Into Africa - DASKOP's 12000km drive

[DASKOP]

Hello - looks like this is only half way , Would like to read the rest before Santa Claus comes around. :thumleft:

It was a long ride, and he is writing slowly, because Dassie knows you can't read fast  :lol8:

I did not say a word. This time I am totally innocent and blameless and pure and .................... unlike Dirty XT.          :



Thanks Tiger. You understand that some of us, unlike others, do have to work.    :imaposer:

did I miss an opportunity to abuse someone? haha Daskop my chom, MURPHY's spot is still my favorite stop over point in PE don't ruin that for me...

[b]else im coming to stay with you[/b]...

:lol8: :lol8: :lol8:

I will never be the same again........................

Murphy, Dirty XT is the nicest oke I know, its all my fault, I made up all those things that were said, please forgive me.  :'( :'(

DIRTY XT IS INNOCENT.

:imaposer: :imaposer: :imaposer: :imaposer:

 

[DirtyTeNeReLess]

:imaposer: MURPHY and I are DIK mates... he didn't believe you anyway.  :deal:

:imaposer: :imaposer: :imaposer:

ok ok back the RR please.

 

[DASKOP]

OK, now that is settled, the following photos should help restore the focus.

Focus, man, focus. This is a RR.....................NOT ROASTING REPROBATES, but ..................... Ride Report.


:deal:

 

[Cyclops]

Awesome report Daskop, I'm really enjoying it.

Quick question - 572 kms from Lusaka to Chipata with many villages, but how many of them have fuel? Did you have to carry extra fuel for this leg of your trip?

Looking forward to the rest.

 

[DASKOP]

Thanks Cyclops.

Due to the 33 liter tank on the Adventure and the 5,4 l/100km that the bike averaged, we never had to carry extra fuel. To be honest, I cannot really recall any of the smaller villages having fuel services, but I know that we put in fuel at Petuake.

Just to be safe, we put in fuel at times that we did not actually need to, but we took into consideration the warnings from other travelers that the possibility of a dry filling station was very real.

The one thing that I would strongly recommend..........filter the fuel, no matter where you put in.

Why?

That is still to come.  :biggrin:

 

[Mzee]

Interesting RR.  Keep them coming.

 

[DASKOP]

Just to help with the focus (a la Dirty XT) again, some photos .............



Doing a bit of a breakfast run this morning, not quite sure where to yet.

Maybe Port Alfred, Bathurst, Grahamstown, Riebeeck East. We are spoilt for rides around PE.

Will update again later today.

 

[MURPHY]

Hell i sometimes thought you were being a bit anal writing down everything as we went , now i realize that it was essential to your RR . I don't even remember some of the things you have mentioned . Thankfully one of us had some common sense . Keep on telling our story the interesting bits are still coming - cant wait for your solo section of the trip . :ricky:

 

[DASKOP]

Hell i sometimes thought you were being a bit anal writing down everything as we went , now i realize that it was essential to your RR . I don't even remember some of the things you have mentioned . Thankfully one of us had some common sense . Keep on telling our story the interesting bits are still coming - cant wait for your solo section of the trip . :ricky:

Honesty must prevail.

I am just quite aware that I sometimes suffer from bad memory, so I needed to write it down just to make sure that I can tell myself where I went.  :imaposer:

You should not be surprised, seeing how you remind me of my age................."Old Man".    :imaposer:

Seriously though, Murphs, I am very glad I wrote it down, otherwise I might have embarrassed myself with the RR.

OK, what were we talking about???????????  :eek7:

 

[DASKOP]

In Chipata, we book in at Mama Rulas camp site.

We get a spot at the back end of the camp, away from where the Overland crowd is. Set up camp. The area is nice and lush, covered with grass, which we find out is soft when my bike topples over.

The bar is full of Western Province and Stormers memorabilia and flags. We chat to the manager and his wife. Get some tips on where and how as he seems to be quite well traveled. I find out he knows an old mate of mine in Lilongwe and he gives me directions to where his bio-fuel office is.

We have something to eat at the bar. When we go to shower, one of the Overland guides is cooking spinach and peanut butter. We ask him about this odd combination and he offers to bring us some later, which he promptly did while we were having some drinks at the bar. Sounds weird, but it is surprisingly nice.

