Before we leave Loza I take an opportunity to update the online journal with the last week or so worth of stuff. Have breakfast, its sunny but quite windy today. SMS from the stragglers is that they’re about 250 KM’s behind us. We are heading to a campsite called Frangella, or something. It’s not on the GPS so we’ll have to keep our eyes open. There is supposed to be a very good on site butchery as well and this is where we’ll probably buy most of the meat for Kariba.
Mattie has to settle the bill with some Pound Sterling travellers cheques, which we determined works out to our advantage. The hotels exchange rates are quite wonky, and the end total for paying in one currency <> another, taking official exchange rates into account. Total bill for me and Annelie, including drinks and the meals: 570 000 Kwachas. Works out to about R 1 140 or £91. Quite a lot, like I said before, for what we got in terms of room quality. And this is AFTER we negotiated a better price. Our options were limited in this part of the world though.
Speaking of which, it’s beautiful out here. Lots of wide open fields and old farm land that must have been quite successful in its day. Now it’s all tall golden grass but it’s still a very nice scene.
At the next town we finally see signs of civilisation, the first since we’ve crossed the border. After a brief stop over in Kapwe, we just manage to catch the Shoprite before it closes and after much trouble to find an ATM that accepted a VISA card (even though most have VISA stickers on them, but don’t accept VISA).
During our drive we have been keeping up to date with Fanie and Dirks movements. They seemed to be tracking along but we knew that the road they’d have to face was lined with pothole on pothole on death trap. Towing a 3 ton trailer shaped like a Mitsubishi Colt cannot be fun if driving it was such a headache.
Anyways, we make quite good time and the road is very smooth all the way, so we arrive at Fringilla just after lunch. The sign post fortunately is quite large and hard to miss. On arrival we are all blown away by the setup. The best I can describe it is that it’s a rather large farm with an onsite butchery, big restaurant and bar with outside seating, a handful of very large conference facilities, play pens, pig pens, goat pens, chickens, ducks, on site post office, Western Union (for money transfers) and a large camp site. The camp site also has numerous lapa’s for making food and top notch cottages and bathroom facilities. Being Sunday afternoon, the place is buzzing with families and large groups of people kicking back, having a nice Sunday roast lunch and chilling in the sun. We register at reception, camping is a mere 25 000 Kwachas each (about R50, or £4) and setup our tents. We bought some nice boerewors at the Shoprite in Kapwe so that goes on the gas stove and lunch is sorted.
To our great surprise, at around 15:00 a white Toyota Fortuner towing a very broken green Colt rolls into the campsite! Mattie quite literally sent them an SMS 10 minutes earlier asking how they were, where they are and that he would like to offer them some chow if they get here. The victorious towing party gets out and we all greet them.
First things first, and we get another round of drinks and seats and settle in to hear their tale, of the 4 tow bars...
We already knew that the Colt blew up again after the engineered timing belt form another make and model broke again. So they ended up towing the car. When they reached the border, well, they had their own adventure with customs to get the vehicles across. During the circus that is a border crossing a very kind truck driver from South Africa took one look at this setup and offered them a real tow bar, instead of the rope they were currently using. He also advised that it is illegal to tow a car with a rope in Zambia (I thought there may be some interesting traffic law eccentricity that they should keep in mind). Also, a tow bar needs to be tied with a rope at both ends anyways, as backup, for in case the tow bar fails. This was especially important for driving over potholes and such: if the front end should fail off the front vehicle, they broken end could stick into a pothole and spear right through the towed vehicle! They arrange to get the truck drivers details in order to return the tow bar once they arrive in S.A.
But first they needed to clear the border. Which was made double difficult by the abundance of trucks trying to do the same thing. And then by a very aggressive and tall Traffic Control Officer (dun dun dun.... probably the same crotch stain that wanted to fine me two days before). Very long story short, but Dirk manages to con his way through it all with the finesse of a Steam boat gambler and through sheer frustration they finally let the injured convoy through. Speaking of which, this “injured convoy” thing worked quite well for them later on, when pulled over at police stops. After Dirk gave them the whole act they usually apologised and wished them all sorts of luck before letting them through.
Anyway, roughly 50 km’s down the road and *klang-KLANG-klangklangklang!* That’s the end of tow bar number one. The secondary safety rope does the trick from keeping the tow off the road. Cool. Rather, not cool: the tow bar snapped in two. Just a few minutes later, another truck stops and the driver jumps out to offer help. They manage to secure yet another tow bar and secure this to the two cars. Few km’s further, *clang-KLANG-klangklangklang!* Second tow bar kaput, broke clean off at the end. The SAME truck driver from tow bar number one stops to offer help. Between the tools in the Fortuner and the tools in his truck, they fashion another tow bar from a combination of leftovers. They give tow bar number one to the driver to go ahead to the next town and at least drop it off at a metal work shop where they can maybe repair it. Oraait, off they go.
*clang-KLANG-klangklangklang!*, third attempt, broken. Running out of options here! So they take a chance to at least tow the car by rope to the next town to the work shop where tow bar number one should be.
Luck smiles on them and they at least reach the town and shop without incident. But as it goes in African countries, not all the ingredients are on site to bake a healthy, welded tow bar. So the locals first need to go off site to another part of town to fetch the flux. Now they don’t have brackets, so off they go again. And one more time, for the bolts and a chain.
After much applied violence, something borrowed and something blue, forged in the fires of Mount Doom, a +3 tow bar of Superior Towing emerges.
Armed with such a divine artefact, the pair managed to tow the Colt the remaining 350 k’s all the way to Fringilla, through horrible potholes and with the aid of extreme anger management counselling (from both Hannelise and Marieke. Apparently Fanie and Dirk was getting quite pissed off with one another, as you’d expect).
At any rate, everyone is still friends and we’re all happy to be together again. We tell them a bit about our adventures on Zanzibar. Annelie and I also explore the pig pens, with the biggest sows we’ve ever seen, each enclosure filled with little piglets squealing for a teat. Annelie melts, as she usually does around small cute animals. Just before 17:00 we make our orders for meat at the butchery: a few kilos of boerewors, chicken, a lamb joint and 9 large T-bone steaks, to be collected tomorrow morning at 09:00. This will supplement the rest of the shopping list (rather LARGE shopping list) that we will be picking up in Lusaka tomorrow for our 4 day boat trip on Lake Kariba (more like the Kariba “dam”, but anyway).
On the way to the butchery, we run into the owner, George, who happens to be from Kenya and just so happens to know Fanie’s dad and uncles! It may seem coincidental, because that’s exactly what it was. It’s also true that before the Mao-Mao’s drove all the white farmers out of Kenya about 40 years ago, the white farming community there knew each other quite well. I guess it’s still a small world after all.
Later in the evening George came to chat some more and inquired about the broken vehicle. George recommended that they tow the car to Moonia Singh’s workshop just before Lusaka. Moonia is well known in these parts as Zambia’s world rally champion and he has his own engineering shop here. A few phone calls later and it’s done.
So tomorrow first thing they’ll head off the workshop and we’ll catch them at Shoprite.
Highlights: The others making it in one piece in such a short time with so much uphill!
Piglets! Delicious looking piglets!
[G & A], out
Organised and dangerous
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