As I write today's blog we are crossing the
Zambezi on our way to ... Oooops we are going in the wrong direction! Just as
well somebody is awake as we would have landed up at Vic falls instead of Kafue
(that someone was Ernest.) So we have turned around and crossed the river again
and thrown our coins in and made a wish. This is a real tradition with Ernest,
he just can't go past a river or go near the sea without throwing in a coin and
making a wish! So wishes were made and we are now facing the right direction.
The border post was a real test of just keeping
everything together and not going effect of the obvious hassles of an African
border post. The way out of Namibia was fairly quick, very busy post but as
long as you didn't get agitated it went pretty smoothly. Zambia however was a
little more of a test of confront. The passport guys were quick and efficient
and after that it kind of fell apart, each window you had to go to demanded
more money from us; money for insurance, road tax, "being there" tax
and whatever else they can think of! Then the guy who you are supposed to pay
slipped off for lunch just to add to the irritation and the final straw was the
gate tax followed by the final papers check just to make sure you had paid all
the right taxes. You just have to keep smiling and saying "no problem” or it takes twice as long.
In-between all of this you have the money
changers who badger you all the time and having been caught more than once by
these guys I tried to go to the bank to change Dollars into Zambian Kwacha. The
first horror was to find that the Zambian Kwacha is worth double the Rand and
secondly you stand in this long queue to be told when you get to the counter
that they are not changing anymore dollars today and please please use the
money changers outside (the illegal ones who work with the banks) I remember
Mark trying to change money with these "money changers” in Zim. He told us he could handle these
guy and landed up getting ripped off six love (we have never let him forget it
as Mark is really smart and was so certain he would never have anyone rip him
off) so I am always nervous of them pulling a fast one on me as I am not half
as smart as my son. Anyway I got my money changed and it all appeared to go okay,
hopefully when we spend the money nobody arrests us for trading in counterfeit
money or something like that.
We were up pretty early this morning but that
still didn't guarantee an early start. Trying to kick starting 11 people is
like trying to push a tank down the road with my little finger. Breakfast took
a fair amount of time and all we did was boiled eggs and the girls had protein
smoothies. Anyway just to pack up is a major exercise and we do pretty well on
the whole to get away before 9. Of course we had to stop and blow up everyone's
tires except ours as we never reduced our pressure in the deep sand like the
others did. While we were doing this Fritz went off tracking (naturally) and he
picked up some Cheetah tracks which means they even have them in this reserve!
It really warrants another visit with a longer stay when we are not heading for
Kenya.
We had our first mishap with the truck yesterday
which I forgot to mention. There was a very nasty stump sticking out into the
road that Ernest never saw and we connected with it on my side of the truck.
After the initial loud bang Ernest asked what the hell that was, he looked in
the rear view mirror and saw the outside kitchen door hanging open. Of course
the first (and always, naturally) reaction was for him to shout at me for not
having closed the kitchen. Now I remember very well that the last thing I did
was to close the door! Anyway what had happened is that the stump had caught
the door and literally bent the hinges back and opened it up. Oooooh what a
disaster and at the same time SHEW I wasn't to blame!
Anyway we do have Mr. FIX ALL on board and when
we got to camp, out came the high lift Jack and between Steve and Ken they had
positioned the jack sideways and bent the whole thing back into place and
voila, the kitchen door could close again and all was fixed. That was a close
call as I would have hated to do the rest of the trip without a kitchen door
closing.
Our second near disaster was that the toilet in
the truck overflowed. Oh hell that was almost worse than no kitchen door. Now I
can see it's going to be for emergency use only.
Once we were through the border post it was only
another 60 or so kilometers till we reached our destination for the night, a
place called Ngoma falls. We had a few detours as they are building a new road
but on the whole it was plain sailing and we arrived well before nightfall. We
unfortunately couldn't get the truck down to the camp site at the falls so they
very kindly let us camp at the top behind the offices - second prize but at
least a safe place to stay, cleared of all bush and big enough to fit all of
our cars in.
It was a short walk to the falls from there so
after setting up the camp we all changed into our costumes and set off down the
path to the falls. One of the camp guards had told us there was a little pool
away from the main river where we could swim which was safe from the crocs. We
all (except Ernest, Ken and Rouvierre) set off in dribs and drabs taking the
path that showed a brilliant view of three of the five apparent falls as the
river is very wide at this point, it was the most beautiful sight, the light
was perfect and I had forgotten my camera, so I quickly went back up to the
camp to fetch it while the others went on to find the small pool where we could
swim. Fritz had already gone fishing so
he was nowhere in sight.
By the time I got back, to my absolute horror I
found our blond bimbos (they all got the award today) swimming right in the
river itself! Oh my GOD, Sonja was up to her arms in the river and the rest of
them had been frolicking around like school kids calling the crocs and saying
"here we are come and have a snack.” The crocs in this river are
huge and you can get taken in an instant, luckily nobody was in for long enough
as the water was pretty cold. Anyway I can tell you I was even colder thinking
of what could have happened. It didn't so all’s well and we still have our 11 guys still fighting for the next
award.
We had a wonderful evening around the fire, planning
out tomorrow which is a hard drive via Mongu and then into Kafue.
Singing off, over and out!
Singing off, over and out!
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