Day Twenty 14th July 2010 - Cops and Speedsters

Wake up call 0530 hours of which we all managed coz the journey ahead was to be Lusaka in Zambia 1500kms away that would take us through Francistown, Livingstone and finally Lusaka in Zambia. So off we were.....we skipped breakfast by the way, but we did have a small bite at Palapye namely a National Breakfast at Wimpy...

A bit of something from your Geography class

Speeding - The roads in Botswana are truly excellent and speeding is inevitable, last time round we were lucky since we went through the Kalahari route hence no cops there, but between Gaborone and Francistown they were plenty.

Beware of the little white cars - We got busted for speeding and a multitude of other traffic violations

1. Speeding in an 80kph zone
2. Overtaking a cop car in a continuous line zone
3. Overtaking a cop car while speeding in a continuous line zone
4. Not recognizing a cop car (yah they are white with red plates labeled BX)

They even have replay videos showing you how fast you were traveling, wanted to ask for a copy of the video for the blog but i thought better of it.....

Cops....they all take bribes doesn't matter which side of the equator you are on.

Botswana is like the beef capital of southern Africa...they were headed to Marapong and no it's not a slaughter house

Speeding through the Kalahari yet again then we met these guys in the Silver Subaru which i later got to find it was named Silvester...wonder if it likes birds like it's namesake there was plenty of those on these Botswana roads...more on the birds Later. We bonded with these guys for more than 30 minutes, it was nice to see some kenyans who had a similar mission with us, exchanged contacts, blog addresses and even signed Silvester's hood.

Check out their blog on http://www.roadventures.net

Excerpt from their blog "Naomi was driving from Francistown towards Nata in northern Botswana when she was overtaken by a navy blue Toyota Wish. She didn’t notice the KBL number plates and started wondering why the driver was asking her to pull over by hooting and flashing his hazards.

Once she did, what resembled a firearm emerged from the front seat. We went into panic mode and started fasting and praying. A few seconds later, it emerged it was a crutch from McCrutch and our fast ended. It was closely followed by Jomo blowing his vuvuzela and Shem pumping the air with his fists"

Naomi, Cathy, GB and Mwarv bond with ShhTeam FC

Messages from all over the world.....would you have thought 3 Kenyans would be signing this somewhere in the middle of the Kalahari?

Dash for the ferry - After meeting the crew from roadventures they suggested we cross the border to Zambia using the Kazungula ferry instead of going through Zimbabwe again. So we needed to get to the ferry 285kms away in just under 3 hours. After a fuel stop at Nata we made the mad dash for the ferry, good roads meant we were making good progress and we made it to the border post at about 1740 hours and we were informed the ferry would be closing any second now, the officials processed us quickly and we were soon off to the ferry, amazingly we made it jus before they closed the ferry closed and we were the last car to board, one car late and we wouldn't have made it. Twas exciting stuff.

Great shot of the sunset over the Zambezi river from the ferry

Classic photo opportunity for ShhTeam FC

Last to arrive on the ferry...last to leave the ferry

Same script....different cast....border crossing madness in Zambia

Wacky Wednesday all the way from Livingstone, Zambia

After a hearty meal at Steers we were again on the road destination Lusaka, roads were good aside from a 20km diversion after Livingstone, arrived in Lusaka about 2am to get a rest.

Lightning strikes twice - Same driver, same road, same result, 6 dead birds. Shem should be reported to the Botswana animal rights, those are 12 birds in 2 weeks, one even got stuck in the hood and got a ride on the Kazungula ferry then mysteriously disappeared when we got to the Zambia side.....Hmmmmm