Day 8 – Livingstone to Eureka Farm & Day 9 - Lusaka to Flatdogs Camp in South Luwangwa

Sinead Chasing the Jack Russel Woo Woo!

Typical Village Scene

Day 8

We were waiting for the bad roads and pot holed roads, but the road was quite good until the sting in the tail some 20kms out of Lusaka when we deviated off the main road under construction and from a day where we commented on the lack of traffic we hit the bottle neck and it was eat dust, dust and more dust in a convoy of some 30 to 50 cars, trucks, motorcycles, and bicycles, but alls well that ends well and we spotted our turn off to Eureka Farm 10kms south of Lusaka. This is predominantly a camping park with around 15 chalets and it was spotlessly clean and an ideal stopover.

Why is it that wherever you go the last thing the owners of the accommodation think of is a decent mattress and quality pillows and the ladies are still complaining about the showers, which have not, in 4 out of 5 places come up to their expectation. For the beds you have to accept being at the bottom of a dip and if there are two in the bed you meet at the bottom or it is so lumpy that you have to wind your body around the humps and bumps, needless to say the old bones and muscles are taking some strain, but hey who said this trip was going to be simple and luxurious.

 Lusaka is a fairly large city with a population of some 3 million souls and is fairly clean when compared to say Lagos or Hillbrow.

At Eureka farm there is a herd of Zebra and Impala and we had to keep Sinade from going and terrorising them, the last thing we wanted was for her to get kicked or bitten. There was an old Jack Russel that soon learnt that hanging about was not in its interest.

We had a good meal and crashed in anticipation of what could be a long and difficult day ahead to South Luwangwa.

Day 9

Another Sunrise in Africa

 This is the longest day and the greatest distance we will do in a day on this trip at 700kms and was a real test for Sinead, who came through with flying colours and in fact was her best day yet, either she is getting used to it or we are, but we were in the car for close on 12 hours less an hour for breakfast at the Lusaka Wimpy having left Eureka at 07h00 and arriving at Flatdogs Camp at 19h00.

Cotton Carrying Truck Completely Burnt Out

We shared the driving with Denise doing the most and tackling a treacherous stretch between Chongwe and Petauke where if one was seen driving in a straight line he or she was drunk, the potholes were everywhere and it slowed us down considerably and I considered doing the shortcut route from Petauke when the road got considerably better and we pressed on to Chipata, which is the capital of the Eastern Province and close to the Malawi border.

Suspension Bridge over the Luwangwa River

Luwangwa River on its way to join the Zambesi

From Chipata I took over for the last 120kms, which they started tarring way back in 2010, but sad to say not only is it a slap dash job, but it is also still under construction and all our orifices were pinched closed as dusk descended upon us and we battled to see what lay ahead with the sun in our eyes to start and the twilight shadows deceiving us at every turn on the gravel section, but we came through unscathed and I said another prayer for our car “Salama” That damn woman on the Garmin, despite have the GPS co-ordinates, was going to take us a few kilometres further, but Denise spotted the turning to Flatdogs in the falling light and we arrived at one minute to seven.

It was beer and double brandies all round and a lovely meal. We have a great double storey chalet with two bedrooms en-suite complete with kitchen, lounges and bags of space, but as it was dark we did not know what our surroundings were like.

All will be revealed, we are here for 3 nights and then we head north to Shiwa Ngandu another 4x4 track in darkest Africa and we are enjoying ourselves immensely.