Just like Zambia, our
first day in Zimbabwe was mainly spent in the truck simply covering
distance. We did have one memorable event though while commuting. It
was about 8:30am and most of the people in the truck were asleep
from yet another early morning. I was sitting up the front,
stretching my legs, when we passed a truck with a load on the back
heading the opposite direction. The truck going the opposite way
somehow flicked a rock up, which hit the front window in the
passenger cabin of our truck (despite it being protected by some
mesh), which resulted in a really loud bang, Next thing I saw/heard
was the glass of our truck window starting to crack. I barely had
time to get my hands to my face and duck my head before the window
exploded and covered me and the front of the passenger area in
flying glass. Fortunately the glass didn't do me, or any of the
others on board, any injury, with little more than a few half cm long
surface scratches on my legs to show from my shower of glass. We
spent the rest of the day getting wind blasted from the open window –
luckily it wasn't raining today.
Our campsite for the
first night was just outside of Tanzania's capital of Harare, which
we spent about an hour checking out while the truck got some fuel. We
got in quite late, put the tents up, had some dinner and most people
went to bed early as a result of three 12+ hour days on the truck,
along with the associated early mornings, taking its toll on our
bodies.
The next day wasn't
nearly as long in the truck as we headed for Masvingo. Our campsite
was located just out of town and mercifully, we got there about lunch
time. We had a couple of hours to kill before we headed to the local
Great Zimbabwe ruins, which the guide tells me is the forth most
famous non-mortar brick structure behind the Pyramids, the Great Wall
of China and Macchu Pichu. The ruins were quite impressive and
spanned up and down hills and through valleys. Our camp was very nice
with hot showers and overlooked the lake.
The next day we headed
for Bulawayo, which meant more time in the truck. Our campsite at
Bulawayo is our home for the next two nights so everyone elected to
upgrade into proper rooms, although we maintained shared facilities,
so that we could stretch out and have a proper bed. We arrived
mid-late afternoon after spending a few hours wandering around the
city itself. The next day we left for an all day game drive/village
tour in an open top jeep, modified to carry 16 people. We saw several
cultural sites within the Matobo National Park, including checking
out some cave paintings, seeing Gordon Park, the starting place of
the Boy Scouts and passing the gravesite of John Cecil Rhodes, who
explored a lot of Africa and started up a successful diamond trading
business. Zimbabwe was previously known as Rhodesia, named after John
Rhodes.
We visited a local
village just prior to lunch, where we talked (via a translator) to
the local village chief, who was quite the character – having
narrowly avoided death after taking on a leopard with only a spear.
The local kids did a dance for us and we had the chance to buy some
local wares (as we quite often do). In the afternoon we went looking
for white and black rhino, which we didn't have too much luck finding
until right at the end of the day, where we got out of the car and
walked up to within 20m of them. It was quite exhilarating starting
within 20m of two male rhinos with nothing but grass between us.
Apparently rhino's have incredibly bad eye sight and would have seen
the group of people as one big blob, rather than individuals so
wouldn't be prepared to take on such a large being. Just as well for
us because they can hit something like 50km/h in a matter of seconds
so we'd have no chance of out running them.
The next day we got
back in the truck and headed for Hwange National Park. We stopped on
the way at the Painted Dog Organisation, which works to protect and
rehabilitate native dogs, as well as stopping poaching. Shortly after
visting Painted Dog we arrived at our campsite, right on the edge of
Hwange National Park. That afternoon we had a game drive inside the
national park in an open top Jeep. We saw quite a lot of giraffe,
elephant, cudu, impala, ostriches, sables, some hippos and a couple
of crocs. There are lions in the park but we couldn't find any. We
went back to camp at nightfall for dinner before departing in the
Jeep again for a night tour. We didn't expect to see a lot but
figured it would be fun anyway (especially with a few beers on board
to consume as we went).
We were driving along
with the spotlight and the guide thought he saw some eyes shining
back at him so we stopped the car and turned off the lights and
engine. The guide found the eyes he saw and told us that it was a
bush baby. However, in the darkness, we could hear the crashes of
branches and heavy footsteps. The noise came closer and then, out of
the foliage, emerged a herd of elephant, walking directly toward our
vehicle. There were about eight in total, the large ones female and
then there were some juveniles and babies. They walked literally to
within 5 feet of our car and stopped. The matriarch elephant raised
her truck to within 2 feet of the car and smelled us. Our guide made
the noise of a baby elephant requesting food from a mother just to
inform the elephant that we were there but posed no threat. The herd
then slowly started moving around our car and vanished off into the
darkness. During this time we were all silent, but smiling from ear
to ear. It was an absolutely incredible experience, one I'm not
likely to forget.
The next morning we
awoke early and went for another game drive within Hwange. It was
quite cold out and to start with, we didn't see many animals but as
the morning warmed up, we started to see more giraffe, elephants,
impala and wart hog. Perhaps the best thing we saw was a snake eagle
swoop down and pick up a mongoose and fly away. That was pretty cool.
We left Hwange NP after lunch for our final time in the truck as we
headed to Victoria Falls. Upon arrival, we went straight to the
falls, which I must say are rather impressive. It's high water time
so there is a lot of mist/spray, which meant you got very, very wet
when viewing the falls from certain places but the shear volume of
water going over the falls makes it spectacular viewing.
After walking around
the falls, we took our guide, cook and driver on a sunset river
(booze) cruise. We all sat back and cruised up the Zambezi with a few
drinks and looked out for wildlife. We saw two hippos chasing each
other and I can tell you honestly that those things are fast! Almost
every hippo we'd previously seen were barely moving but these ones
ran out of the water, across the land and back into the water and
they weren't too sluggish, despite their stature. After the cruise we
shared a final dinner before hitting a local nightspot to ensure the
night/trip ended on a (drunken) high.
That's it as far as
this blog entry is concerned with respect to our Intrepid Travel
tour. I can highly recommend them as a travel company. No one got
sick, everything went well and they offered us flexibility,
suggestions and assistance. A further blog entry will follow for our
post tour adventures.
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