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7th-29th September
It was with the eager anticipation of luxury such as home
cooked meals and comfortable beds that we made our entrance
into Zimbabwe. After a full days drive we made it to Harare
where we were to stay with family. We ended up extending our
stay to 2 weeks and even managed to fit in a side trip down
to Bulowayo to catch-up with the rest of the Zimbabwean relatives.
In those two weeks we also got Nyathi in for a good checkup.
It turned out that she actually needed a fair bit of work
on her engine.
We were surprised, given the current political climate -
at how normal everything seemed in Zim. On the surface it
didn't seem like there were any problems. It didn't take all
that long however to identify the underlying tension in the
air. The Zimbabwean people have dealt with civil war, political
unrest and a dictatorship for the past 30 years now. Those
still in the country are very resilient people. We had to
admire the way the people made light of the situation and
managed to laugh about it all. However, the situation there
is absolutely absurd. Robert Mugabe is reducing the population
of Zimbabwe to starvation and poverty - all in a desperate
effort to maintain his position of power. While old Bob Mugabe
is kicking out all the commercial farmers, other African countries
are welcoming them with open arms. Uganda has extended a formal
invitation to all displaced Zimbabwean farmers to settle there.
Zambia and Mozambique are very keen to develop their agricultural
sectors. And Zimbabwe takes a giant leap back to the Middle
Ages. One can only hope and pray that the situation improves
in the country, in the near future.
Well, enough of politics. After being extremely well fed
and quartered for two weeks we decided that it was time to
be on our way. With and improved Nyathi and the reality of
camp food and camp mattresses filtering through, we set off
from Harare for Mana Pools in the North of the country.
Mana Pools is a National Park on the banks of the Zambezi
River, with an abundance of wildlife. Our campsite was constantly
invaded by Elephant and Buffalo - and that was only during
the day. At nighttime it sounded like there was an entire
zoo outside the tent. We were too fearful to use the spotlight,
for fear of looking straight into the beady eyes of a hyena
or worse. Wouldn't be easy to get back to sleep after that.
On our second day in the park we hired a canoe and paddled
up the Zambezi for a while. It was pretty hairy at times with
pods of hippo wallowing at almost every turn. We thought we
were doing very well at avoiding these fat, short legged animals
when one of them decided to give both itself and us one hell
of a fright by coming up right under the canoe. Rarely have
a canoe and a hippo moved in opposite directions at such a
speed. It took a good half hour for the heart palpitations
to reside at which point we decided that we should probably
head for home as quickly and as quietly as possible. It was
only later that day that we found out that the Park motorboat
had been overturned by a hippo leaving all eight passengers
swimming frantically for the shore. Fortunately there were
no opportunistic crocodiles in the area at the time.
On the next day we decided to go for a walk. Once again it
was a pretty hair raising experience. Every bush seemed to
have a lone bull buffalo behind it. The buffalo has about
the worst temperament in the animal kingdom, with the aggression
to back it up. Our walk got pretty interesting when we ended
up with and elephant cow and baby on one side, a lone bull
elephant on the other and a number of solitary buffalo bulls
all around. We had every tree in the vicinity checked out
for their climbing possibilities. Fortunately we didn't have
to resort to such desperate measures, but we sure as hell
did an about turn and tiptoed back to camp as quickly as safety
allowed.
With our food stocks running low we decided to hit the road
again and headed to Kariba, a huge dam in Northern Zimbabwe.
We spent two days relaxing and restocking in Kariba before
heading back into Zambia. One point that was extremely noticeable
in both Kariba and Mana Pools was the complete lack of foreign
tourists. On previous trips through these areas they were
teaming with backpackers, overlanders and game viewers. The
hotels and campsites are now all almost empty with only a
few local Zimbabwean tourists keeping them open.
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