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The MV Liemba moored at the small dock in Mpulungu at 08.00 and I stepped ashore and into Zambia. There were not many passengers disembarking, the majority of them had gone ashore at the last port in Tanzania, Kasanga. We all walked, looking rather bedraggled after our long voyage down Lake Tanganyika, through the port and to the small immigration office. The office seemed to take forever to process our passports; I suppose they don't get much practice as the MV Liemba only arrives once a week. The customs were more thorough though and took delight in going through my pack with a fine toothcomb; it was probably the only excitement they get once a week. One of the soldiers amused himself by just pressing the buttons on my Walkman and wondering why there were no batteries in it. At the end of their ritual I repacked my bag and the soldier, who had previously been mesmerised by my Walkman, now asked me for money to buy a soda. I just laughed and walked out of the customs office and out of the port.
As we sailed into Mpulungu I still had not decided exactly what I was going to do today, whether to stay here for a night or to take a minibus to Mbala, 40km up the road. I walked with Paul into town, he was going to take a bus to Serenje and while we walked I finally decided that I would spend a night in town before going to Mbala the next day. I left Paul on the main road and took a small dirt road along the lakeshore to the Nkupi Lodge, near the edge of town just past the small market on the waterfront. It was a nice peaceful place to stay, I had a rondavel to myself and there was also a bar and restaurant; the people running the place were very hospitable and laid back, as well as their two dogs.
Mpulungu is described as a busy crossroad's between East, Central and Southern Africa. I would dispute this somewhat, it may be a crossroad's but it was definitely not a busy one; it had more a town at the end of the road feel. The town sits at the bottom of the Great Rift Valley, the 1,000m escarpment runs along the eastern and western shores of the lake. It is a very hot and dusty place with very little amenities except a large market; it wasn't the kind of town that inspired me to stay long. I still had a large supply of Tanzanian shillings stuffed into my money belt that were now useless, so I wandered into the centre of town to the one and only bank in town to change them to Zambian kwacha. On route I met Paul again who was killing time while he waited for his bus to depart. We reached the Finance Bank who said they didn't change Tanzanian shillings and advised me to go down the road to the BP petrol station were they would be able to help me. Silly me, I should have realised that to change money I should go to the petrol station and not the bank. I left Paul at the small bus park and walked back to the Nkupi Lodge and spent most of the afternoon sleeping.
The next day, before leaving for Mbala I walked to the ruins of Niamkolo Church a short way along the shore of the lake from the Lodge. This was one of the first stone buildings built in the area. It was built as a mission station by the London Missionary School in 1898, but was later abandoned in 1906 because many people fell ill with sleeping sickness from tsetse flies living by the lake. The mission station was moved ten miles inland and the church left as a ruin, which is today a national monument. I stopped on my way back at the Nkupi Lodge to pick up my backpack and continued my walk into town to find transport the 40km to Mbala. For a supposedly crossroad's town there was very little traffic. It was hot and the walk from the lakeshore had tired me out; I waited by the side of the road next to the main market for a passing bus or minibus. Eventually one came by and I jumped in; we only went a few hundred metres down the road before turning around and returning to the minibus park, a dusty patch of wasteland behind some buildings on the main street.
It felt like it took forever to leave Mpulungu; whenever we set off down the road, no sooner than we had got going we stopped. You couldn't get any more passengers on board but we had to stop all the time to tell everyone, it really became annoying and frustrating. Fish seemed to be one of the main cargoes we were carrying, bundles of fish were tied to the roof rack and hung down outside the windows, blood dripping onto the glass. For the last few days wherever I went I could smell fish, I would be glad to get inland and away from this lingering smell. Eventually, just before everyone on board the minibus began to loose patience with the driver we hit the open road. The road to Mbala was paved but stretches of it were badly potholed, slowing down our progress.
Mbala sits at the top of the escarpment of the Great Rift Valley, the journey was never going to be quick from Mpulungu when we had to climb 1,000m as well it such a short distance. Mbala is a small town, not much more than one commercial street. It was previously known as Abercorn and it is here that the German East Africa force's surrendered at the end of the First World War in 1918. A small monument on a roundabout as you enter the town commemorates this event. The minibus eventually dropped me off along the main street and I was given directions to the Grasshopper Inn, one of the few guesthouses in town, which was about 750m up a dirt road from the main street. I was shown to a room in a block across the road from the principle building that housed the reception, restaurant and bar. I think the local council runs the guesthouse; it definitely had the feel of a government run place rather than a private enterprise. Just down the road was a school that had one of the best mottos on a sign that I had ever seen during my travels in Africa; the motto read 'Suffer the present, enjoy the future'.
There is one very good reason for coming to visit this small town way out of the way in the Northern Province and that is the Moto Moto museum. Moto Moto in the local language translates as fire, fire, the nickname given to Bishop Joseph Dupont who pioneered missionary work in the area with the Missionaries of Africa, also know as the White Fathers. Bishop Dupont smoked and always asked the locals for fire to light his pipe and hence he gained his nickname; the museum was named in his honour. The history of the collection at the museum dates back to the 1940's when catholic priest Father Jean Jacques Corbeil came from Montreal, Canada as a White Father to do missionary work. During his years as a missionary he collected artefacts from the local tribes, the Lala, Bisa and Bemba with the view to preserving these cultures of the Zambian people for future generations.
The collections were stored at the Mulilansolo Mission until 1964, when they were moved to Serenje in 1970. In 1973 Father Corbeil moved to Isoka and the Diocese of Mbala donated a plot of land and a former carpentry and bricklaying workshop at St Paul's, Mbala to serve as a museum; the museum opened in 1974. The museum is 4km out of town, I asked for directions at the Grasshopper Inn. It took just over an hour to walk heading northeast out of town, turning left at the police station, where there was a bright sign pointing the way to the Moto Moto and onto a dirt road that went past the local prison. It was a nice afternoon for a walk, not as hot as it was in Mpulungu, with scattered cloud giving patches of shade. The road went straight as far as the eye could see, lined by high grass, small villages and fields. The museum is in a small park just past the Lucheche Stream, where the locals were enjoying the clear, fast flowing water that flows out of the nearby Lake Chila. Hidden away in the tall grass I could hear kids screaming and splashing in the water.
I was the third visitor of the day and had the museum to myself. The main hall housed Stone Age implements found at the nearby Kalambo Falls, 40km north of Mbala where the earliest evidence of fire in sub-Saharan Africa has been found. There is a section on history covering the early European explorers and missionaries as well as history on the tribal groups in the area and the struggle for independence. A lot of the artefacts are traditional everyday items from the tribes covering most aspects of daily life like, agriculture, hunting, fishing, medicine and household items. These items will soon be forgotten as local people more and more adopt a western style of life and abandon their traditional way of life. There was also an interesting collection of pickled snakes curled up in old jars; I didn't realise that one of Heinz's 57 varieties was pickled snake. After a couple of hours I had seen most of the exhibits and walked back to town, the skies now overcast, with rain falling on the horizon.
