Blog 29. The Best 4x4 x Far…….

We spent a couple of days at a campsite called Eureka just south of Lusaka where we watched the Wimbledon men’s final in the bar with the passengers of three mega overland trucks! There were semi tame zebra, waterbuck and even giraffe that wandered through the site at will. After restocking the larder we headed off east towards South Luangwa game reserve, our favourite reserve, so far! In Petauke scoured our books and sat nav for a camp site to no avail. We even asked the petrol pump attendants (usually the font of all local knowledge) but they didn’t know of anything. They did however point us in the direction of Chimbwewe lodge that was “suitable for those with a paler skin”. After we had booked and paid for the most expensive ensuite room (slightly run down, smelt of damp had no plug in the bath) and ordered dinner we moved in, only to discover that the lodge’s camp site was next to our chalet! The ablutions were cleaner than our room and camping was one tenth the price. We hadn’t even bothered to ask so we only had ourselves to blame. 

We are always game for a little adventure so rather than hounding up the tar the following morning we opted to take the 150km dirt road which runs along the banks of the Luangwa River. It is always more pleasant to be in the rural areas and was fascinating. It took us all day to drive, a gravel road in poor condition which deteriorated to a track, wide enough for ox carts only. We passed such an ox cart with “Godstime, the best transport” daubed on its side, fully loaded with mealies. The predominant cash crop was cotton and we did see a battered 10 ton Mercedes truck collecting bales of cotton from the many villages on the route, cotton fluff festooned the trees on either side of the track as he had forced his way through. The track slowly deteriorated until it was little more than a footpath and the paintwork on the L/R sides took another battering. We were less than half way and wondering at our decision to go that way when suddenly it changed to a well-made, recently graded single track which took us all the way to our destination, Mfuwe. We later learnt that Robin Pope (one of the US$1,000 a night Safari Companies) had a small lodge in that area and this was their route into the park. It seems that the highways authority can’t afford to maintain the roads unless wealthy American Tourists need them?

You may remember that last time we stayed at Track and Trail we had numerous problems with habituated elephants raiding the camp site looking for food? This time we had taken the precaution of booking one of the sleeping platforms where we could pitch our ground tent above trunk height. The Dutch manager told us that they had had little problem this season - so far. We slept well apart from the shouting and banging that a large South African party were making, presumably celebrating the end of their holiday, they even had fireworks!  Next morning we discovered that we / they had been visited by an angry, hungry herd of hardened elephants that didn’t want to go away. The “monkey proof” waste bins are blue plastic 100 lit chemical drums with screw on lids and the banging had been the elephants stamping on them to blast the lids off. They had emptied out all the rubbish, smashed someone’s camping chair and decimated a storage box that had contained potatoes and onions!

We always enjoy South Luangwa Park although it is expensive (US$70/day) and have seen some of our best game there. There is a huge range of antelope including Puku which we seldom see anywhere else and the bird life is glorious. The predators are good too and this time we saw a big male leopard shortly after entering the park and two leopard cubs sleeping under a bush whilst their mother was off hunting as we left. Late breakfast of bacon, egg and strong coffee or lunch, with a glass of cold wine, under a tree on the elevated banks of the river, serenaded by the raucous belly laughs of a raft of hippos is hard to beat and leaves an indelible memory. Back at the camp we had to buy catapults to deter the monkeys and baboons that continually try to steal anything left out and even jump into the L/Rs and bare their teeth when chased away.

Just as another small adventure we decided to drive north out of the park as it is winter and the rivers are low enough to ford. Next morning we discovered that the garage had run out of diesel so the camp spared us 20 lit which should just be enough to get us to the Great North Road and civilisation. Either that or wait a few days (?) for fresh supplies. The little used, sandy track cuts through the Mopane bush in a straight line right across the huge, flat Luangwa valley and apart from a few painful bites from plagues of Tsetse flies all went well. We knew that we would have to climb up the Muchinga escarpment at the other side but nothing we had heard prepared us for the experience it turned out to be!

If you like 4x4 driving this road is for you, preferably with enough diesel to go back if the going gets too tough. The narrow “track” twists and turns every few meters and the gradients are such that almost the whole 11 km, 2,700ft climb is in 1^st gear, low ratio. The surface is loose boulders and rubble which ricochet out from under the tyres and disappear over the edge. Every few metres there are ditches across the path gouged out by the last rains or great holes where the edge has collapsed. At times it felt like I could see the front wheel through the corner of the windscreen bouncing and scrabbling over the rocks. At one stage we turned a sharp corner on a steep incline to see a foot high, bare rock step right across the road. How our poor old Land Rover climbed it I don’t know and we’ve been on some pretty bad roads before. I gained a new respect for the tired, grinding old technology that got us up there and was truly surprised that nothing broke. It’s worrying to think what that would have meant. It was dusk by the time we got to the top and both fuel tanks were showing empty so we headed for the closest camp site arriving after dark.

