African Overland Holiday...Part IV

Conclusion: Zambia again “Problems? Eh bring ‘em on!”

As promised the “new” booking agent takes us across the border at 8am. We arrive to another empty bus and just sleep. Luckily we do have Zambian kwacha so we can get food at this border town. We know we have hours until we leave so we take our time cruising the strip (the only road) and making friends with volunteers from different countries who survived the ride from Dar last night. We wait until about 4pm and our bus finally takes off, the first of the fleet of buses heading to Lusaka. Our driver is awesome, fast but safe. He is however in a weird race for first to Lusaka, do they get medals for first of the day? It’s really odd that for being in such a rush he makes frequent long stops at every little village store we pass. The best was at one point another bus passes our parked bus while he’s enjoying a coke, he drops the coke and makes a mad dash for the bus. Everyone else runs on the bus because well we know he’d leave us if it meant coming in second.

Somewhere outside of Kapri Mposhi (sorry don’t have a travel book near me to check the spelling) we run out of gas. Yes, we had been driving for like 10 hours and no we never got gas but I guess the driver just thought we’d make it, silly. Everyone else (Zambians and my friends) are upset and outraged, I just laughed and used this non-moving time to sleep. I figured well someone will walk to get gas or we’ll just wait for the bus tomorrow to pass through, I mean really after everything we’d been through this was really “no problem.” We were after all still alive and safe so I could really care less. An hour or two later our bus was moving again. I can’t really say what happened as I was sleeping but we were just 200km away from Lusaka, I could almost taste the freedom (what am I talking about).

We had no other transport problems, we made it to Lusaka and I left my stuff with my friends and ran to get us tickets for the only reliable bus to Livingstone, it was leaving in 30 minutes, perfect. In Livingstone we found Intercape tickets back to Namibia. Originally I was going to free hike this, partly because I didn’t want to spend money for something I can do for free and because I like meeting people when you are hiking. After the last month I just dreamed of the Intercape that would take me back to Namibian soil where things don’t make sense most of the time and every car ride is a death sentence but it’s what I know. It’s where I feel comfortable to jump out of a car if it’s too dangerous or demand a driver to slow down. It’s home.

I literally kissed the ground when we crossed the border. I’m weird I know and really in all my travels I never thought I would end up feeling the way I felt after this trip. I mean I love to travel, I love it. But after this trip I just thought about returning to Outjo and never leaving until I return to America (not realistic at all, I have friends coming to visit in like three weeks). Maybe next time I’ll try booking one of those expensive, worry-free safari type of trips, maybe that’s the kind of travel I’m becoming.