I returned back to the Grasshopper without getting wet and dined at their restaurant and bar that evening. The dining room was an empty, echoing concrete room with a large stone fireplace painted red that looked very much out of place. I noticed that the clock on the wall was showing the wrong time, it was an hour slow. I laughed to myself thinking how typically African it was to have a clock showing the wrong time. While I was eating my beef, cabbage, beans and chips I began thinking that it was strange that the sun had set so late this evening, at just past 19.00. That is when it suddenly clicked, I had been in the country for two days and I hadn't realised that I had gone through a time zone from Tanzania. I checked with the chef who confirmed that there was an hour's difference between the two countries. Suddenly my rush down to the museum that afternoon seemed pointless and also explained why a family came to visit the museum supposedly half an hour before it was due to close. Everything began to make sense including the rather late sunset.
The following day I planned to visit Kalambo Falls, 40km north of Mbala on the border with Tanzania. They are the second highest single vertical drop waterfall in Africa, the highest allegedly being Tugela Falls in the Drakensberg in South Africa. My immediate problem was how to get there as the falls are in the middle of nowhere and there is no public transport. Hiring a car and driver would be too expensive so instead I decided to rent a bicycle. I had thought about it overnight and guessed that I was fit enough to cycle the 80km round trip. Back home I used to cycle 48 miles in under three hours, but that was with a lightweight bike and on good tarred roads; with this trip I had all day and figured that it would be possible. I talked to the staff at the reception and the chef went off and came back ten minutes later with his friend and a mountain bike. We agreed on US$15 to hire the bike for the day.
I went back to my room in a rush to pack my daypack with the essentials I would need for a days cycling through the bush. Unfortunately I was in too much of a rush and was not thinking straight and left one vital piece of equipment behind, my water pump and filter. I had a two-litre bottle of water and thought that that would be enough for the journey. In hindsight it was a stupid assumption to make as it didn't make any allowances for emergencies and little did I know at the time that I would end up in an emergency later that afternoon.
I took directions from the staff at the Grasshopper and at half past nine set off on my journey, stopping at the BP petrol station to borrow a spanner to adjust the height of the saddle. The bike was not bad considering where I was, the gears didn't work and the brakes only slowed me down rather than stopping me; to change gear I stopped the bike and with a stick moved the chain on the front gear sprockets. I followed the road northeast out of town again, passing the police station and continuing down the hill where the tarred road crumbled away to a dusty dirt road. I went through the police checkpoint at the edge of town and passed Lake Chila to the left of the road. There were no motor vehicles driving down this road, only bicycles and pedestrians; I cycled with a local man until the turn off to Kalambo Falls, marked by a small concrete block wall, about 7km out of Mbala.
The road became a track, tall grass growing either side and sometimes in the middle of the track, it was 33km from the turnoff to the falls. I was making fast progress; the road seemed to have a slight downhill gradient that made cycling fairly easy, although I had to watch out for soft sandy stretches that slowed my progress. I passed through small villages, mud huts with conical thatched roofs dotted amongst the fields alongside the track. Women were doing their washing in the streams that flowed across the track and children bathed and played in the water. At every village I would end up with a band of energetic children running behind me screaming and shouting with excitement at seeing a white man on a bicycle riding past. After an hour, when I reached an uphill stretch, I stopped to rest and drink. Sweat was pouring from me and I decided to tie my daypack to the rear luggage rack of the bike to stop my back becoming drenched in sweat. The sun shone fiercely in the cloudless sky and even the short trees beside the track didn't provide much shelter from the sun.
The track seemed to go on forever, after a couple of hours I could glimpse a view through the trees of Lake Tanganyika. I was cycling along the plateau at the edge of the Great Rift Valley escarpment on the eastern shores of the lake. When I stopped to rest the views were stunning looking across the deep blue lake and to the escarpment on the far shores. The track became increasingly rough and rocky, even the downhill stretches I had to walk as the brakes were not good enough to stop me and the rocks were getting too large. Finally, when I thought that this track would go on forever I reached a junction; a sign was nailed to a tree pointing to the track to the right saying, 'Kalambo Falls 1.5km'; I was nearly there. The track wound it's way down the hill steeply to the valley where I could clearly see the Kalambo River lazily flowing past, forming the border with Tanzania to the north. Three hours after setting off from Mbala I finally reached the falls, where in a clearing amongst the trees was a man sitting under a thatched shelter selling entrance tickets; I was the first visitor of the day.
The falls were spectacular and suddenly all the effort to get here seemed worthwhile. The Kalambo River plummets deep into a densely forested valley that cuts its way through the escarpment, the swirling waters of the river disappearing to Lake Tanganyika. The viewpoints around the falls are dramatic and it is hard to see the plunge pool at the bottom through the spray generated by the falling water. I sat under a shady tree to cool down, have a drink and eat the pack of biscuits I had brought for lunch. I was very thirsty after my three hour ride here and I couldn't stop sipping at my water; I had already drunk over half of it and it was then that I realised that I may have a problem unless I could find something else to quench my thirst. I walked back up to the shelter where the man selling tickets was resting listening to religious music on a badly tuned radio. I asked him if there was anywhere in the local villages that I could get a drink; he suggested the large village across the river in Tanzania. I sent him with some money to buy as much soda or bottled water he could with ZK5,000. About forty minutes later, while I rested, he returned and to my disappointment presented me with a bottle of concentrated Ribena; it was all the shop in the village had. I thanked him anyway, the Ribena was useless as the problem was the water to dilute it with.
The journey back was going to be a lot harder, most of it would be uphill, I was tired from the journey out here and I had less than a litre of water left with me. I left the falls at 13.30 and began walking back, the road immediately from the falls was far too steep to cycle. At least the sky had clouded over and it was a lot cooler than earlier with even the odd drop of refreshing rain falling between the trees. I tied my T-shirt and hat to the handlebars and plodded on up the hill. I soon realised that it would take a long time to get back to Mbala, even when the track looked flat the gradient was just slightly uphill and I could only cycle slowly.
