Another five hundred kilometre day ahead but first I had to negotiate the centre of chaotic Lusaka. Getting through the city at this time of the day was always going to take at least an hour.
Once out the other side all was fine but I had been warned that there would be about seventy or eighty kilometres of roadworks early on in the trip. But for the first hour or so the scenery was quite lovely as the sun climbed into the sky.
However, as promised, the road turned to crap so I just put my head down and got on with riding for long periods standing upright. Once I passed the very pleasant town of Mazabuka all was well again.
The road then zigzagged across the narrow gauge railway which carried goods daily between Zambia and Zimbabwe.
I had decided that I would stop for petrol and a break at Choma, which was past the halfway mark of the day’s journey.
From here on, and as there was little traffic, I opened up the throttle a bit. Nothing too mad of course. When coming out of a small town I noticed a police car with a speed gun but I reckoned that I was well past it and that it probably didn’t pick me up. A few kilometres on I noticed a white car in my rear mirror and it was gaining on me.
There were two choices. Either slow right down to see if it was the police car pursuing me or belt on because he could never catch me. I chose the latter and within ten minutes I was well away from him. I then dropped back to a normal pace.
About twenty minutes later an oncoming car flashed at me. I took this as a warning that there was a speed trap ahead and, just to be safe, set the cruise control at 100kph, the speed limit.
Sure enough, a few minutes later I was pulled over by two policemen with a speed camera. I initially argued with them that I had not been breaking the limit and that, as a responsible grandfather, I had great respect for the law. They were neither impressed with my logic nor interested in the pictures of Kaylee stuck to the tank.
I was directed to dismount and to go over to the police car parked under a tree. There, the grumpy senior officer sat slouched back in his seat sipping a Coca Cola while his colleague in the passenger seat dealt with a couple of truck drivers.
I was courteous but definite in my view that I had not been speeding. He was slow to tell me by how much I was breaking the limit but, when I pushed him on it, he said that I was doing 117kph. He was lying but by now I had come to accept that I was not getting out of here without paying a fine.
He gave me the alternative of a court hearing in a nearby town the next day. The fine was three hundred Kwacha (€25) although I noticed that the lorry drivers only had to pay fifty.
He was just going to pocket the money so I insisted on getting a receipt. Needless to say, he took ages with this.
So complete with a nice new criminal record, I thanked him for his courtesy and moved on. Maybe the earlier squad car had phoned ahead and so there was perhaps some form of poetic justice for the legal system in the end.
The roadside for the last eighty kilometres to Livingstone was totally scorched for charcoal. It just went on and on. It’s hard to capture this properly in a photo but it’s quite horrible and one wonders what people will eventually do once there is little land to scorch.
I was soon on the approach into the town and was looking forward to resting up for a day.
I had covered about one thousand kilometres in two days and a break by Victoria Falls was very appealing…..
ZIGZAGGING AFRICA BY MOTORBIKE 