Appointment In Zambia

Product Description

' We could always go overland now that we have wheels ' Ross had suggested out of the blue. I'd pulled out an atlas & we'd traced a route down through Africa via countries still marked with their colonial names. Only two strips of water interrupted the flow of land between Edinburgh & Chingola; the English Channel & the Straits of Gibraltar. Fourteen months had passed since Neil Armstrong walked on the moon so Africa couldn't be that difficult could it? A month later we boarded the ferry for Calais... In 1970 newly-weds Ross & Sara set off with extraordinary naivety & a lack of proper preparation to drive from Edinburgh to Zambia in a standard saloon car. Appointment in Zambia is the story of their epic car journey. Sara was 21 (and could not drive) & Ross was 23 when they & their brand new Hillman Hunter (in ' Golden Sand' a colour chosen before they'd opted to drive through the Sahara...) started out. For eight weeks in a trip of over 20 000 kms they slept in the car coped with illness & looked up the barrel of rifles from the wrong end. Apart from the car their only technology was a compass. Their journey encompassed the Sahara where they had to dig themselves out of trouble with Tupperware containers. They also braved war-torn Biafra navigated storm-wrecked roads through equatorial forests & traversed the main tributary of the Congo River (on a raft cobbled together with dug-out canoes by locals). They met lepers pygmies drunken officials prostitutes & missionaries while their journey took them across 13 countries with widely different frontiers customs currencies & language before they reached Chingola
- just in time for Ross to start his new job. Appointment in Zambia is a unique take on an epic journey
- a young couple & their basic car travel acrosss Africa not because they want to challenge themselves & prove something but because they decide it's the best way to get to a new job in Zambia.