Arrived at Kachele

Yesterday we got out of the pickup truck at about 6pm and I had my first tour around Kachele Farm. It had taken us four days to drive there...

On Wednesday at 3.30am my alarm went off and I stumbled out of my room and into the pickup truck that would take me 2100km north. I was travelling with Sal, Jaap, Simon and George (Australian, Dutch, South African and Canadian). The back seat of the Hilux was a bit cramped with 3 not so short men in it. We were on the road for 14.5 hours that day, stopping only for fuel and bodily functions. It took around an hour to cross the South Africa/Botswana border which I thought was a long time (oh how wrong was I?). While we were driving we saw ostrich, a fairly big snake, warthogs, baboons and a few elephants, all on our way to our campsite.

The next day we packed up and left at 8:00, we drove for 5 hours to the Botswana/Zambia border and spent an hour leaving Botswana and crossing the Zambezi by ferry. On the Zambian side of the river we had to get our visas and then go through customs, this took 7 hours! That border was awful, the lowest point of the trip. We were trying to get a trailer full of sheets and blankets through but it took forever, we had different people telling us to get different bits of paperwork and it was all a big mess. While Sal was sorting that out we were being pestered by people asking to wash the car or watch it (protect it from people who might steal luggage etc). Trying to convince these people, particularly one guy who'd been at the home-brew, that we could watch it perfectly well while we're sitting inside it was almost as hard as getting the trailer through customs. We finally crossed the border just after it got dark and drove for another hour to our campsite just outside Livingston. I went to sleep in the tent listening to Victoria Falls roaring away in the distance.

Friday was our rest day. Me, Sal and Jaap went to Victoria Falls for a few hours, it is coming to the end of the wet season so the falls were pumping so much water that we couldn't see much of the actual waterfall because of the huge cloud of mist and vapour that was being thrown into the air around it. Walking across the cliffs and over the bridges we got wetter than if we'd been for a swim! I managed to get a handful of photos and videos before my camera got so wet it cut out, I spent a lot of time over the last few days trying to dry out the camera and my lenses. We spent that evening watching the sun set over the Zambezi before an early night.

On Saturday we had another 12 hours of driving ahead so we were up early for a 6am start. The road quality was very mixed that day, from brand new tarmac to roads with potholes bigger than bath tubs. I've never seen potholes as big as those ones, some were at least 18 inches deep. After a long, hot and very cramped last day we arrived at Kachele Farm not long before sunset. I met a load of people, some completely new, some from my orientation and some I hadn't seen for at least 4 years. I had an absolutely amazing journey, if my time in Zambia is only half as good as this roadtrip then I can't wait to get started.