We woke up in Lusaka relatively early in preparation for the long drive to South Luangwa. First things first – pack Fiona.

Cheryl and I had our system down for two people. Everything had its place. The things we needed most often were within quick, easy, access. Things we needed less often were tucked away. Our clothes stayed in the cab on the back seat, cooler box and basket of important implements (read: things necessary to make Cheryl’s tea) in the middle. It worked perfectly.

That system got all blown up.

With four people we didn’t quite have twice the amount of stuff but our nice little system definitely wasn’t going to work any more.

My mom and dad were given strict instructions on the size of their bags (and they definitely tested the limits but I was impressed with how well they had done actually.) I had an idea of where everything would fit when they got there but it didn’t quite work out.

It took a lot of finagling but eventually everything did fit. We just had to put a couple of ammo boxes (our spares box and our linen/ mosquito net/ Cheryl’s boots box), our ground sheet and my clothes bag (which we put the entire thing into a dry bag) on the roof of the car.

It all just barely fit. Each time we got to a campsite we had to unload almost everything and load it back up again when we were leaving. It was like a children’s puzzle where you’ve got to make everything fit just right to make it back into a perfect cube.

Then we went food shopping.

By the time we were done and on the road to South Luangwa there wasn’t an inch of space left where something hadn’t been shoved into it.

Luckily I get my packing skills from my Dad.

Space wasn’t an issue.

In our rush to get out of Lusaka, I never took a picture of the packed car.  Here you can see me strapping my bag to the roof while Cheryl is zipping up the tent in Malawi.  Not much space on the inside either.