10th December 2013
Its time to move on after too
many days of the idyllic lifestyle I have grown accustomed to at the
wonderful Paceli hostel. One piece of luck was that two Australian
girls were heading to the bus station at the same time as myself and
of course I had to pay only a third of what I was expecting for the
taxi. Its probably the only safe way of getting somewhere on time.
For some strange reason I cant access photos to load onto this blog so have put them on my Facebook. sorry
It was the first time I had used
an African bus station and not a lot different from the Indian
variety or a typical European one on a very bad day. The place was in
turmoil and it looked like the bus would never be able to get out
through the seething mass of vehicles that packed every space.
However, the bus started to move exactly on time at nine thirty and
it was obviously well organized chaos for we exited the station in
only five minutes.
There were several police check
points just after leaving Lusaka and for some reason the axle weight
of all buses and trucks was weighed. But the worst part was that the
air-conditioning was not on and the temperature outside was about
thirty six degrees. The bus was pretty new so it was most probably to
conserve fuel like all the taxis in Lusaka do. Whatever the reason,
it became uncomfortably hot and sticky during the seven hour journey.
In this part of the world it has become clear that seven hours is
just a training run. Along the often newly (Chinese) tarmacked road,
it passed by many small grass roofed settlements and some of those
famous red dust African roads.
