First Things First

We were all looking forward to touring the national park, but we needed to get some gas and patch a tire first.

We knew that Prince Daniel would come to find us around 9:00 a.m. to take back the tire and collect the gas we owed him. Dan and I woke up early to see if we could take care of those things before he arrived.

We drove down to the camp's general store where we ran into the British camp director again. He was chary to part with much gas because they were in short supply that's difficult to replenish since tankers can't make the drive up to Chelinda. Squeeze convinced him to spare 25 L to repay Prince Daniel and another 10 L or so to leave us enough gas to take a short drive around the park and get back down the hill to Rumphi the following day.

The director wrote us a receipt and sent us to the mechanics yard to fill up and patch our tire. We dropped off the flat tire (not the blown tire) and the mechanics told us they could probably have it fixed in an hour.

We went back to the chalet to get ready for a drive around the park. A little after 9:00 a.m., Prince Daniel walked up to our place. Squeezy told Prince Daniel that we had arranged for the repayment of the 25 L of diesel, but that we wondered whether we could hold on to the borrowed tire for a while longer. We wanted to have a spare available for driving around the park and the drive out of the park the following day.

I wasn't sure how well that suggestion would go over with the Prince, but he was immediately amenable to the idea. He told us there was a Nyika Safaris office in Rumphi where we could drop the tire. We asked whether we could keep the tire until Mzuzu since that was where they suggested we could buy another tire. Again, the Prince said that wouldn't be a problem because there was another office in Mzuzu where we could leave the tire. Prince Daniel just wanted us to write a note to Mr. Mhongo explaining the plan. Squeezy obliged and gave the note to the Prince who would deliver it to Mr. Mhongo.

Just like that we were set up for a very nice day in Nyika National Park.