More Zambia

Monday 2nd April

We left Mutinondo at 8.15am after saying goodbye to Mike & Lari. They have a really laid back life and only manage to keep track of the days by instructing their staff to give them baked beans every Sunday so that they will know that the next day is Monday! If the staff forget, they say that everyone is totally confused as to what day it is. Mike wrote us a letter for the immigration lady at Mpika so that the dates in our passport can be sorted out – 4 of us were only given 7 days in Zambia by mistake. We proceeded along the Chiundaponde road which is 69mks long but takes 2 ½ hours! The Karg’s and us arrived at 11.30am and waited for the other 3 couples. Unfortunately, we had mis read the sms and were waiting further along than we were supposed to. So we had a 2 hour wait on our hands! Anyway, we just got out the cards and played bridge to pass the time. The Day’s and the Hardman’s got stuck and so all in all it was about 4 o’clock before we were all together and headed on the Shoebill Island road. This once again, was an atrocious road and the going was very slow. We passed right through villages and all the kids came out to greet us – it must be very tiresome to be a queen as just an hour of smiling and waving gets quite tiring! Eventually the light was fading but we decided to push on as we wanted to get to the scout camp. We only had 3 kms to go when the road, which was an elevated high road through a plain of bog, disintegrated! So, there we had our camp site, all in a row on this elevated road in the middle of a bog. And, to top it, Brian was stuck in at an angle and couldn’t even put up his roof top tent. Him and Maureen had to pitch a little tent on the road and sleep in there as it was too dark to attempt towing him out. We were in the middle of nowhere with a world of stars above our heads and sounds of lechwe, jackals and hyena all around us.

Tuesday 3rd April
What a wonderful sight! This has been our best camp site ever! We were in the middle of a huge plain full of Lechwe antelope and hordes of birds. The moon was still visible in the west and the sun was rising in the east – it was a breath taking sight to behold. We packed up our tents and then 2 vehicles got in line to tow Brain out. Success – we were all back on the road so to speak except there was no road! Just then a vehicle came towards us through the bog NOT the road. It was forging along through the water with a fountain of muddy water spraying up either side! He veered off to stop and talk to us and in doing so did a complete 360 with a scout hanging on for dear life on the roof rack! We all looked on with big eyes but he assured us that this was now the road to the scout camp and we must just hit out and go for it! Well, it was the only option we had, so off we set one by one. It was a very exciting trip with the wind screen wipers going full ball to keep the windscreen clear and the engine roaring to keep Garfield “swimming” through