Days 68 thru 70

(Dan’s comments are italicized)

We were sad to say goodbye to Livingstone as it had been fun. But we were excited to visit Lake Kariba. The lake took 5 years to fill up after completion of the dam in 1958. It’s 129 miles long, 25 miles wide, and holds 43 cubic miles of water (for those of you who have a difficult time envisioning 43 mi³, that is 10,940,000,000,000,000 in cubic inches); this makes it the largest (capacity) man-made lake in the world to this day!

We had a route plotted. But, somewhere along the line, I spotted a road that would save 13% in petrol and so, being ever-cognizant of our carbon footprint, we opted to take it. While examining the maps of the coast of Lake Kariba, I had seen that there were lodges tucked into the bays. However, there wasn’t a road along the shoreline. Each path to a bay is ,essentially, a dead end.

You truly would expect that we’d have learned by now, but apparently not 😂 In all fairness, the route was beautiful and interesting…

The road, however, started off well but deteriorated quickly. Still, our bodies were well-rested so it wasn’t too bad.

Until our car broke down.

In the middle of nowhere.

Thank goodness Dan has electronic skills as he managed to identify the problem (battery connections) and performed a temporary fix 🎉. I was able to quickly identify the problem because when we were going over the inspection during the rental process, the guy checked the battery cable connection. Luckily I had brought a Leatherman multi-tool along with pliers. Still, when the car just shut off while driving, my heart skipped a few beats.

But we weren’t done with our poor decisions just yet. We went through a place that had a guest house, but we decided to add an extra 30 km as we thought we’d have a choice of places to stay and could have a room overlooking the lake. Those 30 km took us 50 minutes…and we realized we weren’t where we thought we were. BUT there was a guest house.

We all know by now that my standards aren’t particularly high. But this room was like a prison cell; and it was filthy and stank of urine. Dan knew things were serious when I stepped out of the room and just said, “No!” I had the mindset of “experience over comfort”, and would love to have written about how awful that nights stay was, but sadly, that has to be left to my imagination 😞.

So it was 30 km back to the little town whence we made our last poor decision. The good news is that, because daylight was beginning to fail, we made it back in 30 minutes 👍. I even managed to hit 70 kmh on the way back out, prompting Rhia to say something I have never heard her say to me, “Slow Down!”

The room (which cost $10) smelled so clean; though had no sink, no toilet seat, and a broken toilet flush! But it was clean so we were happy. The toilet tank was actually made out of thin vinyl plastic and held onto the wall with two drywall screws. The tank was so distorted from the volume of water and was that the plastic top would no longer fit on top. 

Until we lay on the bed.

I think Dan and I passed the test to qualify as fakirs that night. The mattress was an old spring one, but all the springs were broken and pointing in different directions. It was like sleeping on a bed of nails.

But at least it was a clean bed of nails! This mattress is the top of the list of most uncomfortable bed we have ever slept on.

Needless to say, we were off early the next day. Again, the route was beautiful and interesting, the car kept breaking down, and the road left much to be desired. The road was so bumpy that the battery cables kept shaking loose, and the post clamps nuts were as tight as I could make them. I resort to just pounding on the post clamps to temporarily tighten the connection until the next engine shutdown.

But we reached Siavonga safely and there were many guest houses to choose among! 

We had seen, online, a resort called Lake Safari Lodge right on the shores of Lake Kariba. To book the place was $120 a night, so we purposely decided to drive into town and actually look at a number of availabilities and make our decision on the spot. This place was at the top of the list.

And it’s absolutely beautiful!

Our room is glorious…

The last time I was here, there were no places to stay; I camped! This is much, much better!

We taught our kids at a young age that wherever they were in the world, they could look up and see the same moon that we see, and we send kisses the moon so that they can get them whenever they need them.

There’s something special about Zambia. Everyone I’ve told that I used to work here many moons ago has responded the same way; he or she  smiles and says, “Welcome home, mama!” As we enter our last week here, I have no doubt that we’ll be back someday.