with Muesli “already mixed in” – think of a slightly off-colour yoghurt with floor scrapings from the muesli factory thrown in. Tasted OK if you closed your eyes

3 foot long sausage shaped bag of locally made Cheesy-watsit type things – simply put vile but Alain, Toby and Dan seemed to like them as did the traffic cop and then the guy filling our diesel tank but not the guy issuing speeding tickets but we will come to that…

Back on the road we drove through Lusaka which seemed very affluent and well stocked with everything we could need. We even stopped for a burger in town with minimal fuss.

Heading out of Lusaka we headed south toward Zimbabwe as we were heading to the Zambesi River to spend a few days staying on the lake shore and relaxing. It turns out every good thing you can think to do in Zambia is flooded in the rainy season so we might as well go canoeing on a river!

Along the way we passed over some hills and straight past a traffic cop with a speed camera. He reported clocking us at 82kph and I agreed we were doing 80kph as it was an 80kph area. He stated it was 50kph and there were 3 signs – well I would wager my life’s earnings there were not but not much we could do. I was taken to a car in the shade where a very fat senior policeman sat and basically held court and pronounced me guilty. I even have a certificate and a court date (thankfully having paid the £15 fine I don’t need to attend). It did all seem very official but the desire for me to pay in cash and the fact that every single other car was also caught and stopped suggested a nice little earner for someone.

Anyway back on our way we made it eventually to a lovely riverside campsite where we BBQ’d some steak and enjoyed the view. We also enjoyed some Irish cream liquor we acquired in a less than quality supermarket – it was £0.35p for the bottle and boy did it taste like it. We decided it tasted a little like medicine and nothing like cream liquor.

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