Zambia

7 August – Chipata ZAMBIA

That’s right, Zambia! All the way through Malawi in one day. Our plan was to stop in Lilongewe for the night but we got there at 3pm and with the border only 135km away we decided to carry on. Painless crossing except to find that after they had stamped the carnet it wasn’t valid in Zamibia. They saved us many headaches by kindly stamping the other side too! It was a long day in the road with changes in weather from rain to mist to cloud to sun. We bought 120l of extra fuel because we heard rumours that the refinery in Lusaka had burnt down. We don’t want to get caught again like we did yesterday.

We’re camping at the wildlife reserve grounds (10USD). There is a South African couple here driving a Nissan Sentra. They came up from Lusaka today so I guess that means we should make it there by tomorrow. They found the going a little tough. We’re pushing on to Vic Falls before resting up and spending two nights there. From there we’ll push on to Windhoek. This always happens when we get closer to home. We start to move faster and faster.

We were in Malawi for so short a time that we didn’t even get postcards. I can’t say much about the place except that we seemed to meet some exceedingly enthusiastic cops/soldiers manning the roadblocks. The type who wanted to see all the relevant papers, ask all the right questions etc. Bit of a shock after the casual East African attitude to roadblocks. Apparently Zambia has lots of it too.