The Zambezi was 6 m higher than usual in April this year. Yet Peter and Magda van Noord were game for driving through all this water on their own to the Liuwa Plains National Park. Few have the guts to do that…

Everything is packed and ready for Liuwa. At 1 am on Friday morning we depart from Middelburg, Mpumalanga, to Botswana. Even at this early hour the Easter weekend traffic is very heavy.

It’s chaos at the border – we queue to get through the South African side and go through the same process on the Botswana side. In all the years that we’ve been using the border post at Grobler’s Bridge/Martin’s Drift, this is the longest it’s ever taken - 6 hours!

We had planned to spend the night at Toro Lodge, but the darkness overtakes us and we overnight at Nata Lodge.

At 6am on Saturday we’re on our way again, through the Ngoma Bridge border post into Namibia, and not long after through the Sesheke border post at Katima Mulilo into Zambia. This time without incident or delay.

Now our expedition can start in all earnest.

Our campsite for the night is Kabula Lodge, 58 km northwest of Katima Mulilo on the banks of the Zambezi, where we spent a great night with the owner, Piet du Toit, and Van Rhyn and Natalie Fouche from Randburg.

Our dual-battery system gave up the ghost, and after Peter replaced the battery with another one we have brought along, we’re back on the road.

We can’t take the same road back as the one we took to the lodge. The one we have to take now is a demarcated road that runs across an airfield.

Here we end up in a swamp and the Cruiser sinks into the mud up to its belly. Van Rhyn is directly behind us and sees what happens. Fortunately, he takes a drier line and passes us.

He tries in vain to tow us out. The Cruiser is too heavy and the mud too sticky. We call Piet to come and help us. He tries to tow us out with his Land Rover Defender double-cab, but the Cruiser doesn’t budge.

Then the local residents jump in and help, packing rocks and sticks under the wheels. After almost three hours’ struggle the Land Rover finally pulls us out. It’s too late now to push on to our next campsite and we decide to camp at Kabula again. We don’t regret it, because the camp is excellent and we can wash our muddy clothes and the Cruiser.

With a clean Cruiser and determined to see Liuwa, we tackle the wet road again.

Slipping and sliding, we push on northwest along the M10 and proceed to just before Sitoti. We walk across the bridge. The other side is flooded. Two locals who are only going as far as Kalangola tell us the road next to the Zambezi is impassable due to the rainy season, that one of the bridges has been washed away and that the ferry from Kalangola to Senaga isn’t running because the river is flowing too strongly and the water level is too high.

We’ve never shied away from a challenge, and turning around is not an option. That night we sleep in the bush.

The road that is actually a river

Before leaving South Africa, I printed out a map on Google Maps indicating a road that is not shown on Tracks4Africa. The road turns off just before Sitoti and is marked RD463. This driveable gravel road runs about 140 km as the crow flies almost to the Angolan border. We drive through Mulonga and Siwelewela, two tiny villages with lots of people.

Just after Siwelewela we reach a gate where we have to show our receipt for paying to drive through the Shangombo district. It cost us about 65 000 Zambian kwacha (about R100).

Peter asks the man for the way to Kalabo. He points at a jeep track along the border fence to Sikongo, where we should turn right to Kalabo. Peter and I look at each other and decide that since we’ve come so far, we might as well drive on.

After about 15 km of plodding along the overgrown path, thick sand and bush we find another obstacle: water. We stop, get out, walk through the knee-deep water and decide it’s driveable.

About 5 km further we find water again. Peter looks at the border fence and sees the posts are sticking up above the water. Usually we first walk through the water, but this time we decide we can go through. The water here is so deep that it flows over the Cruiser’s bonnet.

A short way further we get water again… we become more and more cocky and drive through without hesitation.

When we encounter water the fourth time, Peter asks if we should turn back. We’d hoped this water wouldn’t be as deep as the previous patches, but decide rather to drive through than turn back and wade through the water we’ve already been through.

Halfway through, the Cruiser’s engine dies. When the water pulls back level with the bonnet, Peter turns the ignition and the Cruiser starts without hesitation.

Some distance further we reach the bank of the Southern Lueti River, at a place where we must drive across three bridges. We walk over the first bridge, see it’s safe and drive across. Barely 20m further we reach the second bridge, and after once again seeing it’s safe, we drive across without problems. Before reaching the third bridge, we drive through about 20 m of thick grass, and can barely see anything ahead of us.

However, our luck only holds to the third bridge… it’s impassable.

It takes us an hour to shift the wooden beams around so we can drive across. I stand on the bridge to show Peter where to drive on the beams with his front wheels. One of the poles comes loose and gets stuck under the Cruiser. We can’t go forwards or backwards.

