SATURDAY 7 DECEMBER – ARSEHOLE We met Steve and Nick at the roundabout below the golf club, and we hiked out of town to another roundabout where the road lead to the border. We had a couple of signs with HARARE PLEASE written on them, and we settle down to play a card game called Arsehole¹ while trying to flag down a ride.
About 10, a Toyota truck with a safari canopy on it stopped in picked us up. There were already three South African hitchers inside, and the owner, Herman, was also South African.
The border was easy, both leaving Malawi and entering Zambia, and when we got to Chipata, the first town inside Zambia, Herman told us that he would pick us up at 7:30 in the morning and take us all the way to Lusaka.
We trudged around for 2 hours looking for somewhere to stay and ended up in the flashest joint in town. The room rate was 1,325 Zambian kwacha for a double room which worked out at $US19/room, but Nick and I went into town and conducted a shady currency deal in a cafe to net 155 kwacha for the dollar, as opposed to the 70 kwacha officially offered by the bank, so our rooms only ended us up costing US 10 US dollars each.
We had a slap-up meal in the hotel’s restaurant and had a good night’s sleep in really comfortable beds.
¹ Arsehole is a simple card game where the person with the worst had is proclaimed the arsehole and can be bullied, abused, insulted, and told to do menial tasks.
CurseOfTheTraveller 