Disaster struck when I reached my first long downhill stretch, about 10km back from the falls. I still had my daypack strapped to the rear luggage carrier of the bike and I had a drinking tube, with a valve on the end, poking out of my bag. As I careered down the hill, the track very rough and bumpy, my daypack slipped off the luggage carrier and the tube from my water bottle hit the spokes, knocking off the valve. By the time I reached the bottom of the hill and had realised what had happened, all my remaining water had drained out of my bottle. My first thoughts were, bugger; suddenly the day became challenging. I just wished I had packed my water filter before I set out this morning, it would have solved my problems. There was nothing much I could do except carry on, so I climbed back on the bike and steadily pedalled on down the road. I decided that if things were getting desperate I could always stop at a village along the way and ask for some tea, this would be safe to drink as the water would have been boiled.
The journey back to Mbala, as well as being a physical battle, now became a mental battle too. I tried to keep my mind focused thinking about every pedal revolution that brought me that little bit nearer to Mbala. I was surprised at how well my return journey was going, considering the circumstances I was making fairly good progress. I never reached that hallucinating stage that a lack of water can bring on, although I did begin to gaze intently at the passing fields looking to see if there were any fruit trees growing, laden down with large thirst quenching fruit; of course there weren't. It was late afternoon when I stopped on one of my many breaks, in the distance I could see a line of electricity pylons that followed the main road out of Mbala, I was slowly getting there. While I sat beside the track to rest I heard a car coming along in the distance, this was the first car to pass me all day. I flagged the car down and it stopped in a cloud of dust; I was hoping to hitch a ride the rest of the way back, but the car was full. I explained my situation and asked them if they had any water to spare, they did and handed me a bottle of water. They left me by the side of the road holding this bottle as if it was made of gold, I couldn't believe my luck, I knew now that I would be able to reach Mbala.
The water was just enough to see me through the last painful 10km of my journey. I slowly pedalled along the main road to Mbala as the sun was setting; it was one of the most fantastic sunsets I had seen for a long time. I was too tired though to stop and take some photos, my mind was still battling to get me home. It was almost a 360-degree sunset, the western horizon was bright red and this reflected across the clouds above me all the way to the eastern horizon. It was dark by the time I reached the police checkpoint, it was deserted and I carried on into town, walking up the hill where the tarred road began and stopped at the first shop I saw open. I staggered in and saw a fridge full of cold soda. Between drinking three bottles I told the shopkeeper and the other customers who began to gather around me about my adventures to Kalambo Falls. Most of them couldn't believe that I had cycled all that way and back again in one day; one of the customers in the shop even confessed that he had never seen the falls, I recommended the trip to him. Cold soda had never tasted so good and I walked happy, though tired, through the dark for last kilometre to the Grasshopper Inn. It had taken me four and a half hours to cycle back from the falls and I was completely exhausted.
The following morning I felt a lot better than I expected and decided after breakfast to travel to Kasama where I planned to catch a train to Kapiri Moshi, about 200km north of Lusaka. I met the man whose bicycle I had borrowed yesterday over breakfast; he refused to take any money from me because he said that many people borrow his bike and no one else pays. I had to force him to take five dollars as a gift to thank him.
The next leg of my journey would take me to the capital of Zambia, Lusaka. When I had originally planned this section of my trip from Dar es Salaam to Lusaka I had decided to travel by road from Mpulungu, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika to Kasama where I would catch a train along the TAZARA (Tanzania and Zambia Rail Authority) railway to the western terminus at Kapiri Moshi, about 200km north of Lusaka. I had enjoyed my couple of days staying at the Grasshopper Inn in Mbala and had quickly got to know the town and it's people. I left after breakfast and walked back to the main street where I didn't have to wait long for a minibus to come past on it's way to Kasama about 200km to the south. The minibus smelt of fish, I still had not managed to escape this persistent smell. About half way to Kasama one of the front tyres burst, luckily we had just stopped to pick up a couple of passengers and were not travelling too fast. Since the start of my trip in Kampala, back in January, this was the first puncture I had suffered; it didn't take long to put the spare tyre on, which was completely bald. We arrived in Kasama without any further dramas, just after a heavy rain shower. I took a local minibus the 5km from the centre of town to the TAZARA station, where there were also a handful of guesthouses alongside the road.
I didn't know when the next train was due; all I knew was that there was at least a train going through every day or two. I walked up to the station to see if I could get any information, the place was deserted. A notice board had a train timetable and fare sheet pinned to it, but I couldn't make any sense of it; the timetable was all abbreviated and failed to show which days of the week the trains ran. I sat around for a while until someone else entered the cavernous waiting hall of the station; he told me that the next train was due tomorrow evening. With that information I walked back down the road to the Port Elizabeth Guesthouse, which was recommended in my guidebook as a friendly place to stay. If I wrote a guidebook I would describe it as a noisy, impersonal place to stay. I took a single room that was near the bar at the back of the building; the music from the stereo, the speakers being rigged up out in the garden, was deafening. The door and window of my room constantly vibrated to the baseline of the music; after an hour I could take no more, the final straw being a dire Spice Girls song blasted through my door; I had to find another room. I was moved to the more expensive Green House that was self contained and almost double the price of my previous room; it was money well spent as I found out that the music is played from 08.00 to 22.00 at night.
Most of the time the bar and garden was empty, but the music continued relentlessly. I think the fact that they had run out of beer was one of the factors explaining the lack of customers. Even in my new, quiet room, I could still hear the distant reverberation of the base from the stereo; it was a relief at 22.00 when finally silence descended on the guesthouse. Upgrading to my new room also included breakfast, I enquired at the reception where I was told that yes, a free continental breakfast was included with my room. I was shown to the small dining room, tucked out of the way and was presented with a flask of tea and one slice of dry bread. I couldn't help laughing, since when has a slice of bread been a continental breakfast? After my extraordinary breakfast I walked the short way back to the station; the ticket office was still closed but there were a couple of women laboriously sweeping the large hall of the detritus left by the passengers who took the early morning train to Nakonde. Once again I sat and waited until someone arrived who knew when the train would depart. A helpful man told me that the train was due to leave at 22.00 tonight and that the ticket office would open at 19.00.
I walked back to the guesthouse and sat at the reception for most of the day trying to pass the hours. I started the day by reading, which soon sent me to sleep. When I awoke I listened to my radio, it was the Queen Mothers funeral in London today and the BBC World Service carried a live broadcast from Westminster abbey of the proceedings. Once the service concluded I walked next door to the Kapongolo Rest house for lunch, I was now over halfway through my day of waiting. I took a minibus into town to see if there was anything interesting to do for the afternoon; there wasn't, so I just bought some supplies for my journey tonight at a local shop and returned to the guesthouse. Finally the sun began to set, it was 18.00 and I walked for the last time to the station where I planned to wait the remaining hours.
