We have completed the fourth stage of our journey North. So far we have driven some 7,200 miles on tar and dirt roads and are now very far from Cape Town, where we started our expedition. During this last stage of the trip we crossed the African continent from West to East, leaving the Atlantic coast and its deserts for the lush green coast of the warm Indian Ocean.

This last stage was filled with challenges and tense moments that we had, until now, avoided or prevented. Our stress meter reached peak levels when one of our cameras was stolen in Lusaka. A huge bummer! From Livingstone, Victoria Falls, we were joined by an annoying companion, the rain, which we only managed to shake off once we arrived to the coast. To leave Lusaka (the capital of Zambia) we had to take on a road that looked more like an angry river. The water after a strong storm flooded the main avenue and made it impassible for any small or medium car. Those that tried we left floating! Nonetheless, with Nandi’s strength and some determined driving on my part we were able clear our highest water levels and continue our journey towards Tanzania.

Our days were long and filled mostly with intense driving. Nandi’s performance was respectable, given that one of our longest days on the road was during this last leg (10 hours of driving, 550 miles). However, Nandi did show signs that the road took a tool on her. It was mostly small things, such as a small rock chipping the windshield (that thankfully did not split entirely) and the air intake plastic cover feel off from the shaking. One of the not-so-minor issues with Nandi was the started. One day she just would not start! We had to search the streets of Mbeya (just 60 miles from the border of Zambia) for someone who could fix our starter. The other serious thing we needed to fix on Nandi was the rear door lock, which we replaced on the busy streets of Dar Es Salaam.

Patrick (next to Haroldo) is known to be the best auto-electric in Mbeya, in southern Tanzania. He completely dismantled our starter, cleaned it, replaced some minor parts, all in about an hour and half.

We only found a replacement lock for Nandi’s back door in Dar Es Salaam. Before then we had to rig the door shut with a screwdriver and duck tape.

The Zambian and Tanzanian roads are okay. About 80% of the tarred roads allow for Nandi to reach her 60 mph max cruising speed, while the other 20% is filled with pot holes – some dangerously hidden others abruptly taking over the width of the road. But forget having a shoulder to pull off the road – making it hard for us to have our frequent stops to switch drivers and drink water. We quickly noticed that the co-pilot had to do much more than help navigate, providing another pair of eyes on the road to alert the driver of caution ahead, “big pothole on the left”, “careful, broken down truck on right”, “speeding bus on the wrong side of the road!”

As Zambia it is a land-locked country it receives hundreds of truck loads of goods that come in through the port in Dar Es Salaam, daily. These are mostly fuel tankers with double trailers or heavy shipping-container trailers. Since the flow of trucks was on the opposite lane, coming towards us, we had to watch out for the occasional head-on encounter with one of these monsters. More than once we had to stop and pull off (on to the non-existent shoulder) to allow a huge truck to pass another. The ‘competition’ between Zambia and Tanzania ended in a tie, in two days we saw no less than three over-turned trucks in each country.

The rough roads, high-speed driving, and sleepless truckers are all major factors causing these horrific accidents.

Believe it or not, the truck drivers are not the worst ones on the road. Bus drivers take the prize for craziest driving. We were passed, several times, by buses on blind turns and uphill where they clearly could not see the on-coming traffic. Since we were in no hurry, we let them pass and maintained safe driving tactics.

Driving on the more mountainous roads, descending the highlands towards the coast, we saw one scene that was hard to believe. A bus, filled with passengers, after passing us on a blind turn, goes on to pass a long double-trailer fuel tanker on yet another bend. It must have been his lucky day because he got away with some serious gambles.

On the mountain roads following the Ruaha river, which connects the highlands of Iringa to the plans of Mikumi, a bus risks passing a truck on a turn with no view of on-coming traffic.

Still smelling of diesel from the road, as soon as we arrive in Dar Es Salaam we head straight for the beaches south of the capital to plunge into the warm (85º F) of the Indian Ocean. We were all rewarded for surviving the rough road; Nandi took a few days off on the beach while we headed to Zanzibar to encounter the best moments of this stage. We’ll save these stories for the next two posts to come.

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