March is the month of long weekends in Zambia. Taking time
to recognize everything from youth, women and the resurrection of a certain
carpenter requires significant leave from work. Zambia is a large, spread out country and going anywhere outside Lusaka is usually a hike. These long
weekends offer a perfect chance to visit those destinations which are typically
just out of reach.
Our destination of choice this time was Mutinondo, a park
situated in the north not too far from where the bat migration takes place. In
the early morning hours we crammed ourselves and all our gear into two trusty
RAV 4s and set off on the 7 hour journey. Back home, driving 7 hours south would take
me to four states, through at least six significant metropolitan centers, and
past countless rest stops and restaurants. Here, there’s only one that matters:
Fig Tree Café. Sometimes I think it’s the only reason I go out of town. It’s a bright point in an early morning drive, coming at the exact moment when
you start to come down from that initial start-of-vacation high.
Not long after our morning communion with baked goods and
coffee we were forced to pull over. The leading car had a flat, but between the two cars we scrounged together all the necessary equipment
and got to work with surprising efficiency. In no time we had it changed and
were back on track; no sweat. In the next town we’d repair the flat and keep
ourselves covered. However, once there we learned the flat was unfixable, and,
it being a holiday, there wasn’t anywhere to buy a new tire. Then we learned
the spare on the other car was also
unusable. The best we could do would be to put a tube in the flat, which we
did, in case the worst happened, which it did.
A few hours later the spare
loudly and messily gave up the ghost. Its death throes of flying rubber
shredded the mud flap to bits and shore off part of the bumper. We limped into a rural church and, under the
watchful eye of some Witnesses (now I know why they're not called Helpers) we, for the third time that day, removed the
bike rack, took off the spare (punctured but filled with a tube) jacked the car
up and replaced the tire. By that time we all had our assigned roles in the process
and were actually getting quite fast about it. After the car was back together we congratulated ourselves then set off at a much more cautious pace, negotiating the last 20 km of dirt road
as gingerly as possible.
All this stress and excitement made us that much more
appreciative of the magnificent wilderness we were entering. A fault runs below
the area through which magma has bubbled up creating clusters of rounded,
purple black hills surrounded by flat terrain. Rivers cut through the volcanic rock resulting in a number of strikingly beautiful waterfalls. A minimum of dangerous land and
water wildlife means these hills are prime for exploration. Over the course of
the weekend we hiked, biked and swam our way across the reserve; jumping
off waterfalls, scrambling over mountains and bushwhacking through the trees.
While it makes me shudder a bit now, it was a good thing for the enjoyment level at the time that we learned about black mamba encounters (and chases) in that
area after we’d come back.
It was good to take time away from the city, surrounded by
trees and water and stars. It’s always good to get away from exhaust and
congestion for a while, to eat campfire meals and be in the sun and spend
entire days at a time outdoors. It’s also good to be away from home if only
because you appreciate it more when you come back. For example, I’m glad to be
near other people, and not hundreds of km from anyone, when the unexpected
happens. We had yet another flat tire on the way back, but this time we were without any working spare. Very luckily for us, we
had just reached a town where we found a second-hand tire that, while not quite
the right size, was able to fit on the car (though not before it took us an
hour to figure out how to the flat off
the car). It was also good to be in a bed again. Some heavy rain at night, and
the fact that I’d accidentally brought a damaged tent, led to a couple restless
nights of sleeping in the car. Still, let it be said that not one of these
setbacks detracted from the experience. It’s hard to feel anything but good in
a place like that.