The hall was already packed with passengers and luggage, corners of the giant hall looked like a refugee camp as the locals made themselves at home, stretched out on the floor sleeping or gathered in noisy groups eating and drinking. I sat on my pack next to the ticket office window, which did open as I was told at just past 19.00. As soon as I saw the ticket office open, I rushed to the window and found myself about tenth in line, not bad I thought considering there must have been over three hundred people waiting to buy tickets. Soon my turn came and I asked for a first-class sleeping berth; the clerk asked me if I had made a reservation. How could I have made a reservation when the ticket office had been closed all day? I was promptly told that there was no first-class and also no second-class, so I finally settled for a third-class ticket; it was only an overnight journey and I was sure it couldn't be that bad.
Just as I was making myself at home again near the entrance to the platform in the hall, a man came running up to me telling me that the ticket clerk wanted me. I guessed I must have done something stupid like leaving something on the counter but when I got back to the ticket office he presented me with a first-class ticket. It was all very strange and I can only think that the clerk was originally after a bribe when he told me that there were no tickets, as it was the man behind me in the queue that came to find me. I handed over the balance to make up the first-class fare and returned to my spot in the waiting hall. Just as I was about to sit down someone else approached me and asked me if I was travelling first-class, by now I was getting a bit fed up and just said yes. I was glad I wasn't too rude or curt with him as he quickly led me away to the first-class lounge. This was more like it, a little bar, with comfy armchairs and a television showing a European Cup football match; I sat back and relaxed watching the football and drinking a couple of cold beers until the train pulled in at just past 22.00.
As the train slowly rattled to a halt, chaos ensued. There was not much lighting along the platform and the lights on the twelve-coach train were not working either. I wandered the wrong way through the seething mass of people as I searched for the first-class coaches; luggage was being passed in and out of the windows and people were fighting to climb through the doors as passengers were still disembarking. I soon found myself at the wrong end of the train; now with a sense of urgency I fought my way back along the platform, bumping into people and barging my way through the solid mass of people. Eventually I found my carriage and I climbed up and walked along the dark corridor until I found my compartment; it was empty, I double-checked and shone my torch around the compartment before taking one of the lower bunks out of the four berths.
During the next ten minutes three other men arrived in the dark and we all settled in for the night's journey. I fell asleep, I had had a long boring day waiting for this train and the couple of beers I had at the station were enough to send me to sleep quickly. The train was not as comfortable as the Central Line train I had taken across Tanzania; this was an ordinary train rather than an express train, but it was still okay although the carriages had that slightly dilapidated feel about them. The carriages were all second hand Chinese rolling stock, some windows were missing, most of the fixtures were either broken or just not there and the toilets quickly made you constipated. The TAZARA line is a fairly new railway in Africa. It was completed in 1975 with financing from the Chinese government and provided a rail link from Zambia to the port of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. The help provided by the Chinese government is quite apparent in the architecture of the station buildings. The stations, especially the large ones like Kasama and Kapiri Moshi looked very much like former Soviet Union socialist buildings; I don't think they would have looked out of place strung along the trans-Siberian railway across Russia. The track was fairly new by African standards, it was a very smooth ride and I soon awoke as the sun rose as we continued to roll fairly smoothly across the endless plains, stopping at every small station along the way.
By midday, fourteen hours after departing Kasama and 632km down the line, we arrived at the huge western terminus of the TAZARA railway at Kapiri Moshi. Why they decided to terminate the line here, about 200km north of Lusaka, remains a mystery to me, maybe the money ran out. There is a Zambian Railway line that runs south, north from the border with Zimbabwe through Livingstone, Lusaka, Kapiri Moshi and on to Kitwe. I thought that maybe the two lines connected here, but they don't, the two stations are two kilometres apart. Once the train stopped the platform turned into a sea of people as everyone disembarked, luggage being unloaded through the windows. The police forced us to line up in queues on the platform and everyone had to have their identification papers or passports checked. I heard that this was a normal procedure for the express train from Dar es Salaam but we had only travelled on the ordinary train that started at the border town of Nakonde. I suppose it gave all the police something to do, as we were the first train to arrive in nearly two days.
Outside the impressively large station building waited all the buses and minibuses to ferry everyone the remainder of the journey to Lusaka. The trains on the Zambian Railway don't connect with the TAZARA trains and waiting for a connection is not really an option when Lusaka is only a few hours bus ride away. I climbed aboard a large local bus destined for Lusaka; I thought it would be quicker and safer than the minibuses. I was wrong and was only destined to have an afternoons frustrating journey that never reached Lusaka. The men running the bus were a bunch of idiots; I can understand stopping, waiting for passengers and not leaving until the bus is full, this is the way in Africa. But they took this practice to a whole new extreme that just made you angry and annoyed, even the locals were shouting at the driver and conductor and all their friends who were messing around in the front of the cab. We were the last bus to leave the station and managed to stop every fifty meters or so through Kapiri Moshi just so that they could stop and chat with their friends.
The bus was a wreck too and it was not a surprise when about halfway through our journey we stopped, yet again, and steam began to appear from the vents in the front of the bus. It was not a good sign but we continued, slowly, the only speed the bus could go, along the road until we stopped again for no apparent reason. We all sat on the bus getting increasingly frustrated when the driver reappeared with a large container of water, he was going to top up the radiator. You can guess what happened next; he lifted the cover off the engine next to the driver and unscrewed the cap on the radiator. The water exploded out of the radiator sending a fountain of hot water splashing against the roof of the bus and a cloud of steam rolling down the bus; the locals screamed and panicked. It looked like the end of our journey; I couldn't see us going any further for a few hours. Time was slipping away; the sun was getting lower on the horizon and storm clouds were gathering, lightening flashing in the distance. Most of the passengers on the bus wandered up and down the road while the driver and conductor lay under the bus cursing and fiddling with spanners. I just wanted this journey to end and to be back in civilisation, after all I had been travelling since late last night and all I wanted was some decent food, a cold beer and a comfortable bed to sleep on. I decided to abandon the bus and flagged down the next passing minibus; they were going to Lusaka. I ran back to the bus to grab my luggage. Some of the other passengers asked me if I was leaving and then joined me on the minibus, happy at last to be moving again with the prospect of getting to Lusaka by nightfall.
Within an hour we climbed up a hill, then suddenly in front of us was Lusaka, the few tall buildings making the city look like a busy metropolis after the last few days spent in small towns. By dusk the minibus dropped me off on Lumumba Road in downtown Lusaka; I took a taxi to Chachacha Backpackers on Mulombwa Close and at last my journey from Kasama was over. I checked into a dorm room and met Paul, who I had travelled down Lake Tanganyika with, who had only arrived a few hours earlier. He told me about his horror story travelling on the local bus from Mpulungu to Serenje; the journey ended up taking thirty-one hours, the bus breaking down twice, rather than the approximately ten hours it should have taken. My journey down from Kasama suddenly didn't seem quiet so bad.
