After an amazing week in Dar with Wookie and Marty we headed on our way south. Taking a leaf out of Janer's book, I got stopped for speeding on the way to the border. After a quick chat about the fine, the policeman said what has to be the quote of the trip…
So, we paid the man and we were back in business. After that we adopted to using our manual speed trap detector...
(Podge finally got a haircut)
We still managed to get in some wildlife on our way to the border at the side of the road like elephants, giraffes, water buffalo and... a new kind of monkey, the yellow baboon just sitting there havin' an afternoon snack…
ZAMBIA
Anyway, we finally made it into Zambia, a gorgeous country with green everywhere and hardly any people. For such a big country, there are only 11 million people (who mainly live in the cities). The life expectancy here is only 33 because of AIDS. There's loads of billboards with this clever little caption (makes a difference from speed kills back in Ireland…
SEX THRILLS, AIDS KILLS!
We’d heard northern Zambia is pretty boring from people we met, they weren’t completely wrong. We drove for about 1000 kilometers with pretty much trees to look at…
Zambia has pretty good roadsin general. But in the north, when they’re bad, they’re really bad…
One thing that is true about Zambia is they have really corrupt cops at so many checkpoints throughout the country. We were stopped by one guy who got us for not having white reflective stickers on the front and red on the rear of the jeep. They wanted to charge us 10 Euro for each missing sticker even though the lights have reflective strips in them at the back and the front has a pretty reflective chrome bumper and bull bars. They tried to give us a receipt on a scrap of A4 paper. We ended up after about half an hour settling it for about 6,000 TZS (3.50 Euro). The guy was a complete douche.
We were also stopped at an army checkpoint where your man says... “so what have you got for me”. Got through that one with a ten cent coin. At least in Tanzania they were honest about bribes and were saving you money.
LIVINGSTONE
We went on down to Livingstone spending one night in Lusaka (the capital city) where we even went to the cinema!!!
After arriving at the Jollyboys campsite in Livingstone we met a load of guys we’ve met previously along the way… Pete (SA), Neil (UK), Cam and Craig (NZ). We had a few drinks with them and a load of others staying here from America and Brazil.
After one day on the couch, we headed the following day to see the awesometastic Victoria Falls, one of the seven wonders of the world I'm told.
When we got to the falls we found that there was hardly any water. It's not the rainy season yet but it meant we could walk across the falls towards Zimbabwe. On our way we met two S. African girls staying at our campsite who joined us on the falls. Absolutely class place...
That night after a few to many drinks we all decided to go white water rafting on the Zambezi River. One of the most amazing experiences we've had so far on the trip...
BOTSWANA
The next day we headed for Botswana and only 5 minutes into the place we saw a herd of elephants on the side of the road. There's so many wild elephants there, we must have seen 50 in a couple of hours...
We only spent three nights in Botswana on our way to the final stop...
SOUTH AFRICACACACACA!!!!!!
Oh what a glorious site...
...we had reached the promised land, we were finally on our holidays.
First stop was Camp Africa in the small town of Louis Trichardt in the north to visit Dave Van Graan who we met in Egypt and Sudan. Camp Africa, Dave's bar...
The evening we arrived, they were having a fancy dress party for Lani birthday who works for Dave. Great craic and a very messy night. Here's myself and Podge's last minute attempts at dressing up...
A Masai Warrior and a Doctor... the tube's for colonics
We had an absolutely amazing few days with Dave, his wife Jacqui and Davey Junior. Here's us outside Dave's house just before we unfortunately had to leave...
Janer, Podge, Me, Jacqui, Midnight (the dog), Jacqui, Dave and Lani.
After having to drag ourselves away from Louis Trichardt, we headed for the coast to Richards Bay to visit Frans and Carlie. They were traveling with Dave around Africa.
We stayed with them in their gorgeous house on the river right beside the Richards Bay Sailing Club...
The next day Frans and Carlie took us out deep sea fishing on his monster Catamaran to catch Marlyn. Martin and Charles helped us with the rods, cos lets face it, when it comes to fishing, I don't know my arsienda from my elbow (that's a sailing joke by the way)...
Martin and Charles
And here's Frans kickin ass on the back...
Poor auld Podge and Janer were feeling a bit sea sick on the boat, but we had such a great time.
After hearing about my steermaster experience in Dar, Frans let me man the wheel and do a spot of steering, Arrrrrgghh...
After a day on the open sea with 2m high swells, I managed to get a Blue Dorado (rainbow dolphin) on the line for about 30 secs. Here's what it would have looked like if I caught actually caught it, but more real looking...
We had an awesomeo time with Frans and Carlie in Richards Bay,, thanks guys! Alas, we had to leave and head south to Mossel Bay.
DISASTER STRIKES... BUT EVERY COULD HAS A SILVER LINING, THE JOUBERTS...
On our way down, disaster happened. The poor little auld Hilux overheated, the radiator burst open at the top, the head gasket blew and cracked the cylinder head. Oh the humanity. Really puts breaking your flippy floppies in perspective!
After hitching a life with a detective to a guy with a tow truck and coming back, he told us the jeep was too heavy and had to call in a flatbed truck from 50 k away. Again, Oh the humanity...
The view from the back of the flatbed
When we arrived at the garage, Diesel & Industrial Engineering, we were greeted by Phil, our saviour. Phil and his wife Tracy took us in for a week and treated us like family...
He ordered in our new cylinder head from Durban and arranged everything to get the jeep fixed down the road by a mechanic called John. They let us stay up with them on their farm and even brought us up to their holiday challet in Underberg at the weekend with their daughters Jess and Mel...
Tracy, Jess, Phil and Mel
We were honest to God blessed to meet them and will hopefully see them again. Thanks guys!So we left Kokstad and finally headed south about 1000 km to Pinnacle Point in Mossel Bay with Paul (Podge's uncle) and Linda for Christmas
...come on Santa, do your worst :)
