The Road to Kasane (Pictures)

July 11th, Day 30:

We got started around 10am on this morning as we were set to began the three day trek to Kasane, a relatively large town on the border between Botswana and Zambia. This road was supposedly deserted from Nata, where we were now until Kasane, and many people had told us how dangerous it would be to travel up this road alone, because of fear of wild animals along the way. Aaron's brother, Jon, solved this problem for us as he would be following us in a 4x4 pick-up truck from here to Livingstone, about 60 kilometers in Zambia, where he rented the truck.

When we had finished unloading some of our bags into Jon's rental truck, we noticed there was a relatively large dent on the right side above the back tire. We came to the conclusion that the only possible explanation was that someone had backed into the car during the night and driven away without taking responsibility. To make things worse, his front left tire was partially flat, probably from the ride from Kasane to Nata which is notorious for his various potholed sections and large craters in the middle of the road.

Luckily, he was still able to drive it to the gas station to get the tire repaired. The gas station then referred him to a kid sitting across the street under a sign that read "car repairs". We were all skeptical about this kid's ability to find the leak, which we could not locate, yet all it took was a simple kiss of the tire and he had located the spot amazingly. He then proceeded to fix the flat and we had that taken care of in about ten minutes. Unfortunately, we still had to deal with the issue of the dent above the rear tire. Jon called the car rental service, which told him he needed a police report so while he went over to the police station, Aaron and I worked on my back tire, which had kept on going flat from Francistown to Nata regardless of how many tubes we tried.

Finally, after Jon got his police report and we did what we could with my back tire, we set off on the road to Kasane. One of the police officers had told Jon about a campsite approximately 60 kilometers from  Kasane, and because of our late start we decided that would be the best option for the night.

Unfortunately, more problems awaited us as we headed out of Nata. We had only biked around 5 miles or so when Aaron chain literally snapped right off his bike, so we had to stop for a while and get his chain working again. After maybe another 5 miles, my back tire once again deflated for reasons we could not understand, and we were forced to stop once again. We realized that because it was a slow leak, we could just pump it up every time we took a break and hopefully it would be able to stay inflated for long enough.

On top of all our problems on this day, my stomach was also beginning to not feel well, to the point where I could not bike and had to go off into the bushes to use the bathroom. That was certainly a unique situation, as I kept hearing movement around me, and I was just hoping it was not a lion. Luckily, no lions appeared, just a few cows roaming the bushes, and I made it out of there alive and feeling much better.

It was getting late and we were still about halfway to Elephant Sands, the campsite/lodge we were aiming to get to on this night so we decided to hop into Jon's truck for part of the way so we could bicycle at during sunset, and have Jon get some nice footage of us bicycling for our documentary.

Elephant Sands was in the middle of nowhere but happened to be a really nice place that was packed with campers and others just passing through. We were told we could choose any place to camp, and they would supply us firewood to make a fire to keep warm and also keep away the lions. The chef at Elephant Sands also prepared an amazing meal with beef fillets, pop (a thicker version of potatoes), chips (french fries), salad, and all other sorts of goodies.

Later, as we were gathering firewood, we noticed a rather large object around the pool area. We walked closer and to our amazement, it was an large elephant drinking out of the pool, and everyone seemed to just be going about their business as if nothing was happening. We were told later that elephants come to the campsite all the time (that probably had something to do with the name...) and elephants usually drink all the pool water so they have to constantly refill it.

We finally settled down at our campsite, where we made a rather large fire, which would keep us warm for most of the night. Jon slept in his tent that he purchased at in Johannesburg before he got here, while Aaron did not want to set up our tent because it turned out to be a real pain so we slept outside under the stars. Aaron and I were the only people in the whole place without a tent so I was kind of nervous about running into a animal in the middle of the night, but that never occurred and we were both able to get a good night's sleep alongside the fire.

-Eric