I spent a few days in Lusaka rejoicing at being back in civilisation and in a city with amenities. The novelty soon wore off though; Lusaka is a fairly dull and uninteresting city and will never win any prizes for cultural heritage. There is really only one commercial street in the city, Cairo Road where all the banks, airline offices and major shops are located. There are about a dozen tall buildings in the city, all located on Cairo Road between the North and South End roundabouts. The architecture is functional but unattractive, just bland concrete monoliths that reminded me of 1950's and 60's architecture in Britain, though this was a lot newer. To the south of Cairo Road was just wasteland, it seemed odd how the downtown area just ended abruptly at the South End Roundabout; to the east is the railway station and sidings; to the west a couple of blocks of local shops, markets and bus parks; the north seemed to have nothing of interest either. The city was not badly polluted; for a capital city there really was not that much traffic and the streets were generally clean and swept clean of litter.
I decided to take the overnight train to Livingstone in the far south of the country to visit Victoria Falls. The ticket office opened in the afternoon and I booked myself a sleeping berth for the train that evening and was told to report at the station at 18.00 for a 19.00 departure. I had an early dinner at Chachacha and left for the station; as always there is never a taxi waiting on the street corner when you need one, so I walked instead, which took about twenty minutes. When I arrived the train was waiting at the platform and the platform was busy with passengers and hawkers. I settled into my compartment, which was very roomy, with just two sleeping berths and chatted with some other passengers as we waited to depart. We never did depart and after an hour or so an announcement was made informing us that the train had been cancelled and all services suspended indefinitely because a goods train had derailed south of Lusaka. It was a mad rush back to the one ticket office window that was open to get my ticket refunded. Luckily Africans aren't the quickest people around and I managed to get to about position number forty in the queue. It took about half an hour to get my ticket refunded and then I walked back to Chachacha to spend another unexpected night before taking an early morning bus the next day.
After failing to leave Lusaka last night on the train because of a derailment I resorted to taking a bus. I asked at the Chachacha Backpackers if they could recommend a good express bus company for the trip down to Livingstone, the last thing I wanted to do was to end up on another chicken bus breaking down by the side of the road. They told me to go to the C R bus company that had its depot behind the Shoprite store on Cairo Road. The first bus was due to leave at 06.00 so I took a taxi at about 05.15; at least at that time in the morning there were a couple of taxis parked up outside the backpacker's gates. The bus was in good condition and I managed to get a seat; the ticket cost ZK45,000 for the 400km journey.
The journey was not all that interesting, most of Zambia is a flat plateau, the exceptions being the Copper belt Highlands and the Nyika Plateau on the border with Malawi. The main vegetation, covering almost 60% of the country, is the various types of miombo woodland, which is moist woodland where the main trees are various species of Brachystegia. In the hotter southern areas of the country, along the Zambezi and Luangwa valleys, this is mopane woodland, dry woodland where the dominant species is Colophospermum mopane, with small patches of acacia. At about midday we arrived in Livingstone and I walked the short distance to the Jolly Boys Backpackers on Mokambo Road that had been recommended to me by quiet a few people.
The town of Livingstone was established in 1905 on a site that had been previously known as Constitution Hill. It replaced the first settlement of Old Drift that grew up around the first ferry crossing point on the Zambezi River, 9km upstream from the Falls and about 10km from present day Livingstone. Old Drift was a badly sited settlement, lying in low, marshy land where malaria took a heavy toll on the inhabitants. With the construction of the railway and the Victoria Falls Bridge in 1905 a new administrative centre was created away from the mosquito-infested marshes of Old Drift. In 1907 Livingstone became the capital of North Western Rhodesia by which time the town had grown to include two hotels, a restaurant, two mineral water factories, eight general stores, two butchers, a barber, a chemist and four building contractors. In 1911 Livingstone became the capital of Northern Rhodesia and remained so until 1935 when the capital was moved to Lusaka that was more central. Livingstone remained the tourist capital of the country until the 1970's when the country slid into economic and political chaos and the tourists disappeared to Zimbabwe. Victoria Falls, across the border, soon replaced Livingstone as the place to go to see the falls; the pendulum is now swinging the other way as today Zimbabwe slips into economic turmoil. Today Livingstone is the adventure activity centre of Southern Africa where you can go; abseiling, bungee jumping, canoeing, flying (fixed wing, helicopter, microlight or balloon), gorge swinging, hiking, river-boarding or white-water rafting.
Many original buildings survive today in Livingstone, giving the place the air of an old colonial town. The North-western Hotel was one of the original two hotels built in 1907 and extended in 1909; today though the hotel is shut and the building falling into disrepair. It is supposed to be renovated soon, but this rumour has been going around since 1995. Nanoos, a supermarket on the main street, Mosi-O-Tunya Road, was built by one of the first settlers at Old Drift. Originally the building was both a bar and a store, about the only thing that has changed is that the bar has closed and now there is a large Coca-Cola sign on the roof. The St Andrews Anglican Church on Akapelwa Street was one of the first churches built in 1910 and is still in use today. The Livingstone Museum is the biggest and oldest museum in the country dating back to the 1930's. The main interests to me on my visit were the documents and personal artefacts of Dr Livingstone; there are also substantial displays of Zambia's ethnological and ethnographic heritage.
I hired a bicycle for a day for US$10 from outside Jolly Boys Backpackers and set off to Victoria Falls, 10km down the road. The weather was not too bad, there was some cloud about and it would probably rain later in the afternoon. It was the end of what had been a strange rainy season. The rains started as normal towards the end of November and should have lasted into April, which is why I planned my trip south through Africa at this time of year. On Christmas Eve the rains stopped, almost two and a half months too early. It was just my luck then that they seemed to start again the moment I arrived in Livingstone. The day I arrived there was a torrential downpour in the middle of the afternoon and it looked like the same would happen again today.
