Its been awhile, again. I could argue that its because I am not a serial poster type, that I prefer to live in the moment rather then publish the moment etc, which would hold a little bit of truth… the fact that there has been little wifi and what there is does not always stretch as far as loading up my WIX site, let alone downloading pictures is a far more compelling argument. But the reality is, i don’t want to just publish an itinerary - a catalogue of “this is where we went and this is what we did and then this or that happened etc”. Because we have been to many splendid places and done many splendid things, for which I am truly fortunate and grateful but my literary capabilities will not do justice to in imparting these all to you. And sometimes it takes time to distill things a bit.
Right now, I am composing this on my trusty laptop, perched on a camp chair under a large wild mango tree, looking out across the sandy expanse of the Runde river, the Chilojo cliffs peaking out of the bush to the left and the acrobatic manoeuvres of the colony of white throated bee eaters just below me where the river has eroded a good 10m bank - ideal for their burrows. We had another night of excitement with some curious lions wandering through the camp in the early hours, not as exciting as a few nights ago at a different campsite where a few of them took up positions around the camp (one literally 3 meters from our tent) and proceeded to roar to each other, all night. They vanish with the dawn like smoke, leaving nothing but paw marks and the knowledge that They Were Right There! We are in the Gonarezhou national park, south eastern border of Zimbabwe.
Since the last update, over a month ago now, we have binged out on the bush in various forms, and with family, lots and lots of family stuff. Good family stuff - going places and doing things together. 10 days spent in the Vic Falls / Hwange National Park - old favourites of ours. But doing some new things, like camping out on one of the platforms on the other side of the Vic Falls national park under the full moon and being surrounded by a huge herd of buffalo that had come down to drink. Or spoiling ourselves with a couple of nights at Ivory Lodge amongst the elephant. It’s been a long time since I last drove the entire length of Hwange national park, popping into the various pans and lookouts. Probably since the 90’s. Jono spent a lot of time there as kids with his folks, it being within relatively easy striking distance from Kamativi and had many fond memories of these pans, platforms and picnic sites. It was fun sharing this with our first Kiwi visitor, Tracy, Ashleighs good mate.
Our week in Bulawayo after VicFalls was the start of the real ‘core’ highlight of our visit with Steve (Jonos brother) arriving from Perth, Matt from Nelson, Ruth from Harare (though she had also been with us for some of our stay in Vic Falls!), Hendrick from the Marlborough Sounds (Ashleighs boyfriend), and James - my brother - from South Africa, complete with his travelling companion Boris the Baboon. A rather vulgar life size garden ornament of this primate. A gift for my brother in law who has a somewhat complicated love/hate relationship with baboons. We are careful not to guarantee too much in terms of experiences / animals etc when folk come to visit, but we are fairly confident that if you visit in June/July aka winter, that although it will be surprisingly cold, it will be bright and sunny. Of that we can be certain. Except for this year. Days and days of cold grey windy rainy and generally inclement weather greeting our visitors!! No spectacular African sunrises or sunsets to enjoy, just cold grey skies. Which, when coming from NZ, is the LAST thing you want!! But it gave us lots of time to sit around a blazing wood fire, playing board games, chatting, while Steve entertained us on the ancient upright piano, which we all agreed had nearly played itself into tune by then end. Steve worked his way around a few completely dead keys, and culminated in his hilarious ode to Boris “The Baboon Blues”… (any similarity to the demise of Boris of UK PM fame is entirely coincidental).
A great exodus to the legendary Nottingham Estate after our time at the farm, once again finding ourselves on the great grey green greasy limppopo river, and it was indeed surrounded by fever trees this time - beautiful green trunked giants with spreading flat top canopies. Away from the river the vegetation is more scarce, but the geology / rock formations are from a different planet all together. Apart from being in a fairly remote, interesting part of the world with some excellent bush camps, Nottingham Estate is first and foremost a citrus orchard - a couple hundred acres along the edge of the river. The highlight of any visit is to go out to Fly Camp, in the ‘hinterland’ where they drop a pile of left over oranges, daily, for the elephants and baboons - primarily as a decoy to keep them away from raiding the orchards, but does make for some good elephant watching. We enjoyed two evenings up there, with beautiful sunsets (of which we had missed out on for a good few days with said inclement weather!), and dinner - a more exotic location for a family feast finale would be hard to find!
Another interesting highlight of the visit was a trip out to the neighbouring station - Sentinel ranch - to look at an incredible dinosaur fossil unearthed in the last +10years. My brother being a geologist had heard of it via his network, so off for some slightly unusual “game viewing”. We were taken around by the son of the woman who found it (they were away), a hugely knowledgable young man of all things geological, paleontological and environmental. He had grown up out there, and it was interesting to get a rather factual, objective account of the last 25 years from someone of a generation younger than myself. The wholesale annihilation of the wildlife post the land seizures in their area alone, and that has left vast swaths of this country devoid of any biodiversity and turned forests into arid dustbowls is heart breaking, and leaves me demoralised by the waste and failure of Zimbabwe’s government. The opportunity to build conservation and environmental custodianship as a cornerstone of the new administration has been another defeat wrestled from the jaws of victory. To be followed a few days later by a visit to the magical Matopoes National Park - the Jewel of Bulawayo, to find the valleys and vleis once the domain of black sable, wildebeest, zebras and much more, now empty of wild life, not even one impala - and instead the plague of cattle, goats and belaguered donkeys that have infested everywhere, invading this, a National Park, as well. Surprisingly, there is a small population still of rhino, fiercely protected, but in spite of this nearly half disappeared to China just after the latest regime change. Of course there is no tangible evidence of what exactly happened, other than these animals were removed. I know I sound dark on it, and yes there are pockets of astounding good work being done, but its hard not to feel this way as the human population continues to burgeon unchecked across the globe, and here in Zimbabwe, compounded by lack of agriculture and industry pushing people to inadequately and intensively subsist of tiny bits of ground or go digging up other bits of ground in a haphazard fashion trying to find a spot of gold, using horrendous chemicals for extraction, and other such activities. But seeing this little dinosaur, locked in its stone grave for 200 million years, serves to remind me that we are but a minuscule player in this vast creation that has reinvented itself countless times. Being witness, and no doubt a player in the demise of the current exquisite version makes one prone to introspection.
