17 - Road Trippin

20 Sep 2010

Well I’m nearly finished with the cattle stuff. Have been spending some time with Tokkie and Dirkie showing them the ropes of the computer program. With some practice they should be able to take over without any problems. . . . . . hopefully.

David finished up his hunt with the 72-yr-old Costa Rican guy and we decided to head out on a road trip as there really is nothing to do here when we’re not hunting, filming or doing cattle stuff. Printed out a Google map, packed up a tent and some food and hit the road.

First stop was Chimanimani National Park on the eastern side of Zimbabwe, bordering Mozambique. We slept the first night at a very nice waterfall creatively dubbed Bridal Veil Falls. It was soooooo nice to be down there in that secluded little valley between mountains with the water and the moisture and the vegetation. We were the only people there and we would have stayed longer but there really was nothing else to do there except look at the falls.

So we moved on to a different area of the park which was as arid and hot as the falls were moist and cool. The parks worker who was watching over the place was ecstatic to see visitors. I think we were the first in his whole 14-day shift, which doesn’t really surprise me. Tourism in Zimbabwe is kind of an oxymoron at this point. We hiked following a map which had been printed in 1999 and which David had pilfered from the deserted and run-down national parks office in Chimanimani town. I was honestly surprised it hadn’t been rolled up and used as smoking paper yet. Anyway, the hike was incredible. A rugged 2 hours of nearly vertical landscape that was totally alien to anything I’d ever seen in my life. Huge tortured slabs of rock jutting out of the land below had been painstakingly ground into strange shapes by the eternal elements. Topsoil was nonexistent and little scrubby grasses somehow clung to meager existence in the sand. I felt sorry for them.

We crested and dropped down slightly into a sort of hidden plain surrounded by these strange mountains. The plain was laid bare and sunbaked. Part of it had been intentionally burned to encourage the grass to send up new green shoots, probably for cattle although we didn’t actually see any there. Tucked in the crook at the far end of the plain was a really beautiful waterfall and we spent an hour or so there enjoying the mist and munching on apples and fruit rolls before heading back across the plain and starting the long trek back out. We were pretty wiped out after it was all over, probably thanks to the mainly-flat landscape we’ve been tromping around in for the last 5 months. It’s amazing the different muscles that get used for different terrain.

Had a nice night’s sleep there on the side of the mountain and headed down the next morning, taking the parks worker with us. Apparently he decided his shift was over and he was going to hitch a ride with us into Mutare, the next big town on our route. Mutare was actually larger and more organized than we thought it would be. Picked up a couple of things from the supermarket and continued north to the Rhodes/Nyanga National Park. Upon arriving we were astonished to find in the office, along with the usual parks workers and hangers-about, a hippie! She had harem pants and a tank top on, her hair was all in black-style extension braids, and of course she had the requisite face piercing. However, she earned my admiration when I learned she was traveling around Zimbabwe on the “public transport.” Cringe. Anyway, we teamed up and went on a walk to another nice waterfall, which David climbed, and returned covered in small worms. Hm. Hopefully not the burrowing type, still waiting to see.

The next morning we gave our hippie a lift 10-ish miles from the camp to do the short hike up a small mountain to the highest point in Zimbabwe. It was one of the windiest places I’ve ever been, windy enough for me to cop out and sit in the car while David and the hippie hiked up to it. Apparently I didn’t miss out on much. The wind was bad, of course, but also the air clarity was pretty bad, from a combination of dust and smoke from people burning the grass, so there wasn’t much to see from the top.

After that we three made a quick side-trip to a trout hatchery in the park. It was small and looked fairly unregulated but there were trout there, some really big ones too. We then headed out of the park and dropped the hippie off on the side of the road at the junction where our ways parted. We headed northwest, through the dingy, artificial-looking capital city of Harare and continued on up to Chinhoyi where there were supposedly some nice caves. There was a cave, and the clear blue pool in the bottom of it was amazing, but that was really about the only thing that was. Everything was graffitied on and chipped off and stinky. The camp right next to the cave (and the highway) was full of squatters and we spent a very alert night sleeping there in our tent. Every time we heard footsteps outside our tent David would poke his head out, knife in hand, to make sure our truck was not being broken into. We left early the next morning and continued still north, heading for Mana Pools National Park.

Mana Pools is the place where every Zimbabwean tells us we have to see before we leave. And now we know why. The entry and camping fees for this park were twice what they were for the other parks, probably because it was really the only one that could still be called functional. The campground was neat and orderly, with numbered sites right along the Zambezi River which forms the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia. When we drove into camp there was a bull elephant right there plucking branches from the trees, to the delight of the white campers sedately watching from their lawn chairs.

Driving around the park that afternoon there was an abundance of wildlife, including things we don’t normally see around Threeways like buffalo, hippo and elephant. But it wasn’t until nighttime when we discovered what the real attraction of Mana Pools is. As we sat by our small fire finishing our dinner David looked off to the side and spotted something sitting in camp a short way off. He shone the flashlight towards it and lo and behold it was a hyena! In camp! It trotted off away from the light, not really threatened but obviously not happy with having been spotted.

Anyway, we decided to go for a short night walk around camp and saw plenty of hippo, buffalo and more hyena. During the night the sounds of life all around us were amazing. All kinds of munching and grunting and laughing and whooping. At one point we opened the tent door to find a small herd of buffalo grazing not 5 feet from our tent in the moonlight. It was thrilling. We considered staying another day just so we could spend another night there, but decided it was time to head home.

The original plan was to stay overnight somewhere south of Harare, but David decided he would rather not deal with the hassle of finding a good place to stay and pushed through to Threeways. I was secretly glad he did, although I was on the edge of my seat the whole drive after the sunset. The roads here are basically just wide enough for 2 cars to comfortably fit side by side, with no shoulder or safety zone in case someone passing up ahead does not make it in enough time. The sides of the roads are absolutely littered with the crumpled remains of head-on collisions. Scary.

But we made it back safely and have spent an incredibly hot, slightly boring day here organizing our room and relaxing, which is probably what we will be doing for the next 6 days while waiting for the 26th, when we get on a plane back to civilization.