I cycled down the road and soon came to the Zambezi River; in the distance I could see the huge cloud of spray thrown up by this enormous waterfall and the constant drone of helicopters as they flew tourists over the river and falls. The Zambezi is Africa's fourth longest river, stretching for 2,700km to the Indian Ocean. Dr David Livingstone was the first white man to see these falls on 16th November 1855; he named them Victoria Falls, although the local name was Mosi-O-Tunya that translated means, the smoke that thunders. The Kolobos, a South African tribal group that colonised the area during the 1830's, gave this name to it. The falls are 1.7km wide, 100m high and 874m above sea level. During the height of the rainy season approximately nine million litres cascade down into the gorge. Livingstone, on his first visit to the falls, wrote, 'Scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight'. In 1876, E Mohr wrote, 'No human being can describe the infinite and what I saw was part of infinity made visible and framed by beauty'. The gorge downstream from the falls carves a tortuous route through the soft basalt rock for 8km in a tight zigzag course. This incredible gorge has been formed by the successive formation and abandonment of seven previous broad waterfalls that have formed along fault lines that cut across the riverbed; this process is estimated to have taken 100,000 years.
There is an entrance fee of US$10 to walk out to Knife Edge Point. I paid and followed the paved path through the forest along the edge of the gorge. There was a shack where you could hire waterproofs, but I didn't bother, it was a hot, sunny day and I was wearing light, quick drying clothing. As it was the end of the rainy season there was a tremendous amount of water cascading over the falls, the spray obscured the view and at times it was hard to just see the falls on the other side of the gorge. I reached Knife Edge Bridge where I got completely drenched; it felt like someone was throwing buckets of water over me. The whole of Knife Edge Point was being deluged by the falls; it was impossible to take any photos unless you had a waterproof, underwater camera. I rushed around although there really was not any point, I was soaked to the skin and any more water would not make much difference. I eventually reappeared back at the ticket office-dripping wet; I stopped to wring out my T-shirt and tried to dry myself off as best I could.
After walking upstream I jumped on my bike to go to Victoria Falls Bridge. The bridge is in no-mans land between Zambia and Zimbabwe so I had to leave my passport at the Zambian immigration office in order to get through the gate. The bridge was an idea of Cecil John Rhodes as part of his plan to build a railway line from the Cape to Cairo. It took nine months to build and was completed in April 1905 and officially opened in September of that year. It was later widened in 1930 when the road was built. I cycled over into Zimbabwe and got as far as the sign saying, 'Welcome to Zimbabwe', where a Zimbabwean kindly offered to take a photo of me before I returned to the bridge. By now I was almost dry from my close encounter with the waterfall. I picked up my passport at the immigration office and was back in Zambia. I cycled along a dirt road that lead down the gorge. I found myself alone, away from the crowds of tourists, sitting on top of the gorge watching the turbulent waters flow past, far below me trying to work out how a river can condense it's width from 1,700m to a mere 50m; surely there must be a law of physics being broken here. The impending rain forced me to return to the visitors centre, but the heavens opened before I could make it and I got soaked for the second time that day. When there was a break in the weather I returned to Livingstone and managed to reach Jolly Boys Backpackers without getting wet again just before the sun set.
Jolly Boys was a nice place to stay, it was very friendly and relaxed. There was a small swimming pool in the garden next to the bar, a kitchen where you could order breakfast or an evening meal. The place wasn't too big and still had a homely feel about it; there were dormitory rooms, double rooms and space to camp in the garden next to the bar and pool. There was no television but Sue and Kim went off and borrowed a television and video for a couple of nights and brought as films to watch.
Other guests recommended the walking safaris in the nearby Mosi-O-Tunya National park where you could see the only five white rhinos in Zambia. Back in the 1960's there were about 6,000 white rhino in Zambia but these were all poached, an alarming statistic if there ever was one. These rhino were a gift from South Africa and arrived in this small park back in 1994. There were two male and two female, one of the females was already pregnant and gave birth in the park increasing Zambia's rhino population by 20%. Unfortunately in the eight years the rhino have been in the park, they haven't mated. It is thought that the park is too small and that the rhinos see too much of each other and their relationship is only platonic. In addition, the dominant male has marked the whole park as his territory leaving the other male submissive to him. The park is due to be extended in June 2002 on to land that was gazetted back in 1988 but lack of government funds since then have meant that it could not be properly fenced. Wildlife experts are expecting that the submissive male will then set up this new section of park as his territory and will see less of the females. It is hoped that when the males do stumble across a female that they will be a lot more excited than they are today when they graze together almost every day as a small herd.
I booked my walking safari with Dave from Livingstone Safaris for US$40; I found him one evening at the Fawlty Towers Backpackers having a beer; he also runs the Geckos Backpackers in Livingstone. He told me to be ready at 06.15 and he would pick me up from Jolly Boys in his Landrover. The following morning Dave arrived as he said he would and we drove down to the Waterfront, an up market lodge that is also cashing in on the overland truck business, and picked up another three Dutch people. The park gate is almost next door to the Waterfront, we drove in and to the staff village where we picked up an armed ranger. We parked the Landrover near to where the rhinos had been last seen and began tracking footprints in the mud. We walked off into the bush in single file, so as not to alarm too much any animals we might stumble upon. The rain the previous afternoon made it easier to track the footprints, we could easily tell if the prints were made before or after the rain had stopped. Along the way we saw a lot of giraffes and other herbivores such as zebra, antelopes and buffalo. With the reputation buffalo have for being mean and dangerous animals, it was certainly a different experience seeing them while walking through the bush rather than from the safety of a vehicle.
After an hour or so walking the footprints were looking very fresh, Dave estimated they were made late yesterday evening. Soon we caught a glimpse of a single rhino still asleep under a tree. We carefully and quietly walked around this giant, snoozing animal to get down wind of it. Rhinos have very poor eyesight and rely mostly on smell to find out what is happening in their environment. The rhino caught sense of our smell and began to stir, but by the time she was on her feet we were safely down wind and hiding amongst some small trees and bushes. It was an amazing sight to see this animal at such a close range in the wild as she woke up and began her day grazing on grass and scratching herself against a tree; we were only about 8m metres from her. She slowly grazed her way into the distance and soon disappeared into the bush; we continued on our search for the other four rhino. It wasn't long until we picked up another trail of footprints in the soft, damp sandy soil; Dave estimated three individuals made them. We tracked the prints for about another hour until we found three rhino grazing in a marsh. We eventually had to back away into the bush as the rhinos grazed towards us. In all we saw four out of the five rhino in the park, not bad for a three-hour morning's walk.
After spending four, relaxing nights in Livingstone I returned to Lusaka. The train was running again but one traveller who had just arrived told me of the ordeal of his journey overnight from Lusaka; the engine broke down on route in the middle of nowhere and it took five hours to fix it. I decided that it was not worth the risk travelling along the Zambian Railway and took the C R bus again instead. By the middle of the afternoon I was back in the rather dull city of Lusaka and walked from Cairo Road to the Chachacha Backpackers. I spent a couple of days in the city waiting for Graeme, a New Zealander I had met the previous week at the hostel, who had offered me a ride to Malawi. I passed the days at the three cinemas in the city, all of them along Chachacha Street, a block to the west of Cairo Road. The best film I saw was the remake of Planet of the Apes, I huge groan of disapproval went up at the end of the film when he kissed the ape; the worst film was Scary Movie 2, why did they bother?; the funniest, The One, just for the reactions of the crowd during the fight scenes. Late on a Thursday evening Graeme arrived after going on a tour of the west of the country; we sat down and planned our journey to Malawi along the Great East Road.