This was at a “small” 100 sq km farm called Mutinando, close to the escarpment overlooking the Luangwa valley that we had left behind. Our campsite was perched near the top of one of the great granite whalebacks that dominate the scenery.  There were open roofed, hot showers and wooden throned long drop loos with viewing windows looking out over the bush beyond. We used an open fronted rondavel complete with fireplace which we cooked on and huddled around in the cold evenings. During the day we explored the many footpaths along the river and paddled in the ice cold waterfalls, stretching our legs after spending much time in the car. Two more overnighters at Fringilla Farm, a ramshackle but clean lodge with camping surrounded by cattle, pigs and peacocks at a huge farm. There was an abattoir on site, butchery and beef, pork and lamb in abundance as well as honey, atchar, spices and jams. I took us 1½ hours to buy enough meat for 4 days due to the kind hospitality of the owner who tempted us with tasters of various of his wares. The second campsite at Monze is owned by a Dutch doctor, again on a farm growing maize predominantly, but also housing a lovely project making embroidered table ware and niknaks for children.

Yesterday we pulled into Livingstone, the tourist mecca for this part of the world and this afternoon went to the falls, the first time we have seen it from this side since 1975 when we spent our 2^nd wedding anniversary here!

 

 There is a vibrancy about Zambia, the people are very friendly with ready smiles and there is order and some evidence of prosperity despite some white Zambians expressing concern about the raping and pillaging of the natural resources of the country by the Chinese. Others, including the many Zimbabwean farmers fleeing the Mugabe regime, are upbeat about their future here. This in complete contrast to our experience of driving through here in the 1970s when there was nothing in the shops but tinned Chinese duck (2 bones and salted water) and plastic sandals.

Namibia next.

28. Writing on the wall.

Further north and east brought us to Vaalwater, a small bustling trading-post type town that is now the centre of the 15,000 sq km “Waterberg Biosphere” (one of Africa’s two savannah biospheres) and the tourism it brings. For many years this area has been dominated by huge farms that specialise in the commercial production of game for meat, hunting, game parks and export all over the world. The roads are lined for miles and miles of 15ft high game fences and the farms are often 20 and 30 thousand acres. We just missed a game auction, clearly a huge affair bringing vast revenue to the organisers.   For us an unusual by-product is that we could stop anywhere under a tree for lunch, a cup of tea or just a pee without attracting the attention of hordes of children from the thousands of tiny hamlets and villages that line the roads everywhere else on the continent. Here there just aren’t any, the “locals” all live in accommodation provided by the farmers on the farms (along with basic schools, churches and all other employee “needs”). Perhaps this physical isolation results in slower development since independence and perhaps the resultant frustration partly explains the (disputed) 6,000 farmers murdered since independence in this region.

Waterberg is a huge plateau where perpetual springs issue from the flanks of the mountains and the Biosphere is internationally recognised. Its purpose seems to be to promote tourism to benefit all the people in the area and encourage development that sustains the environment. We stayed on one of the farms in a lovely, spacious cottage with views of part of the farm and often saw giraffe, zebra or kudu from the huge front stoop (veranda). Our hosts family are firmly woven into the local community and their children are sixth generation white Africans. He is also an amateur astronomer who delighted us with a tour of the night sky using a laser pointer (that was more like a “light sabre”) and an 8 inch telescope. We were free to walk, drive and generally explore the bushveld that is the farm, walking without a guide and watching game watching us was such a lovely experience. Before dawn one morning one of the workers took us to watch as porcupines returned home from nights foraging. We sat very quietly for a while only to eventually conclude that they had had a night in! About a week later I discovered that one of the bites I’d had was infected, so took antibiotics to fend off what we think was probably the beginnings of tick bite fever. It seems to be ok now.

From there we moved on to Mapungubwe National Park, situated in the north western corner of the country, where the rivers Limpopo and Shashe form SA borders with Botswana and Zimbabwe respectively. Mapungubwe holds archaeological evidence of a vast ancient African civilisation. Royalty lived at the top of the hill and commoners (who carried soil and water to the top) at the bottom. It was an early trading centre, glass beads from the Middle East and pottery from China, were traded for skins, gold and ivory. Gold foiled artefacts including a rhino which has been dated to 13^th century were found buried with one of the kings at the top of the hill.

