I was up at 4:30am this morning for a 5am departure and a drive of almost 1000km. It was totally worth getting up early at this place as we saw more game on the way out (as it was still dark) than you would at some actual game reserves. The first animals we saw were waterbuck who darted in front of the truck as we were leaving, then a few zebra in the bushes and then lastly some Kudu. The best thing though were two giraffes who were sitting down sleeping right next to the truck. I've never seen a giraffe sit down, let alone seen one sleeping!

As we drove out a found myself feeling more and more shattered, probably in no small part to the amount of drinking I had done last night with the guys. So I crawled into the bed in the cab and had a nap for about two hours. When I awoke we were on the highway flying through Zambia, I put some music on and sat back and watched the miles fly past.

This road was probably one of the most accident prone I think I've ever seen, I must have counted twenty seven major accidents and that doesn't take into account the two hours I was asleep in the cab this morning. It seemed like on every corner there was a new accident, mostly trucks that had flipped on their heads. Accidents in Africa are always preceded by tree branches in the road so you know there is one around the corner. I remember looking at some and thinking, how on Earth did that happen? Some had clearly been there for months and just not cleared up, others had happened moments before we turned the corner. I saw everything from a petrol tanker flipped on its head to a truck full of maize spilled out all over the road and locals running off with it.

We passed through a few small towns and stopped to get lunch, which is only ever beef and rice in this part of the continent. Dixon and I sat in the squalid little shanty eating our lunch.

We drove for approximately fifteen hours today, we did get into one town at about 5pm as it was only 100km from the border we decided to keep going. That, I think was a bit of a mistake. After another hour of driving it started to get dark and now we were traveling along the death road in the pitch dark, with semi trailers zooming past at terminal velocity in the blackness. It was one of the most scary experinces of my life and one I am not keen to repeat.

Finally at about 8pm we got into the border town of Nakonde, Dixon was sleeping in the cab and I was sleeping in the back of the truck in another muddy shanty town that time forgot. Dixon wanted me to stay up and drink with him, but I refused on account of having to find a bathroom in this awful place in the middle of the night. I made up a makeshift bed in the back of the truck out of some sleeping mats and my sleeping bag and watched TV on my laptop until it was a decent time to go to bed. I remember thinking, that sleeping in a soft sided truck in a place like this was going to scare me to death, but basically as soon as I put my head down I was asleep.