As SA experienced through the Apartheid era, the press always generalize about a country and try make their viewers believe the entire country must be same as the hot spots. After talking to heaps of people we decided that the touristy areas would be safe and gave ZIM the benefit of the doubt. It was more than fine although the entire country is suffering from the effects of high inflation and lack of tourism. Our stay turned out to be quite cheap with us getting Z$320 for 1 USD and Z$25 for R1 even at the Burea de Changes (although their receipt is made out at the official rate). Now is the time to travel cheap in Zim and you can get some really good deals. Just steer clear of the hot spots and you'll be very safe
Longer version
After a little group pow-wow, we decided we would give the Northern part of Zim a visit. The thinking was that we didn't expect any trouble in the far northern, and extremely touristy Vic Falls. Our crossing in Zim was without problems, except for the fact that you need to buy Zim dollars at the official rate of 55 : 1 (for the road tax and 3rd party) so another 26 US Dollar later.......
Our time in Vic Falls was only eventful!!
Because we got charged at 55Zim Dollar to 1 USD at the border, we were keen to cash in on the 350-to-1 offered to us one the black market in Vic Falls. Yes, its illegal, blah-blah, but we still opted for this. Daz was away for a long time and soon Brett went after him. Daz had felt uneasy about doing the deal (maybe the whole illegal-thing about it). After examining the money three times (we were warned about getting wads of paper), he handed over the USD and left. Something wasn't right... he looked around... the bastard was running away! Daz had received paper! He chased the guy, slip-slops and all, and finally caught up to him. Grabbing him roughly by the shoulder he shouted: " Give me my money back!", with a fist ready to strike had he been met with any resistence. Eventually he got it back and stormed back to the car. OK,OK so the 300-to-1 at the local bureau was acceptable (even they too advertised 55-to-1).
We made our way to the Inyathi Campsite and settled in after a big day. It was to be that our fun was not yet over!!!!!
Firstly we had this huge chunk of flesh for a baboon stealing our food off our table in our campsite. That thing was not at all scared of us and only backed off when you grabbed a spade for a weapon.
Then at night we had another huge fleshy Pumba who raided our dustbin for vitamin additions while we looked on. That thing has the biggest tusks we had ever seen and could have had us as an aperitif. ( Isn't it amazing how all the animals in Zim seem to be on steroids!!!)
To top of the evening.... yes, this is all happening on the same day,...The 3 of us were driving home from pub crawling Vic Falls looking for some action. We were in Mr Jiggles. A car was stopped at the bottom of a hill on the other side of the road but we thought othing of it and kept going ...until we realized it was an elephant trying to cross the road in front of us!! "Brett, elephant ...elephant", Lou screamed as this thing started to cross the road. Brett slammed on the brakes but there was no stopping us. "GO...GO...GO!!!!", realizing that we would come to rest under a hugely gigantic foot, so Brett hit the gas again. He had just stepped onto the road when we saw him so you can imagine how close he was when we sped past. He was rocking on his foot (which is a mock threat display )but it doesn't feel like that when the dude is flapping his ears and waving his tusks at you.
We were thoroughly adrenalized!!! THIS IS AFRICA!!!!!!!!!
Nellie generally stayed close to the camp and we stated to adopt him as our "pet". We have been literally metres from him on a number of occasions. He even came into the camp to get a drink of water from the swimming pool and mock charged us! One night we were sitting next to our fire and heard Nellie trumpeted loudly. Some tourist had stopped next to the road to check out this elephant next to the main road and had taken a photo. Nellie verbalized his disapproval. Instantly we felt angry. It's amazing how protective we had become over him. Bloody tourists!!
After lazing around, not doing canoeing and not river-rafting, we decided to go to Livingstone. To get there we obviously had to cross the border into Zambia. This would mean more money for road-tax and more money for third party. So we decided to hire bicycles and cycle the 14km's. Oh my word! How buggered up were those bikes!! It would have been easier to walk than to ride. We eventually got there and Lou promptly organized to get a lift back.
We stayed at a backpackers called Jolly Boys and slept in the dorms. We met really great people from all over, including RSA! Its quite cool to get info from travelers who had just been where you are going.
Daz and Lou also visited the local market and purchased some hair extensions, to be done back in Vic Falls. We lazed and liased and generally had a cool two days.
