Finding Our Way

Zambia MapWe visited our local Borders book store and bought the Michelin Map of Zambia. It wasn’t that helpful. It gave us a basic idea of our travels: We planned to fly to Livingstone, pick up the car, spend 9 days in Kafue National Park, drive through the capital city of Lusaka and across the country for 3 days, and then spend another 9 days in South Luangwa National Park. Roughly 1000 km on pavement and 1000 km on two-track dirt. Zambia is roughly the size of California and Nevada combined and the lack of detail on the country map gave us…trepidation. So we stepped boldly into the world of GPS navigation. We purchased a Garmin Nuvi 500 GPS (about $200) and used it to go to work, the store, and shopping for about a month. Then we loaded it with the essential Tracks4Africa (aka T4A, http://www.tracks4africa.co.za) and punched in our planned route. The downside: with satellite phone and GPS (and digital cameras of course) we were bringing technology with us. And with the electronics we needed the rechargeable batteries and the ‘stuff’ to charge batteries using local electricity, solar, and the cigarette lighter in the Rover. Bummer. [retrospect: A GPS and T4A are essentials. We could have left the solar option at home].

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