Sunrise
We woke up around 8 AM. I ate cereal for breakfast and took a shower. Showers at Flatdogs were great. The showers had hot water and were in a hut-like building. After all this, we packed up camp and went to the reception area and paid our bill. My portion of the bill was $265 US dollars. I also learned at this time that Zambia does not take old US bills. They only accepts the new bills with the “big heads” as the lady at the desk explained to us.
Sunset
Our next destination in our journey was to go to the home of John and Ruth which was in Mansa. To get to Mansa, we would have to take a taxi to Chipata, a bus from Chipata to Lusaka, and then a bus from Lusaka to Mansa. No bus runs from Mfewe to Mansa.
We took a taxi to Chipata with the two English girls. John sat in the front with the driver and I sat in the back with the Ruth and the two English girls. The English girls were on their way to Malawi which is the adjacent country and is next to Chipata. The driver made good time as it took us three hours instead of the four we originally planned. The trip was pretty smooth though it was really dusty at times. I talked with the English girls for a good part of the ride.
Our taxi driver was a great guy. He was very good at answering our questions about local current events. He also had an interesting taste in music. On our ride, we listened to [[Lucky Dube]] as well as a mix tape of love songs including All My Life by K-Ci and JoJo, You’re Still the One by Shania Twain, and Heal the World by Michael Jackson.
I sat in the front when we took our taxi driver took us from Chipata to Mfuwe. I noticed that occasionally, he would flip something on the far side of his steering column. I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, but when he did, his gauges all went to zero. At first, I thought he was turning off the link to the odometer to spoof its reading. But then I thought that if this was true, why wouldn’t he do this all the time… why only occasionally. On this trip, I noticed him doing it again. So, I asked him about it. Our driver told us he was turning the car off. When he could coast, he would simple turn the car off. When he needed acceleration again, he would turn it back on. He said it saved him a significant amount of fuel. I was very interested in this and knowing if it was true. I paid attention to every driver I had for the next two weeks and noticed most of them did the same thing: the drivers turn their car off when then can coast. Note, you cannot do this with a new automatic car in the US — I tried, it doesn’t work, even if you shift into neutral before turning the car off. All of the car I rode in, in Zambia, had manual transmissions.
Charlie, myself, Bex
When we arrived in Chapata, we decided to stay at the Crystal Springs Hotel again. So, we dropped off the English girls first and then went to our hotel. Once there, we made rice for dinner and watched a NOVA episodes I had on my laptop. We watched it for about two hours. Finally, I set up the mosquito net over my bed and then went to sleep