Day 58-59 Lumangwe Falls to Kasama

We initially thought to stay for two days at the falls, but after seeing the run-down facilities and being the only people and still seeing leaking oil we decided to head back to Kasama. We had breakfast and packed up by 10:30. We drove to the Kabwelume Falls only 5km away, but the road took us 30 minutes. Hugo went down all the way and got properly wet.

We only got back to the main gravel road at 12:00. The 80km to Mporokoso is still gravel, but we could average 45kmph. Rather 60kmph on big sections and then 20kmph on the rest.

The oil leak looked like it got worse so we stopped 50km from Kasama to check it out. Hugo tested the diff oil level, but it felt like it was still full. We made it back to Thorn Tree at 17:00.

Caro made Spaghetti with mince next to the car in the parking lot, where we also slept. After dinner we set up office in the restaurant charging everything and trying to get some work done. Hugo bought hourly bundles as it works out cheaper, but every time we ‘missed’ the time out and then the internet uses ‘out-of-bundle’ rates which depleted our airtime much faster than just buying a big weekly bundle would have done.

Caro couldn’t stay awake anymore so we went to bed at 23:30. Hugo waited for 24:00 and bought a 1.5Gb night bundle for only K8 to upload photos and download updates and offline maps.

Day 59 Kasama

George came at 09:00 to help us again. We took the axle off again and tried to see what the problem could be. There was nothing obvious, but George thought the inner seal’s cable was not tight enough. He cut it shorter, but then couldn’t get it back in so we had to go buy another seal. We also drained some diff oil as he also suspected that he could have accidentally put in too much oil two days ago. Finally around 12:00 we got everything back in and went for a test drive. George took us to the Location (actual name of informal part of town, literally saw poster advertising: “House for sale in Location”), where Caro bought a ‘real’ chitengi. We also bought a spare bearing kit and a new bottle jack as ours broke this morning.

For the rest of the day Caro tried to work on Unisa assigments while Hugo struggled with the internet and tried to help the owner with his PAYE Tax Return.

We decided to have dinner at the restaurant again and ordered grilled chicken. The restaurant was almost full (7 people) with Afrikaans South Africans. It was nice to speak and hear some Afrikaans again from someone other than each other. All the others, however, live and work in Zambia, some for 20 years already.

Tomorrow we’ll hopefully be heading north again.