Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire

The wind is coming from the wrong direction. Last week we cruised along at 25km/h. Now it’s back to the usual 15km/h and we really feel the difference. Next to us the Zambezi lazily snakes its way through the Barotse floodplains. Its banks are either sandy white or volcanic rocky black. We are, slowly but surely, roasted alive by the October heat. The flies at least already treat us like roadkill.

These days we make the mistake of not taking our days off as a bundle but interspersed with one or two days of cycling. While it looks like progress on the map, it doesn’t actually leave us well rested. On one of these single rest days we visit Sioma falls, a collection of impressive cataracts that briefly split the river into seven streams. The next day, back on the road, we watch men in strange costumes run along. We have no idea why but gladly pay them a couple of kwacha for a picture.

After pushing Jo and Olive for two kilometers through deep sand while being harassed by a couple of kids, we reach a nice campsite on the river bank. They mostly cater to South African tiger fishing enthusiasts but Pieter, the owner, also welcomes cyclists like us who are stupid enough to use the sandy road. He shares some oats and delicious grapefruit with us and we settle in for another day off in the shade of the trees.

In the evening we briefly say hi to newly arrived overlanders (Magda and Dave from SA) before preparing for another sweaty night in the tent. Around midnight we’re woken up by a rumble. Ben sleepily opens the rain fly to investigate and there it is. FIRE! The reception and bar area is ablaze and its thatched roof is rapidly turning into a wall of flames, 20 meters away from our tent.

We scramble out in a panic and start shouting. Ben bangs on Magda and Dave’s car (even closer to the flames) to wake them up and we all run for our lives. After the initial bout of panic subsides and we assess that the fire is not spreading in our direction we quickly dart back and forth to rescue the bikes and our tent. Pieter, other guests and workers arrive and we hunt for buckets to try and fight the fire as best we can. It’s mostly a wasted effort.

The irony is that the Zambezi is right there. All this water and no way to utilize it since the campsite pump runs on solar power and there is no generator as a back up. We therefore focus the laymen’s firefighting on little sources of fires away from the main one that threaten to take over other buildings. At any moment the wind could pick up and start a massive bushfire that would consume the entire area.

After a couple of hours the main fire slowly starts to burn itself out. We get out the camping chairs to wait for the morning and chat about Magda and Dave’s YouTube channel (MustBeMad). Another guest from SA tells us about his suspicion for the source of the fire. While fishing yesterday he took out an illegal net and notified the government. This reasonably upset the local fisherman whose net it was and who will likely face a harsh punishment. Apparently arson is not an uncommon form of retribution for this sort of thing.

The early morning light filters through the smoke rising from the smoldering trees. Every now and then stray sparks travel a bit too quickly for our taste. It feels surreal to walk through the remnants of a structure that, just yesterday, was a fully intact deck and bar with a cute thatched roof, fishing magazines and hand carved wooden sculptures. We were sitting right there, drinking coke and babbling the afternoon away. Now all that is left is ashes.

Still slightly shellshocked we get ready to leave. The sandy push back to the main road and sweaty 60km to the next town are not going anywhere. We awkwardly hand Pieter some money and he reassures us that it’s not his life’s savings that burnt to a crisp last night. Running this lodge is more of a hobby and he had wanted to build a new deck anyway. We all breathe a sigh of relief that no one got injured and that the fire didn’t devour more buildings. It could easily have gone another way.

Back on the road we feel hungover from a mostly sleepless night and lots of drama. Mercifully, the sky is overcast and we even feel some raindrops. Magda and Dave race to catch up with us and hold Ben’s travel spatula out the window of their car. In the frenzied packing it was almost lost in the grass. There are no words to adequately express Ben’s gratitude at the rescue of his favorite kitchen implement. We hug goodbye one last time and go our separate ways.

To cap off the list of unlikely events, the few raindrops turn into a consistent downpour. We haven’t cycled in rain in almost half a year. At this moment it’s a godsend, not just because it cools us down but also to hopefully extinguish the rest of the fire at the campsite. At lunchtime we exhaustedly pull into the best shitty guesthouse in town. We deservedly splurge on their second fanciest room, dry out the wet clothes and collapse into bed. We sleep for 11 hours straight. It never gets boring in Africa!