From Lusaka the Great East Road stretches about 570km to the border with Malawi. I had agreed with Graeme to hitch a ride to Chipata, the Zambian border town, from where I would travel by public transport to Mfuwe, a small village just south of the Luangwa River, which forms the border of the South Luangwa National Park. The trip was not going to be quiet that straight forward; Graeme was already giving a lift to Klaartje, a Dutch freelance journalist who was doing a story on refugees in Zambia. Graeme had also obtained permission from the Ministry of the Interior and the Commissioner for Refugees to enter a refugee camp on route to Chipata as Klaartje's driver and photographer; the photography was a purely personal assignment. As I didn't have the necessary permits I could not enter the Ukumi refugee camp about 70km north of the small town of Patuke, so we agreed that I would spend the night in this small town. The journey to Chipata would take two days, which was fine with me, as I was not working to any tight time schedules.
Graeme was driving a very well kitted out white Toyota Hilux 4×4 with a 2.7 litre petrol engine under the bonnet. It was a South African registered pickup truck with an extra passenger cab so that it could seat up to five people. The bed of the truck had a set of storage lockers bolted to it leaving space underneath for a fridge, water, gas and other supplies; on the roof was a roof tent, a couple of spare tyres and a fuel can. Graeme had bought the truck in South Africa on a buyback basis and either hired or bought all the equipment he needed for his four-month tour around Southern Africa. His trip had so far taken him around South Africa, up into Namibia, across Botswana and into Zambia. The rest of his journey would take him through Malawi to Mozambique, Swaziland and back to South Africa where he would sell back the vehicle to the company he bought it from at an already agreed price.
The three of us left Lusaka on Saturday morning and drove the 400km to Patuke. It was great to be travelling in a private car rather than on the local bus; there was no waiting around for hours or needless stopping along the way. This whole concept of travelling seemed very novel after spending nearly three months on local African transport. We cruised east out of Lusaka along a good tarred road; it didn't take long at all to get out of the city and to be back in the bush again. About halfway we passed over the Luangwa River on an impressive suspension bridge, after this the road began to deteriorate and by the time we neared Patuke it was slow going, dodging the worst of the potholes. By late afternoon we arrived in Patuke, the town being a few kilometres north of the Great East Road, and Graeme dropped me at Brother Willy's Motel.
He and Klaartje continued 70km north of the town to reach the Ukumi refugee camp where Klaartje was going to conduct some interviews and Graeme take some photos. The camp was fairly isolated as it was mainly a temporary home for Angolan refugees from the civil war; a lot of them were UNITA rebels. In the past few weeks a peace treaty had been signed between the government forces and the UNITA rebels in Angola. The recent killing of the UNITA leader, Jonas Savimbi, brought about this seemingly sudden end to this decades old civil war. It still may be a while before these refugees go home, as the majority of them are still scared at what might await them when they return to Angola.
Patuke is the kind of town that no tourists ever visit; there is no point, there is nothing to do or see here. To me that was good enough reason to spend twenty-four hours here, just to meet the local people and to find out what life is like in a small south Zambian town. The staff at Brother Willy's were extremely friendly. I think I was the first tourist to stay here for months; in the visitor's book, under reason for visit, everyone had written either work or business; the majority of these people were working for World Vision. I soon met the gardener and general handy man, Joseph, who also had the responsibility of collecting the empty bottles that people throw away in the garden rather than returning them to the bar. He told me that life in Patuke is hard, it's a struggle, there is not much work and no-one has much money. The term Zambians like to use most to describe life is, suffer; in Patuke, like many other towns I had visited, Joseph told me that the people suffer. I also met someone else while visiting the shops, who had come to Patuke to buy precious stones. It appeared that mining was the main local industry but on a very small scale. There were a couple of businessmen staying at Willy's who had been investigating an old disused gold mine near the town. The mine had been started during the colonial times but abandoned in the 1960's after independence; whether there is any gold left in the mine remains to be seen.
It was Saturday evening and a local band set up at the bar at Willy's. The music was good but the instruments had seen better days and the speakers distorted badly. Not many people came to listen, maybe no more than a dozen. Later that evening, after dinner, Joseph took me to the liveliest bar in town, at a motel about halfway back to the main road. A band was supposed to be playing there tonight but they never turned up; instead we drank a few beers and tried to talk with some of the other locals while being deafened by a multi-decibel stereo system behind the bar. By about 23.00 we walked back the couple of kilometres to Willy's under a clear sky sparkling with thousands of stars.
Graeme and Klaartje said they would pick me up at 16.00 on Sunday; they arrived back early at 15.00 and we set off for the short 160km journey to Chipata. We arrived late in the afternoon and camped at the Zambian Wildlife Conservation Society campground just a couple of blocks north of the main road. We didn't stay long in Chipata, early the following morning Graeme dropped me off at the bus station where I waited for a minibus to leave for Mfuwe. From what I saw of Chipata it looked like a busy, bustling town; there was a huge market that we had to pass through to get to the bus station and even at 08.00 in the morning the market was packed. Graeme and Klaartje continued to the border with Malawi and drove on to Lilongwe; we agreed to meet at the Kiboko Camp again either on Wednesday or Thursday, depending on what happened with the local transport.
After waiting for nearly six hours and the minibus struggling to fill up with the required number of passengers the first bus from Lusaka arrived. On board were seven other travellers, five from Slovenia and a couple from the Netherlands. That was enough to fill the minibus to bursting point and within twenty minutes or so we were at last on our way to Mfuwe and South Luangwa National Park. After filling up with fuel and collecting a spare tyre we turned off the main road, just west of town and headed north along a road that soon turned very rough. The tar only lasted for a few kilometres and then we were on a very bumpy, dusty, dirt road. The road had suffered badly during the rainy season and large gullies had been cut across the road by the rain making the going in an overloaded minibus with low ground clearance, very slow indeed. The road was being repaired and after an hour or two we reached a freshly graded section where we made up for lost time by speeding like a maniac. The road climbed up and over two hills, where the road was tarred and after about three hours we reached Mfuwe. The back of the minibus was loaded up with luggage leaving the rear door open, dust was sucked in through the back door and by now I and everyone else were caked in red dust. The narrow road around Mfuwe and up to the national park was paved; hundreds of pedestrians and cyclists were travelling up and down this road that was lined on either side by grass that was over twice the height of a man.