Family started to disperse once again on our return to Bulawayo from Nottingham, leaving Matt, Ash, Hendrick, Jono and self to set off on our next adventure to The Gonarezhou national park for 10 days camping - which is where this latest blog edition was started. Its now our last day, and I am sitting under a sausage tree at the Rundu Gorge campsite. Thankfully not a sausage on it, which would be lethal if they landed on your head. A curious tree to select for the campsite - though I think there was another one a little further down which got destroyed by flooding. The gorge itself is just in front - tumbling through a narrow gap in some very peculiar looking rock formation - not sure if its a type of sandstone, or some sort of igneous type. Will have to look it up when back online. A large pod of hippos honking to each other on the right, and plenty of interesting water birds, including the Goliath heron who is most majestic, fishing next to a very large Marabou Stork and some yellow billed storks (large) - a more unusual triumvirate would be hard to find. We have been fortunate to explore a large part of the northern section of the park - and have had some very cool encounters with lion, leopard, painted dogs, and elephant to name a few - the latter have developed a large reputation of being Most Unfriendly - and do indeed chase cars, a bit like the proverbial dog with a postman or passing car wheel, trumpeting and stampeding in an alarming fashion. One in particular amused me greatly. We were coming around a bend just after sundown, and spotted 4 elephant disappear behind a snuff box bush, but only 3 emerged from the other side and crossed the road to the others. We waited. Crept forward. Finally spotting the 4th, hiding quietly. We stopped. She realised she was spotted and nonchalantly lurked across the road, eyeballing us with a wicked glint, then loitered just on the edge. And waited, knowing we would have to pass. We waited. She hung there, stretching her hamstrings, rolling her shoulders, arching her back, literally cracking her knuckles - limbering up for the evening entertainment. Nonchalantly twiddling the tip of her trunk in the sand, waiting for us to come forward. We thought about it and decided discretion was the better part of valour and cut out across the bush far behind the herd - fully aware that we had deprived her of her evenings highlight. She will forever be the mental image I have when someone uses the term ‘stroppy cow’!
However, it is hard not to notice the huge burden that the very healthy elephant population has put on the bush - with some areas looking like some sort of post apocalyptic landscape of dust and the ruins of giant trees which once formed a closed canopy forest. Not the elephants fault - they are hemmed in on all sides by people, and so cannot migrate to fresh ground, along with all the other animals that end up concentrated in these parks. And its not only the elephants that are causing this nearly irreversible change to the vegetation (as an indirect consequence of humans) - there are other areas of the park, looking similar in terms of the ruins of old forests, these ones a result of the dastardly practices of the Tsetse fly control department of the 1960s’ which wrecked a veritable flora-side, fauna-side and insecticide across huge parts of the country, including this park. Ring barking the giant lead-woods as it was believed that forests, and these trees in particular, harboured tsetse fly which made large areas of the country uninhabitable to people, and of course cows and thereby hindered Progress. Over half a million animals of every variety were also indiscriminately exterminated - the irony that at exactly the same time poor old Fothergill was painstaking saving 6000 animals in the north of the country from the rising floodwaters of lake Kariba with Operation Noah. The ruins of these forests remain, monuments to our ignorance and greed. So no, the pillaging of this country is not only in recent times. The efforts to address and reverse the damage is left to passionate individuals and foreign intervention - the Gonarezhou is only the haven it is currently because of the intervention of Frankfurt Zoo. And it’s a tenuous existence, who knows when it will collapse again into a haven for poaching, pollution and mining. But, the Gonarezhou has emerged from a long chequered history of neglect, abuse and ignorance, and holds a host of stories of amazing triumphs - not just disasters - and remains largely intact, which gives me enormous hope and optimism that it will remain the sanctuary and become the ‘crown jewel’ of the regions national parks - by ‘region’ I mean the trans-frontier national park that is slowly gestating between Zim, Mozambique (Gorongoza NP) and South Africa (Kruger NP). Watch this space.
Talking of ruins, we had a lovely day out before coming here, visiting the old Khami ruins, which I had not been to since I was a girl. It was a most enjoyable experience, both because of how well maintained the historical park is, and of the company - we were joined by Martin Sanderson, a man who has influenced and inspired many generations of children in Bulawayo. A walking encyclopaedia of historical information and a way of making even the most boring brick wall seem more interesting than the Sistine chapel!
Having these 10 days in the park, plus the time in Hwange, Tuli etc, I have finally had a chance to really start boffing up on birds and trees. Which has opened up a vast new dimension in terms of getting out into the bush. I have long wanted to improve my knowledge in these areas - but with only a week if we lucky once a year or less makes it difficult to get to grips with, and the animals are so beautiful and fun to spot that these other aspects barely get a look in. Until now :).
Back to civilisation (?!) tomorrow, having not had comms for 10 days who knows what might have happened in the world! Not sure if I will be able to upload pictures with this edition - they will perhaps have to wait until a later date!
Cheers for now - we are off to Uganda this evening!
Until the next time,
Viv