During the 31 days of October, we spent 318 USD on food, 91 USD on accommodations, and 258 USD on everything else. In total, we spent 667 USD, at an average of 22 USD per day (11 USD, per person).
EXPENSES: September 2017, Botswana and Zambia ($791)
#12 (Kacholola, Zambia - Lilongwe, Malawi)
The cement is hot. Too hot. I am lying on my right side at the bottom of a long hill with a burning sensation running through my skin. I feel pain and dread and anger at myself for being so careless. Slowly, I rise to my feet.
My bike is a few meters behind me. One of the panniers has flown off the rack and landed next to my body. I look down. Its vinyl exterior is coated in a brown ooze that looks not too dissimilar from something that might leak out of a stomach. I lift my shirt to check the state of my organs. They feel intact. I realize that this murky goop is not coming from inside me, but inside my pannier. A kilogram of chunky peanut butter I'd been carrying has exploded, its contents leaking out onto the dusty concrete.
#11 (Livingstone, Zambia - Kacholola, Zambia)
The most we've traveled in a single day since leaving Cape Town has been 114 kilometers. Aided by downhills and the sole run of tailwinds we've had to date, it is one of only a few days we've surpassed the 100-kilometer mark. Our plan for the next five days is to cycle one hundred kilometers, on average, each and every day. This time, we'll be traveling uphill. Into a headwind.
We get started.
#10 (Kazungula, Zambia - Livingstone, Zambia)
There's a tiny dot in the middle of the Zambezi River where the boundaries of four nations come together. It's called a quadripoint, or more precisely the quadripoint, as it's the only place in the world where this happens. For a brief moment, a person floating downs the Zambezi might find their left leg in Zambia, their right leg in Zimbabwe, their left arm in Namibia, and their right arm in Botswana. The moment would be brief partly because the dot is small and the current strong, but also because the river is riddled with crocodiles and someone floating in its waters would lose one of those limbs pretty quickly.