The crossroad

Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing at all.

Helen Keller

Lazy days

Reaching the Zambezi river is quite a milestone for this trip, the first of Africa’s big four rivers which I plan to cross during this trip (The others are Nile, Congo, Niger). I spent a week alone just sitting under a big shady tree staring across this huge mass of water. On the other bank is Zambia and I wondered what adventure was waiting for me there. I used this week to catch up on internet stuff, bicycle maintenance and mainly to rest up after my 1000km sprint in the previous 2 weeks.

From Katima the logical route would be to cross into Zambia and cycle the 200km to Livingston to see the Victoria falls. The other route to the falls via Botswana is a pain because cycling is not allowed in the Chobe National park. On my to do list for this area is Lusaka (capital of Zambia), Livingstone but also Zimbabwe. There is no logical route to do all this without a multiply entry visa to Zambia or Zimbabwe and I don’t feel like sponsoring either government the extra $20. That said within 5 minutes of looking at my map I could see a perfect solution.

While chatting to the owner of the internet cafe I mentioned I was considering cycling to Mongu in Zambia, her reply was “you can’t cycle that road, its a ‘orrible ‘orrible road” and so it was decided, I would take the 1500-2000km detour to Livingstone via Mongu and Lusaka along the ‘orrible ‘orrible road and cross into Zimbabwe via the falls. It was once again time for adventure……..

Peter

Since the early days of planning this trip I’ve followed the adventures of Peter Gostelow and his BigAfricaCycle and before that his 50,000km journey from Japan to the UK by bike. He has been on the road from England now for 2.5 years and despite various set backs which would of sent most people home he has continued his journey. For a large part of the past 2 years I sat a home reading about his adventures green with envy that he was doing it and I was still at home working, saving and planning.

Within minutes of meeting Peter I commented that Katima Mulilo was the most African feeling town I’d seen so far, he replied that it was the most civilized town he’d seen in a long time. This sums up our whole meeting really, we met at a crossroads to both our journeys, for me the gateway to central Africa, more adventure and cheaper living. For Peter the gateway to the last couple of months of his trip and a more civilized world of expensive luxury supermarkets and expensive accommodation. It was obvious while speaking to Peter that he was winding down his trip and it would now be my turn to live the adventure and now he was a little envious of me, and almost tempted to just turn around and head north.

We spent what was planned to be two days hanging around the river, swapping stories, tips and sharing a few cold beers. Peter has the quiet nature you’d expect from someone who has spent about 5 out of the last 6 years alone on the road and this made him great company for me, a good balance of chatting, gear talk, tips swapping and silence. What was supposed to be two days together rapidly became four and had we been travelling the same direction it may have become more.

On the fourth day we spent most of the morning packing, procrastinating and delaying the inevitable departure, it was kind of weird and very pleasant to connect in such a short time with someone with so many similar interests, passion and sense of adventure. It was obvious neither of us wanted it to end, with an awkward handshake we went our separate ways Peter to the endless roads of Namibia and on towards Cape Town, myself into Zambia, central Africa and adventure.

Thanks Pete for a couple of great days, I hope we can do it again sometime.

Into Zambia

Leaving the air conditioned Namibian immigration office I wondered what awaited me on the other side. After a little hunt around the border village on the Zambian side I found the shack that was immigration, with only the predictable hassle of them not wanting my dodgy worn out $50 I gave up and gave them a shiny new one, the Zambian visa is for 3 months but I have to renew it every 30 days, strange system. Changed $50 with one of the dozens of money changers (receiving 250,000 kwacha) and haggled on the price of a local sim card.

The road for the first 2 days was far from ‘orrible, it was just a standard dirt road with some potholes, though it was very dusty from road works and passing trucks, parts of the road where even sealed. Every few kilometres I encountered an all too typical scene in modern Africa, the Chinese invasion of road builders. As usual locals are used for the manual labour but all the machinery and supervisors are imported from China.