Along this road and around the blind corners the driver sped as fast as he could, the other road users ducked for cover in the long grass on either side of the road. We came upon an accident and sharply braked; lying on the road was a cyclist, blood pouring from a wound in his head, his bicycle lying in a heap of twisted metal. A large crowd had already gathered and were offering him help; there was nothing else we could do that someone else hadn't already done, so we drove off. Later that evening I met the doctor who treated him on the scene; the cyclist had head injuries and a broken leg but would live. You would think that after seeing this scene of carnage on the road that our driver would slow down and take more care; he did nothing of the sort and soon had his foot flat down again terrorising everyone else who dared to move along the road. Finally he dropped the five Slovenians and myself off at Flatdogs Camp; I was glad to see the back of this irresponsible driver.
Flatdogs Camp has a legendary reputation amongst travellers of all budgets that stretches far and wide across this continent. It was first recommended to me while I was in Uganda and I had heard a lot about it ever since while I had been on the road; it was great to be here at last. The original Flatdogs Camp (flatdog is the local nickname given to crocodiles) was opened in 1992 at Mfuwe Croc Farm. The owners realised that there was a need and also money to be made from providing decent facilities for people travelling on a budget and on 26th May 2000 opened the new Flatdogs in a beautiful location on the banks of the Luangwa River. The camp is set on the southern banks of the Luangwa River, a short distance from the Mfuwe gate to the national park. I took a tree platform for my nights accommodation and made myself at home up in a sausage tree. The sausage tree gets its name from its fruit, that hangs from it's branches and look remarkably like giant sausages on strings, weighing up to 10kg each. The camp also had a campground and private chalets dotted along the river bank. There was a large bar and restaurant that served some of the best food I had tasted in Zambia. The swimming pool was unfortunately closed and being reconstructed after an incident with a hippo. A sign at reception read, 'the hippo population of the Luangwa River wishes to apologise on behalf of one of our kin, William Bloat (1997-2002). William decided to move into the Flatdogs pool one night in January but omitted to check the depth, or his exit route. Sadly this experience resulted in not only William's demise, but the demolition of the swimming pool. The management assures us that the new pool, with steps, will be completed by June.'
The camp is also noted for the wildlife that wanders past; there is an elephant crossing very near to the camp and it is not unusual to see a herd of elephant strolling past. I went and sat down by the river with a cold beer in my hand trying to wash the dust out of my throat from my journey from Chipata. The river was full of hippos wallowing as the sun set; on the other bank a lone elephant walked past and a couple of kingfishers perched on a twig near by fishing in the river. It was a wonderfully peaceful scene as the sky turned red silhouetting the trees on the opposite bank. Later that evening, while I was sitting at the bar having a drink with the manager, one of the staff came running in saying that there were three lions outside reception. I joked to the manager saying, 'Don't the lions know that the camp is full tonight'. We ran down to reception and took one of the safari Toyotas down along the track to the main road. After only driving about 100m from reception we spotted the lions with a searchlight, lying in the grass. I had only been at Flatdogs for one evening and had already seen giraffe, impala, elephant, hippo, kingfishers and lions and I was still outside the national park.
I had a great night sleeping in the sausage tree with just my mosquito net as protection from the elements. I woke up early, at 05.30, to go on the first of two game drives for that day. On the way to the park gate we saw the three lions again drinking from a stream near reception. The park entrance fees were US$20 per twenty-four hour period and Flatdogs charged US$25 for the first game drive and US$20 for the next. The park covers an area of 9,050 sq km and encompasses a range of vegetation from dense woodland to open grassy plains. April is probably not one of the best times of year to visit as it is just at the end of the rainy season; the animals are spread widely across the park due to the abundance of water and the grass grows very high obscuring views of the game. We set off though in our open topped Toyota Landcruiser across the bridge and into the park. I had seen most animals now on this trip on previous safaris in Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia; the only animal I hadn't seen yet was a leopard, so I kept my eyes peeled. The game was not as abundant as I had previously seen in other parks, there were not so many of the huge herds of herbivores, if there were they were hidden by the grass. We did see impala, zebra, elephant, baboons, buffalo, hippo, crocodiles, puku and greater kudu; the last three were the first time I had seen them in the wild. After a few hours we returned to Flatdogs and I spent my day resting in my sausage tree until the evening game drive set off at 16.00. The evening game drive went fairly much the same as the morning drive; we did see seven lions, which was the highlight of the drive. During the night drive we didn't spot anything of interest and I left the park still without spotting a leopard, my quest continues.
Public transport from Mfuwe leaves at a ridiculous time in the morning, at 01.00 so that people can connect with the early morning busses from Chipata. I had arranged with a driver while I had waited in Chipata to pick me up at on Wednesday night at Flatdogs. I had to vacate my sausage tree and after dinner I curled up on a comfy sofa at reception to wait for the transport to arrive. At 00.45 a truck pulled up and the five Slovenians, myself and a couple of others climbed into the back for the long and bumpy ride to Chipata. On the way through Mfuwe we picked up some more passengers, including a man moving house. We had everything on board, bed, mattress, table, chairs, pots and pans etc. The truck did not get as packed as I thought it would, I still found the most comfortable way to travel was to stand. It felt strange to be travelling in the middle of the night, in the back of a truck through the African bush illuminated by the silvery light from the moon.
After a very bumpy ride we finally arrived, covered in dust in a deserted Chipata at 04.30. The Slovenians went off to wait for the Lusaka bus on the main street and the truck took me back to the main bus station past the deserted market and a club that was still going into the early hours, music pounding out into the sleeping street. I was surprised to see so much activity around the bus station at this early hour of the day; within a quarter of an hour I was in a share taxi heading for the Malawian frontier. The driver drove like a maniac, I hid on the backseat crouched behind the front passenger seat waiting for the inevitable impact when we hit an unsuspecting cyclist or pedestrian. Amazingly we didn't, we only had a close shave with an oxcart that tested the taxis brakes to the full. The drive seemed like a lifetime but at the speed we were doing only took about ten minutes before we were at last brought to a halt by the border gate across the road.
There was only one other women, a local lady from Lusaka, who was crossing the border. We walked into the small Zambian immigration office and woke up the immigration officer who was asleep at his desk at the back of the office. After filling in his register with our details and stamping our passports we were free to leave the country and walked through the small pedestrian gate and into Malawi; it was 05.20 and the horizon was just beginning to brighten as the sun rose to start another day.
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