We can see that there is a party brewing with this Overland crowd, and being the sensible people that we are, we excuse ourselves and get an early night.

Getting older is a *****.



I hope that Murphy has the pictures of this section somewhere on his laptop. Murphy?

Just some confusing trivia.

Zambian currency is the Kwatcha (ZMK) and is divided into 100 ngwee. The ZMK was replaced with the ZMW at a fixed conversion rate of 1000 ZMK = 1 ZMW as from 30 June 2013. Does that mean that 1 ZMW = 100 000 Ngwee?  ???

When we put in fuel at Petuake, 10 liters was ZMK100 or 9,91 per liter, no change was given. Is that R70 per liter?

I drew ZMW300 at Barclays Bank at Zchata. Seemed like the right amount at the time. Just needed enough to get to the Malawian border. Did not want to have left over currency and do exchanges at the border. Wanted to avoid the money changers as much as possible. They can be extremely irritating as you will see when we get to the border.

We were charged ZMN3500 per camp site at Mama Rulas. That would be R245.00??        ???

One lesson learnt on this trip, be up to date with the currency situation of the country that you are in, especially when they are in the process of rebasing and you find an African currency that is significantly stronger than the Rand (on paper), Bots excluded.

Can some Forex experts out there shed some light?

 

[JACOVV]

:sip:

Ek is rustig en ry lekker saam - dankie

 

[DASKOP]

Hallelujah, found the photos.  :ricky:

Now..................if I can just find the time to sort them.  ot:



Hello Angie.............how's my dog?                          :lol8:

 

[DASKOP]

Nyimba - no 17 on the villages list indicated earlier.

 

[DASKOP]

The photo below shows a scene that was frequently seen. At times there were dozens of men, women and children sitting and hammering stones into a coarse aggregate.

These poor people graft hard to eke out a meagre living. Some of our locals cannot say the same.

 

[DASKOP]

Off the topic for a short while.

I want to ride Eastern Namibia and Botswana from the 2nd week of Dec 2013 to the 1st week in Jan 2014. Please check the
"Nam / Botswana in December" under Planning a Ride. ALL advice would be greatly appreciated.

Just some photos Lusaka to Chipata.

 

[Casino]

So this is my version of "The long awaited African adventure".

Some patience is going to be required, as I have a few thousand photos to sift through and sequence.

Day 1 - 26 June 2013 - PE to Murraysburg.

Amazing weather to start the trip with. We were warned that it was going to start raining soon, so we left 2 days earlier than planned. I was not complaining. Could not wait to get this show on the road.

We left from Bob's Appliance World (the only place for kitting out your kitchen, beefing up your bedroom, livening up your lounge..... you get the picture.)

The trip to Murraysburg went without a hitch.

Very nice RR and good reading , enjoyed it very much ! :ricky: thanks

 

[DASKOP]

Thanks Casino!!!!!

Back to the RR.

I was cruising along, minding my own business, when I saw a first for this trip.

A police bike next to the road. So I stopped, turned around and went back. I struck up a conversation with the cops. They were very friendly. Were more inquisitive about where I came from and where I was going.

The cop was very proud of his bike. (You can surely guess where it was made  :biggrin. How long it would still last, that's also anyone's guess. Parts were bopa'd with wire, the tyres were slicks, lettering on the number plate were missing and there were loose wires sticking out. I did not want to push my luck and take close-up photos.

Can you imagine what their involvement in a scene from the "Worlds Greatest Car Chases" would be like?

We bade each other farewell like biker club buddies and I was once again on my way.

Amazingly though, after that, all the way to Chipata, all the cops, at all the roadblocks, just waved me through.............very strange.  :

 

[DASKOP]

As I mentioned before, trucking in Zambia is a very well regulated business. Rigorous policing, zero tolerance.

Overloading is not a problem at all.                     

 

[DASKOP]

I have received a mail from Odded, the Israeli we met in Chivundu. He is in Ethiopia.

This is a link to some of his photos.

https://www.a-trip.com/tracks/view/141391

I wonder where our other friend, Matt, is.

 

[DASKOP]

Villages and bicycles. Plenty of bicycles.