Lou got a lift back to the border, while the boys cycled. We decided to go and see the Vic Falls from the Zambian side before we crossed over again. This cost us USD10 each, but it was worth every cent. We were gob smacked at its size. It looked so much smaller from the Zim side! We were sopping wet as we ran laughing through the spray from the falls. We giggled and danced as the spray rained onto us and soaked every thread of clothing!
Back in Zim, Daz and Lou found some locals who were willing to do some hair braiding for a good price. Daz had bought ice white extensions and after four hours of braiding looked like white Bob Marley. Lou sat for an eight hour braiding marathon and eventually emerged with long brown hair. Cool!!
As I'm sure you can all imagine, Zim is like a ghost town at the moment. Having said that there are one or two overland trucks that seem to come through each week. In general though, you can negotiate some really great deals because unfortunately the local guy are so desperate for business that they're slashing their "normal" prices. If we wanted to, we could've rafted for USD60 as opposed to the USD95 we paid three years ago.
We agreed beforehand that we would assess the "feeling" in Zimbabwe before deciding our route from Vic Falls. Our experience in Vic however was very pleasant and we decided to drive to Kariba via the road that hugs the southern banks of Lake Kariba. We were warned that it wasn't much of a road and that it would take us a few days. It sounded like an adventure so we headed for Binga.
The tarred road to Binga was quite good and we decided to set up camp early in Mlibizi - the place where the Kariba ferry starts from. We got to a beautiful camp site with a stunning view over the lake that also had fishing rafts for hire. We were told that the ferry had stopped running due to the lack of business, which suited us because as a result the camp site reduced their prices to get business. We paid a ridiculous R4 each to camp!
In fact it was so cheap we decided to rent a fishing raft the next day, so that Darren and Brett could put their newly rigged out fishing gear through its first paces. Fishing is not great this time of year and although they weren't very big we eached pulled out at least one fish each (Lou included but her fish probably broke some sort of record for the smallest fish!). The sunsets from Mlibizi were absolutely breathtaking - No other words could do it any more justice.
From Binga the road turned into a dirt road, which bore all the signs of the past rain season and the many local vehicles that must've travelled the road. They weren't lying when they said the road was corrugated and in bad shape. However no 4x4 required but it was slow gowing. We got to the southern entrance of Matusadona National Park and debated whether the USD15 entrance fee was worth it. After considering the 170km round trip to Tashinga, that happened to be in the wrong direction, we decided to give it a skip. This proved to be a decision we probably regreted later.
We ended up setting camp at the Sanyati River bridge community campite. What you need to appreciate is that this landscape is just wild. There are no game fences and animals move freely. It turns out that the area has heaps of lions and you're virtually gauranteed of seeing them if you go into the Matusadona park. Anyway the campsite bore all the signs of elephants. After a monster bonfire (our biggest yet) we set down for some shut eye. However some very loud rustling in the bush in the middle of the night woke both Brett and Darren up. It was Ellies!! They were virtually 5 metres from Brett's tent. Daz and Lou were quite safe in their roof top tent but I think Americas Funniest Home videos would've been paying out their grand prize if somebody could've video taped Darren nervously hoping out of his safe tent for a mid-night leak with ellies less than 10m away and then quickly scurrying back again.
The rest of the drive to Kariba was complicated because we took a "locals short cut" route. It was obviuosly not sign posted and we eventually picked up a local who needed a lift to Kariba - huge ass sack of mielies and all - who could direct us.
Kariba left us awe struck, as it did 3 years ago, with its sheer size and beauty. The winding mountain roads make it feel like the Camps Bay's ocean drive in Cape Town. The Lake even looks like the ocean so the scene is pretty complete. Camping was even cheaper and only cost us R2-50
Lou and Daz decided to hire a houseboat and live in a bit of luxury for a while. They were able to negotiate a pretty reasonable rate although houseboat business is actually still pretty good. Apparently the Zim farmers are coming up to Kariba and spending two weeks at a time on houseboats to escape their lives on their farms. Brett in the mean time decided to head onto Mana Pools with the two backpackers we had met in Kariba, Rick and Caroline. Rick and Caroline had wanted to do a 4 day canoe safari in Mana Pools but the USD250 per person was just outside their budgets. We met up with them and offered that they could drive with us into the Park. For good measure we negotiated with a local tour operator to accompany us and show us around Mana Pools. This was only going to cost us USD 60 each but we wouldn't get to canoe though.
