So our day of departure from Lokuthula started much like many other departure days. All three of us had waited until this morning to do any form of packing so we quickly had our tea and coffee while frantically stuffing the car with all of our belongings. While I was loading the car Jenny walked up to e reception and got our deposit back and informed them about some of the problems with the lodge (mainly the fact that they replace towels every day even if you haven't used them). During one of my trips back into the house to get suitcases I return to the car to find a very nice security man guarding the open boot of the car "wouldn't want any monkeys to raid your things".
We departed from the lodge right on time for our scheduled checkout and headed into town to pick up a few things before we got on the road to Lusaka. Me had told us that diesel was quite expensive in Zambia so we decided to fill up the car before we embarked on our 500km drive. When we had filled the car up we headed to the Zimbabwe border post ready to end our second trip into this country that God seemed to have forsaken. The Zimbabwe side of the border post posed no problems and after a mere 5 minutes we were back in the car and driving through no-mans-land. I wish I could say the same for our experience at the Zambian side. We arrived at the second border post to find several buses of local attempting to take very large haphazardly wrapped packages through customs. Again the runners were everywhere, but this time we knew what to expect. Lesley and Jenny stood in the immigration queue while I took up a spot pre-emptively waiting in the customs queue.
Jenny and Lesley managed to get my visa before I had even moved in my queue but luckily there was a very nice man (who we thought was a runner) who actually wanted to help us for free. Once my visa was stamped he somehow convinced the people in the customs queue to let us to the front and one stamp later we were on our way! When we cleared the border post we were mindful to obey the ridiculously low speed limits because Joe warned us he had been caught doing 74 km/hr in a 65 km/hr zone, so it seemed that there was no tolerance when it comes to speed. The downside to this strategy was that there were no speed limit signs for the next 200km so we eventually sped up and carried on to Lusaka at 110km/hr.
Perhaps it was our lack of long trips in the past 2 weeks but the drive seemed to go on and on and on. The scenery remained unchanged and the entire trip only involved 2 turns. The only thing exciting on the trip was finding a recent accident (within the previous 5 minutes) along the side of the road similar to the accident we witnessed a few weeks ago. Nobody seemed to be injured and their were plenty of people stopped to help so we simply carried on. A few km down the road we all needed a toilet break so in true African style simply stopped along the side of a deserted stretch and all wandered into the bush. After many more boring km we finally started to get close to Lusaka, rather disappointingly this is where things slowed down. Zambia has a habit of thinking that any speed over 10 km/hr is too fast, so starting 20 km outside Lusaka they place massive speed bumps every 200 metres or so. We basically crawled the remaining distance to Lesley and Joe's house navigating terrible drivers, slow traffic and unmarked intersections.
When we finally made our way to the house just after 17:00 we found Joe in the swimming pool throwing a water bottle for Thebe. We were hungry for dinner so Jenny and joe ran out to get a pizza while I brought in the suitcases and moved them to the room we would be staying in. We spent the remainder of the evening watching some tv and enjoying a few beers while we unwound from a boring yet exhausting drive.
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