As there are no trees nearby that are big and strong enough, we can’t use the winch, so we lift the back of the Cruiser with the high-lift jack and try to pull out the stump. Because the surface isn’t level, the jack bends and starts sliding. Luckily, it snags on a step on the back of the Cruiser and doesn’t fall into the water.

Fortunately, the stump is loose now, and after Peter reversed a little to get the jack out from under the Cruiser, we cross the final stretch of the bridge without problems.

This exercise takes us about three hours, and that night we sleep in the bush.

The next morning we find yet another puddle of water. Luckily, some locals direct us on a detour to Kalabo that is a little drier to drive. Almost everyone we meet here in Zambia are friendly and helpful.

Fortunately, we don’t encounter any more deep water, but we do hit a lot of thick sand up to the turnoff to Kalabo.

Kalabo, finally

We are greeted by a crowd of surprised faces in Kalabo. Nobody can believe that we’ve come this far in the wet season - on our own in a vehicle from South Africa, along the western bank of the Zambezi to boot.

The actual route along the west of the Zambezi runs along the Zambezi’s bank, but it’s closed to traffic and one bridge has washed away completely.

From Kalabo it’s just a short distance to our dream of visiting the Liuwa Plains National Park.

At the African Parks offices we meet Charity, our contact in Kalabo. Craig Hay, field operations manager, is a South African who used to work at the Orpen gate in the Kruger National Park and has been working for African Parks in Zambia for a few months.

He quickly arranges a ferry to take us over the Luanginga River into the park the next day. In the dry season the park uses the ferry that they tow over the river with a rope, but now the water is too high and the river too strong. A mokoro with a 30-horsepower engine tows the ferry a little distance upstream so we can drive out onto a drier part.

As there are no camping facilities in Kalabo, we spend the night in the Cruiser in Craig’s yard.

The ferry is a memorable experience … The Cruiser leans over quite a bit because there’s too much water in the drums on one side of the ferry. Peter just wants to hold onto the Cruiser the whole time to stop it from ending up in the water.

To make things worse, the mokoro they use to steer the ferry is leaking! While the helmsman is steering, another man scoops up the water and throws it out with half a bottle.

Grassy plains stretch as far as the eye can see. Here and there only the tips of the trees are sticking out.

On the river we encounter several locals using their mokoros as taxis. They load up to 40 people onto a boat to ferry them from the edge of the park to Kalabo for shopping. Others are busy cleaning and repairing their fishing nets.

When we approach the edge, the helmsman has to switch off the engine a few times to remove all the grass that got stuck in the propeller. Like a gymnast, Peter has to jump onto the front planks for driving onto the banks so the front and back planks are on the same level and we can drive off.

Most of the game is still in the northern part of the park, but it is too wet to get there. We are nevertheless very happy with what we see – wildebeest, oribi, zebra and many bird species, such as wattled crane.

We overnight in the south of the park in the Kwale and Katonyana camps because the other camps were too wet to reach. The camps have cold showers and flush toilets, but every moment in the park is worth the slight discomfort.

After three days on the Liuwa Plains – all on our own – the ferry comes and fetches us again. En route we decided that we didn’t feel like driving through the water on the western bank of the Zambezi. Charity helps us to rent a freight boat, which will meet us at the end of the tar road at six the next morning to take us from Kalabo to Mongu.

After sitting and standing on the freight boat for five hours, we reach Mongu. It’s interesting to see how people can remain living in the water. When it’s dry, they grow food, and during the rainy season they live on their tiny islands. When the water gets too high, they simply stay on the roofs of their houses.

From Mongu we take the M9 tar road towards the Kafue National Park. Some 70 km before the village of Kaoma we turn right onto the D309 gravel road, which takes us through bush plantations.

There are no camping facilities here, and we simply pull in behind a school building in the village of Manueal and sleep here.

Early the next morning, we’re up again and cross the Zambezi on a ferry at the Kazungula border post. Now we just want to go home…

We spend our last night camping at the Elephant Sands Lodge, 53 km north of Nata on the Nata-Kasane road, where we see a pack of wild dogs and plenty of elephants.

This time the border posts are much less time consuming.

Will we do it again? Definitely. Nothing beats Africa.

The travellers

NAME: Peter and Magda van Noord
OCCUPATION: Businessman and teacher, respectively
FAVOURITE PLACE: Namibia
BEST TRAVEL TIP: Always make sure your recovery gear is in order. Believe in your creator and your vehicle.

*Because the Van Noords were completely self-sufficient, they had to get special permission to visit the Liuwa Plains National Park. The season usually only opens on 1 May, but because it’s so wet, the park was only opened on 1 June. They were there in late April.