Pete Ryland's Web Log
I didn't want a blog but they made me do it.Wed, 13 Jul 2005
After a mammoth 650 km drive, we arrive in Chobe just in time for a game cruise. This was the most amazing experience to date, with sightings of numerous hippos, elephants big and small, some kudu, impala and other antelope. At the camp there was also plenty of mongeese and some spotted jenets. This river is on the border of Botswana and Namibia, but with little stopping people or animals from crossing.
From Chobe we headed for Vic Falls, a massive set of waterfalls on the corner of Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia. We stayed for four nights, half on the Zim side, and the rest on the Zam side. All sorts of activities were on offer, but I opted for the slightly less brave horse ride where we did a few water crossings, saw lots of wildlife up close (they don't run away when you're on a horse) but ended up getting mock charged by an elephant who wasn't happy with our proximity. It was lucky we had one more water crossing since some of the girls had wet themselves.
The sad part of Vic Falls was a parting of company as some of the crew were going home from there, some were going to Mozambique through Zimbabwe and others like me were looking to avoid Zimbabwe and go on through to Nairobi. Still, there were some starting from there going north, and some coming from Capetown so there was plenty of new friends to make and more people to have a few beers and swap stories with in the coming weeks.
The next day we had to get some clicks behind us and fuel is expensive in Zambia, so we stopped only overnight to sleep and feed before heading onto Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi for a spot of lunch. From there, we drove along the 365x52km Lake Malawi until nightfall when we stopped in Mbamba on Kande Beach where we spent a few nights. This was a great spot with lots of friendly locals near the campsite and many a souvenir was bought from the market just outside the campsite gates. I was running out of local currency, so ended up swapping unneeded clothes for some nice curios. The local lads there all had strange names, like King David, Captain Morgan, Black William, Mario, Julius Caeser, Banjo Patterson, Jonnie Howard, Soft Touch, Ande from Kande, etc. They were all full-on pot-heads, so haggling with them was an interesting experience. They showed us around town on the first day and then the night before we left they made us a meal of yam soup, chicken, rice and casaba which I thought was fantastic but turned out not to be to the liking of some of my companions. I was going to do some diving there, but the weather was not so generous. It did make for fun surf and challenging volleyball on the beach though.
Driving in eastern Africa is interesting. There are few other vehicles on the road outside the largest towns and those are made up of trucks, buses and hired Toyota Hiluxes and Landcruisers. In towns, there are Corollas aplenty and the taxis are usually Hiaces. I'm not sure how it happened, but Toyota seems to have the whole of the African market cornered, or at least what I've seen of it so far. There are a handful of "motorways" that connect up eastern Africa that range from bad to drivable, but at least they're tarred unlike all other roads. These motorways are a lifeline to most of the continent's people, with a large percentage of people living close to one of these roads. At any time of day, anywhere along these roads, even hundreds of kilometres from a town or village, there will be people walking, carrying things on their heads, riding heavily-overloaded bicycles or just sitting there watching and waving as you go past. Everywhere we go, people wave and smile, especially the children. All this said, driving here is still very dangerous. It's not just the other vehicles driven with little consideration for safety, but it's the people crowding around the markets in towns and cyclists getting in your way when trying to overtake and trucks stopped in the middle of the road and crossing animals. The latter is especially potent at night so we've been getting up before dawn most of the driving days to ensure we get to the next campsite before sunset.
>