Game was quite sparse, although we had the privilege of watching a large bull elephant completing his ablutions. This consisted of systematically throwing muddy water first down his left flank then right then between his front legs. He then lay down and rolled onto each side, luxuriating in the muddy puddle which was a bit small for and elephant. As he left the turtles, who had been watching from the side lines scuttled back into their home. He lumbered on a few metres to a patch of deep dusty sand, which he puffed all over himself, then on to a pair of angular upright boulders for an all-over massage.

The SA / Zim border crossing is reputed to be the busiest in Africa and one of the most difficult and corrupt for the un-initiated so we decided to nip through the corner of Botswana into Zimbabwe through more rural crossing points. You can’t win them all and the close by one was closed as the Limpopo was too high to ford except for foot passengers who crossed on a sort of chair lift. The next one south was in the same condition so two long days driving eventually brought us into Zimbabwe. Bulawayo’s colonial glory of streets “wide enough to turn a wagon and six oxen” is now mixed with the grimy necessities of daily living in a poor country although central park is still clean, green refuges from the bustle and barter of the streets. We drove passed the small BnB that Mick and I stayed in in 1972 whilst we looked for work there.

The Matopas Hills or Matoba National Park, as it is now known, is like an alien landscape, covered with huge domed granite outcrops, known as whale backs with Inca like structures of close fitting blocks and precariously balanced, weather worn boulders as big a houses decorating the tops. It is littered with hundreds of caves which are rich in paintings attributed to the nomadic San (Bushman).  From 6,000 BC until almost living memory the elders, soothsayers, rainmakers and wise men of this diminutive tribe daubed red ochre and charcoal black onto the walls of their religious sites. Prancing people with weapons appear from the shoulders of animals or emerge from or disappear into cracks in the rock. The messages they left were so important at the time but a mystery today.  Here too is the contentious final(?) resting place of Cecil Rhodes, his intimate long term friend and one of his cronies, alongside the traditional resting place of the Ndebele people who inhabited this place after the San left.

.We took a guided walk for a couple of hours with a group of 6 White Rhino, at times they were as little as  6 metres away and we crouching nervously as they peered short-sightedly in our direction. All 40 White and 15 Black Rhinos in the park have their horns removed every three years as an anti poaching measure. Sad old world!

Great Zimbabwe near Masvingo contributed further to the archaeological aspect of this trip. The peoples from Mapungubwe migrated here in the 13^th century and this amazing civilisation developed progressively over the ensuing 400 years. There are a number of stone built centres of civilisation in this part of the world. Arab traders brought goods to the African coast at eg Zanzibar, and Ilha da Mozambique, and Swahili middle men traded into the interior from there. Great Zimbabwe is the biggest and most extensive of its kind. Our guide, Miriam was a mine of information, painting mental pictures of the lives of those who occupied these enormous dry stone walled enclosures. She told us too that their country is named after this place. Zim means big, ba means stone, bwe means house but still managed to roll her eyes like a traditional Ma Ma.

Our route through Zim avoided Harare, on the advice of some other travellers, we went via the Antelope Park at Gweru. It takes all sorts, they thought it was fab -  we felt it was more like a theme park, their next stop was Chinoyi, so we followed suit but this camp had seen better days too, at least the showers were hot. For years we have tried to get in to Chitake Springs, billed as the ultimate African game experience without success. This year it was also booked when we tried in February but we were short listed so it was with some anticipation that we arrived at the gate. The staff tried hard for us but, for the last time, it wasn’t to be so we pushed on to Kariba in the hope of finding a houseboat for a couple of days to relax and lick our wounds.

Kariba is one of the biggest manmade lakes in the world, 180kms long and 40kms wide, 5,600 sq kms. The retained water weighs 186 billion tons and is so heavy it has caused earth tremors in the area as the crust adjusts. We managed to secure a houseboat for two nights on the dam, spent time relaxing, fishing and game viewing in a small speedboat alongside the southern shores of the lake in the Matusadona game reserve. Spectacular mountains dominated the view and we were able to sail close to hippo and elephant, this was fine until the outboard motor gave up and our guide had to paddle us back to the houseboat. He paddled against the wind for an hour and we were less than half way back. We tied up to a dead tree and re-examined the problem – the air inlet to the fuel tank hadn’t been opened! A few seconds later we were forging a bow wave and back just in time for sundowners!!

Zambia next.