While the three went on ahead with Washington (our guide), Daz and Lou boarded their "French-Riviera" type boat for 2 nights of being waited on hand and foot. On board was a chef who used to work in the hotel industry and he managed to make a gourmet meal out of the little "overlanding type" food that was brought along. Once on the water Benson changed into a "SURF white" shirt and shorts with an apron to complete the outfit and proceeded to make a huge english breakfast complete with poached eggs and all! Daz invented a drink called the fizzy bogwash and we were feeling like royalty on our ship.
The house boat anchored on the banks of the Matusadona National Park and there was game to be seen all around. On the first night a most spectacular scene unfolded on shore less than a kilometre away. Although it was dark and all that could be seen was the stars, we heard how first some lions were growling-roaring and then some ellies trumpeting. This carried on all evening and our guide explained that the lions were trying to catch the baby elly and the mother was trying to protect it!
The fishing was very unsuccesful with Lou only managing to catch an even smaller fish than in Mlibizi! Apparently when the water gets colder the fish's metabolizms slow down as well. Imagine our frustration at literally being able to see the fish (heaps of them) yet none of them want to bite our bait.
In the mean time Brett, Rick and Caroline arrived at Mana and saw a wild dog in an attempted kill of an impala. The dog failed but it made for a good start to the the "safari" - as Rick the American called it. Mana Pools has wild life in abundance that congregates at the banks of the lower Zambezi or the 4 pools near its banks. Washington (our guide) turned out to be a really great guy and very knowledgeable about the wild. His company does canoe safaris down the river but we just hired his services as a field guide. When Darren and Lou arrived they found out that we could hire canoes from the Park to view wildlife from the water. Although this would be in direct conflict with his normal business, Washington agreed to guide us down the river on the hired canoes. The experience has altered my view on the the prices paid for these professionaly guided safaris.
We launched our canoes about 13 kms upstream amongst some hippos and a huge crock lazing on a nearby sand bank. What a perfect setting even though we felt a little nervous with such big wild animals being so close to us in our vulnerable position in our little canoes. The lower Zambezi is infested (if thats possible) with hippos which was quite romantic at first but they quickly got our pulses racing with their grunting, showing teeth and snorting. Lou decided they're suddenly not as cute as in the Chomp advert. We had to pass quite close by a number of herds and it was then that we realised why a knowledgeable guide is so important. Washington tapped on the canoe to get the hippos to surface and then he'd navigate us through the mine field of blubber with "I've had a bad day" tempers. The scariest part is when the hippos "dive" again and you see this bow wave, that quickly gets swallowed up in the fast moving stream, starting off in your general direction. All we needed was the Jaws theme music!
Another candidate for Americas Funniest Home Videos would've been Darren, Louise and Carolines faces when after navigating a particularly bad patch in the river (where we moved in between two groups and a single male) a lone male surfaced a few metres behind their canoe. They paddled so fast that they would've been able to pull up a skier on a slalom ski behind them! It was a really draining day finished off by cracking ice cold Castles and sharing a camp fire with new friends.
If anyone intends on doing any types of safaris in the Kariba, Matusadona or Mana Pools area we can really recommend Washington and his company called IBHUBEZI SAFARIS. He trained with SAF-PAR and then opened his own business. He's therefore highly skilled but is able to negotiate and offer cheaper deals than the bigger companies. His contact details are:
[email protected]
mobile number: +263 11 747127
Rick left us with a few riddles to figure out so we now have a new game to play in the car and around the camp fires at night.
Brett's border crossing cost him R40 when a corrupt official wanted a bribe for taking extra fuel out of Zim. In hind sight he should've refused because theres no such law!!
Average cost of camping - R10 p.p.p.n.
Road conditions - tarred roads really good, the dirt roads in dire need of grading
Peoples attitudes - friendly and warm
Daily GPS co-ordinates:
Vic Falls
S 17 56.667 E 27 04.294
Mlibizi Lodge
Sanyati River campsite (South of Kariba)
S 16 31.960 E 28 46.074 Kariba
S 15 58.744 E 29 23.536 Mana Pools