After extending our stay at Lake Malawi yet for another 3 days, we half-heartedly decided that we really needed to move away from there...
Once you leave the lake shore the scenery becomes drier with cute little hut villages all along the way set amongst large areas of trees with red, yellow and orange leaves; all of the sudden the city of Lilongwe pops seemingly out of nowhere and you are in the capital of the country.
It is a pleasant little city in which we spend also longer than expected. Cruisi was making a noise that needed to be taken care of. Waiting, repairing and waiting some more took 2 and a half days. (once on the road again we realised that the noise is still there...)Because of all the driving around in the city the fuel would have not lasted us until the Zambian border and we needed to get a few litres to reach it, this took another half day.
Finding a petrol station is easy, there are plenty, finding one that actually sells petrol is a huge mission. We drove all over the place and we almost exhausted the last drops of our fuel until finally we found the only station in the whole city still having some. The cue of waiting cars was enormous, reaching over two blocks away from the station itself. We had no option other than wait patiently and pay in the end about 70 USD for 25 litres of the precious liquid.
Petrol really makes the world go round, there is no question about it!
After an extended stay in Malawi we reached Zambia. We did not know exactly what to expect from this country apart from what we had heard some of the nicest and most welcoming people which is definitely the case.
Apart from that we were pleasantly surprised to be entering bush environment again, we had missed this after getting in touch with it in South Africa, and we did not have a proper bush experience since we left it actually. With ‘bush experience’ we mean being in environments and situations that remind you of the extent and remoteness of the stereotypic African wilderness and give you the feeling that a wild animal could come out at any time from one of the bushes around. The sounds of places like this are unique, the sky seems bigger than anywhere else and the sunrise and sunsets can be truly breathtaking.
And this is what we headed for when driving up to the national park of South Luangwa. We found an amazing campsite (Wildlife Camp) just outside of the park; there are no fences here to mark the boundaries of the park, people need to make way for animals here and not the other way around when their paths cross. So when we arrived at the campsite we were greeted by 3 giraffes standing just next to the bar area.
We camped just on top of the river bank, which is dry during this time, and had the view of the whole riverbed and the opposite banks of the park. The most amazing location to stop after a long drive and like proper overlanders, get the chairs out, open a cold beer and sit back and enjoy the African sunset. 
During the day it is hard to do anything else than either sit somewhere in the shade or drive around with open windows, climbing out of the tent at 6 am already makes you sweat, it gets really hot here, it can reach up to 50 degrees on a good day. We have reduced our meals to two per day and they consist mainly of breakfast and tomato salads, its too hot to eat. This is quite convenient as the overlanding life of driving, eating carbohydrate laden African diets, sitting down again and drinking afternoon beers had resulted in some fat accumulation...
It is the end of the dry season and everybody and everything is waiting for the rains to come. Just in front of our campsite a hippo left his last breath on the river bank after not finding enough water to stay in.
The lions and hyenas did not even bother to eat him as most of the animals are so weak because of the lack of water that they are an easy and fresh pray.The nights are a great spectacle. Each night we can wake up and watch the hippos come to the green grass of the campsite to have a feast. One night an elephant came so close to the tent that he touched it with his tusk, we could have shake hands.
Although we could have done most of our game watching from the camp we did nevertheless enter the park.
Here the fees are a mere 30 US Dollars per person and 15 for the car compared to the 80 and 150 in Kenya, Tanzania etc, here you are by yourself and everything seems truly wild. In the park we had breakfast on the roof of Cruisi waiting for the animals to come. At some point we realised that the roles had been reversed, giraffes and antelopes were standing just behind us watching us, we had not even realised them.
Another closer encounter happened when we were standing in the middle of an elephant herd and Cruisi started fuming white smoke from below the engine cap. It looked quite concern-able! We switched it off and waited for the elephants to get some distance before checking. The smoke was coming from the air-filter for no obvious reason. With the mechanical expertise we have on board we figured out that some exhaust smoke must have gotten trapped in the filter (...), something like a mechanical burp. It never happened again.
We left the park after 4 days. Not only does the Zambian bush-life remind one of South Africa but even more so the Zambian cities which are a concentration of South African shopping malls and supermarkets, you can find everything from Mr Price, Pick & Pay, Edgars, Standard Bank and Shoprite (which here is more similar to the SA Woolworths!). Lusaka especially, the capital, made us feel like back in South Africa just a bit safer... This is where we are at the moment. Next, we are planning to head to the famous Victoria Falls.
P.S. Luisa’s Confession: I killed a chicken. After managing to avoid millions of them over the 18 000 km we have been driving so far this one was one of the stupidest and Cruisi was too fast and heavy to stop without creating an accident. I hope it could still be used for someone’s dinner...
P.S. 1. Zambia has squirrels with the biggest and monkeys with the bluest bollocks ever!
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