Day 56 Kapishya to Kasama

We slept in our ground tent again, even though we had the MonkeyMobile with us, the one mattress deflated again through the night and at 05:00 in the morning Hugo shifted over to Caro’s mattress.

At 06:00 Caro got up for a last dip in the Hot Spring. We quickly packed up and while Caro did the last packing Hugo went to fetch the Fridge from the lodge kitchen and asked Felix to help check the diff oil. We needed 1L of oil before it was full.

We managed to leave by 07:30, the earliest yet. The road to Kasama was quite good and we arrived at the Thorn Tree Lodge by 10:30. We were welcomed by the friendly Claire and after she showed us around, we told her about our vehicle problem. She immediately called their mechanic George. We thought, ‘here we go again’, but we would soon be pleasantly surprised.

George arrived a while later and immediately set out to help us. There was oil leaking all over the wheel so he suggested we shouldn’t drive and took us to Shoprite while he took our original axle to some of his contacts to see what they can do. He picked Hugo up again and they went to buy a new bearing for K395 and then took it to a local with a press who pressed out the old bearing and ABS ring en pressed in the new bearing and old ABS ring for only K200. Back at the lodge we struggled until after dark to get everything back in again as Felix took everything apart for the broken axle. Also after the first try, the axle didn’t go in so we had to go back to the press to press the bearing deeper in.

At the end of the day, we could drive again and Hugo took George to his house. He said he doesn’t charge anything, we can pay him what we want. Hugo gave him K300. So for less than a K1000, we had our old axle all fixed up. We refuse to believe that Kapishya didn’t know that we can get a bearing in Kasama and that there are people with a press. We could have been sorted within two days for a 1/15th of the price. I promise this will be the last time complaining about Kapishyagate.

We decided to order from the restaurant. Caro opted for the Bream (K60), while Hugo ordered a pork tjop (K60). The food was delicious and we went to bed with full tummies, tired from the day’s excitement.