First of all we had to try and get some Zambian Kwacha, but
to no avail, we had some from Michael and Elisma, which we thought would see us
through the border only to find that ZKw2000 of it was in the old currency and
only now worth ZKw2.
What a racket this border is, if you do not have Kwacha you
have no choice, but to use one of the agents as there is no bank there and a
charming bunch of guys they are, conversation goes along the following lines.
“Sir what I can offer you is a trouble free experience as
the Zambia border is very complex and furthermore I will pay all the fees on
your behalf from my money and at the end you can pay me in Rand’s, Pula or
Dollars”
Although we could have managed you think what the hell for
R50 we will have a hassle free navigation through Road Tax, Insurance, Council
Tax and Carbon Tax only one of which you can pay in US dollars. The trick comes
when you do not know the current exchange rate for the US$/ZKw, everything
looks fine, but they tell you the rate is 4 to the dollar but in reality, as we
were to find out when we changed some money later at the bank, is 5.4 to the
dollar, so our agent cost us a converted R600 instead of R50. The only saving
grace is we had cleared both borders in under two hours and learnt a valuable
lesson, which was know your exchange rates and maybe do not use an agent.
The trucks waiting to cross the borders must have been at
least 3kms long if not 5kms on the Botswana side, a driver told me he had been
waiting for 3 days and 2 nights, but at times it can take 4 or 5 days to cross,
but crossing into the DRC takes even longer.
I must have had the wrong coordinates for our next stop, as
we went past and had to go back about 8kms. The self catering unit is a very
large camper van that had been used as a dressing room in the making of “Out of
Africa” movie in Kenya
starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. The sleeping quarters have been
placed under thatch and there is an outside toilet and shower as well as a
patio lounge and it has been very adequate. The girls are moaning about the
shower and the lack of enough hot water, I have no problem with it and they
should be grateful they have any running water let alone hot water,
The caretakers are German and they have a miniature
daschound that thought this is great upon seeing Sinead, someone small and his
own size I think he changed his mind after having his hair pulled and being
kicked a couple of times and now he keeps his distance.
There is some United Nations meeting scheduled for Zambia
in the future and as a result they are busy trying to sort out some of the
roads, as some of the locals say, “Why does it take such an event to wake them
up”? It sounds familiar to us.
We travel into Livingstone to get some Kwacha so that we can
buy some groceries and charcoal, the latter we eventually find near the station
and I am sure we were overcharged, then Denise starts to hand out sweets to the
children and they pour out of a warehouse nearby like rats then the adults join
in the fight for sweets, Denise is guilty of starting a riot in Livingstone so
we get the hell out of there.
We enjoy our first Braai that night with yours truly
managing without firelighters, but to be honest the dry wood in this part of
the world is like tinder, I was probably lucky I did not burn down the “Out of
Africa” house and the surrounding veld.
It has been cool in the evenings and the early morning, but
by 10h00 the temperature is rising and by midday it gets up to 25°C.
We feel good about having crossed another border and bad
about being conned out of at least R500, it is no good saying “I told you so”
because we had been warned by someone who did Cape to Cairo, warned on the 4x4
community web site and others, but the guys there are “artists” I have another
word for them, which I will not share with you as I will probably contravene
some communications act.
No photographs today, we are in Lusaka and posting days 6 & 7. We are all well and everything is going well, Sinead has been extremely good and has given us some good laughs, everything is still a "Woo Woo"
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