Day 3 kids stopped hassling me for sweats and the locals became more helpful and friendly without hoping to earn a dollar. Obviously this is also the time the road became ‘orribly ‘orrible so few tourist have made it this far to corrupt the locals. The added complication of the Kalongola ferry not running due to the rainy season high waters meant no cars come this far up either.

Adventure?

The first couple of days I was able to camp at overpriced tourist campsites($10) on the banks of the Zambezi. The time between the campsites felt like I was once again in Uganda, the road got steadily worse and where scattered with small poor villages, some with a little shop where you can buy the basics and some also had a water pump where I was able to refill rather than use river water.

Once I left the campsite near Sioma the road quickly turned to a track which in turn quickly turned to sand. And so the adventure started, of the 40km I travelled that day to Nangweshi about 10km was deep soft sand which I had drag and push Mr Hyde through and the rest not a lot better. Some parts of the road went uphill making it impossible to push Mr Hyde through the deep sand so I found myself shuttling my gear 200m then my bike the 200m under the midday sun.

This went on for an hour or two, in all a 8-9 hour day to cover the 40km. I suspect some folks may find such a situation quite frustrating, I found myself just laughing…”you wanted adventure”, with thoughts of the fact I had enough food and water I figured I would just plod on nice and slow and could eat and camp when I’d had enough, no worries!! I think to fight such a situation would become very frustrating, to just accept it and push on calmly is much easier.

Once in Nangweshi I was rewarded with a $5 room(no water, no power) and millet pap/cabbage/chicken leg dinner for $2 and a beer for $3.

Crossing the Zambezi

Because of the high water the ferry is not running right now, but lucky for me there´s a local boat service, after laughing in the guys face when he wanted $20 for the journey I knocked him down to $10 that the locals had paid which I still thought was a lot for crossing a 300m river. As it turned out it didn´t just cross the river but was in fact a shuttle service from Kalongola to Senanga, a 3 hour boat trip instead of cycling about 20km. Naturally the shuttle service works on an African schedule so after waiting almost 2 hours under the melting sun for it to fill up we finally got moving.

Once in Senanga it was too late to push on so I just took one of the non tourist hotels where I got an en-suite room for $9(rather than $30 at the Safari blah blah tourist hotel next door), not the kind of place you´d bring a pretty girl back to but ideal for a cheapskate cyclist like myself….I’ve taken an extra day in Senanga to chill out and write this post among other things, though who knows when I’ll get to upload it. Tomorrow will be 105km to Mongu(my map says it should be a tar road) where I hope to get internet access and get my sim card registered so I can use internet on my phone once more, not looking forward to seeing “you’ve got 50 new mails” in my inbox.

Walking around the market town of Senanga is quite pleasant and unlike most towns I’ll encounter in the coming year. The locals are not used to seeing a white face so are curious and friendly rather than hassling and trying to get money. I’m often stopped for a short conversation or a handshake. Of course most of the shopkeepers try to overcharge me by 50-100% but that’s just an occupational hazard of having white skin in central Africa, whatever price they quote me I usually just laugh, grin, look into their eyes then ask again then get charged closer to the local price.

Exped Synmat 7 failure!!

So, another one bites the dust as they say. For the second time in a 18 months I have an Exped sleeping mate that has failed me. I expected one day it would die due to punctures but that hasn’t been too bad, only 1 in 100 nights. It appears that one of the baffles is delaminated making it a rather lumpy bed. The answer from Exped wasn’t very helpful either despite me explaining my situation and trip, “it’s covered by a 5 year warranty, just send it to your local dealer after your trip” like I’m going to carry it through the rest of Africa or pay for the postage to send it back…..

If only the quality of an Exped was as good as the comfort then things would be fine. I’ve had enough of poor quality Expeds now and in future will just go for a nice reliable high quality foam mat, 1/3 of the price of an Exped and probably 10x the life expectancy, less comfort but reliability is more important during a long trip.

Congratulations on making it to the end of this rather long blog update.