Tag Archive | Land Rover

Rover – Steve’s 2-cents

Sep26
Checking the oil
Our trusty, but dusty, Land Rover

I’m very fond of Rover. Our Land Rover never failed.

Now here in the US, Land Rovers have a terrible reputation. And in Africa there seems to be great rivalry between Rover and Cruiser.

Rover was diesel and diesel was actually more plentiful than petrol (gas). It seemed to be reasonably thrifty on fuel and fuel was expensive: 6999 kwatcha to the litre, 4800 kwatcha to the dollar, four litres to the gallon = $5.83 per gallon. We spent about $375 on fuel.

Our Rover was full-time 4WD. We used low range, low gears very occasionally, but when we did, we needed it.

We never broke down, we never had a flat. We never got stuck. We were lucky? Maybe.

Rover was low mileage (14,000 km at start) and well maintained. I also lived in Montana for 20 years and drove dirt often and 4WD occasionally.

The downsides of Rover: They just don’t fit the American physique! The steering wheel is very close to the door! And then the left side driving that means steering wheel on the right and shifting with the left hand! And perhaps our biggest complaint, they are not dust tight: at the end of a few days of dirt road the back is filthy.

Well, she may be a little dusty and need a drink of diesel now and then. And when she drinks she crawls around on all fours, but I luuuvvvvvv Rover.

Farewell, Rover!

Sep26

Today we surrender our car keys and turn ourselves over to the tender mercies of the Bushcamp Company. We had stopped in Mfuwe Lodge for a drink on the way out of the park last night, easing ourselves back into civilization. We were dusty and sweaty and rumpled, but still they welcomed us. Despite the dust and rattle, I will miss the freedom to set our own schedule and pace. I might even miss having something to do: setting up and taking down the tent, cooking, organizing, cleaning up. But, in exchange, I will have time to make notes in my trip diary, read my book, write a postcard, watch a lizard eat bugs on a log.

We had a leisurely breakfast – we didn’t have to meet our connections at the Mfuwe airport until 10:00 a.m. We then started reorganizing ourselves back into our own bags. This is clearly an activity the monkeys were keyed into – suddenly I hear people in a neighboring campsite say, “Oh, look at the monkey in the back of the car. Should we tell them?” I realized that the “them” was us, and shooed a monkey out of the back of the land rover, but not before he snatched a bag of raisins. In another moment of distraction, one made a raid on our table, puncturing a box of milk. (Fortunately, we had another for our coffee.) Feeling besieged, we quickly wrapped up our sorting and packing, and retreated to the ablutions block for showers.

We passed along some remaining gin to our neighboring Dutch brothers, who seemed rather disorganized and unprepared – it didn’t seem to be a good combination for bush travel. They seemed to have a lot of complaints – their expectations were not matching their experience. Other campers had a ruined trip: their broken down land rover had been abandoned in the camp for several days, and no one had come to retrieve it yet. We met one British couple making their way across Africa in a Volvo station wagon. But, we realized that we were one of the rarest sightings of all: Americans camping in Zambia. We tried it, and we liked it. All of our friends and family thought that we were crazy to do it. But, we will probably do it again!