Day 48: Lusaka to Forest Inn

We got up when Mewin waked us with the two coffees and went down to have breakfast (which Mewin also sets out), with Francois. About an hour after he left for work we managed to get on the road. The 6 days at Francois really did us good, we felt ready for the road again and managed to earn some money to keep the journey going.

In Lusaka we stopped to fill up on fuel and fresh groceries before heading north. The traffic was quite bad and we only reached the “You are now leaving Lusaka” sign at 11:30.

The road was in very good condition, but the going was still slow with all the trucks and the villages where you have to drive 40km/h.

We stopped at the Fig Tree Café 7km before Kabwe for a short toilet break and light lunch.

At Kapiri Mposhi we turned right and suddenly all the flatbed trucks with copper turned into fuel tankers from Tanzania.

We reached the Forest Inn (70 Kwacha p.p) at 16:00. We were the only campers and chose a spot near the lapa and kitchen sinks as we didn’t want to pack out too much stuff. We set up the tent and immediately started with dinner.

Caro bought Oyster Mushrooms this morning for only K8, apparently it is much more expensive in South Africa. We tried to fry the mushrooms and cook spaghetti, but both stove tops were so slow, the water didn’t even get to boiling point. The stove tops were still ‘damaged’ from the too-full-bottle episode. We first blamed each other for not buying a new one, until Hugo went to fetch the sewing kit and pliers and proceeded to open the top and tried to press the needle through the holes. It didn’t feel like anything happened, but when we tested it again it was faster than ever and the pasta was ready in no time.

After dinner we took a shower and climbed in the tent. “What time is it?” Caro asked. 19:00…

We had good mobile reception (1.7Mbps), so Hugo checked our inbox and saw there was some work to do. While Hugo worked Caro made notes for this journal. At 21:00 it was finally lights out.