Who knew the capital of Lesotho is Maseru (our destination early Wednesday morning)? I learned around 10 years. It was then, a few years before Steve and I had retired, that I conceived a crazy plan for us to go on an epic quest to visit every one of the 54 countries in Africa. I had this notion we would set up a website and attract legions of readers who would be riveted by our adventures as we tried to accomplish this difficult task. Steve gulped but agreed to go along; we announced our plan to a number of friends. I learned the name and capital city of every African country and spent many hours working on routings.
Reality (including the fact Steve’s mom was in her late 90s) finally changed my mind, and now I know it would not have been a good plan. I think it would have quickly worn us down; become drudgery. But I’ve retained some of my huge appetite to see as much as possible of this continent I like so much. That’s part of why we tacked on quick trips to Lesotho and eSwatini (the former Swaziland). Another is that we so enjoyed our visits two years ago to Europe’s smallest microstates. The same questions apply: how do these little chunks of territory surrounded by big burly states survive?
We blew through Lesotho in less than two days, yet even that brief interval delivered a strong taste of the place. I had found a South African company, Roof of Africa, to drive us clean across, and one of their driver-guides, Sandile, met us as we emerged from the brief immigration formalities at the airport. Sandile, 35, spoke excellent English and proved to be thoughtful, well-informed, and curious — an excellent traveling companion.
Over the course of the next 34 hours, we learned a lot about each other, as well as the history of Lesotho, which was occupied for millennia by San (aka Bushmen) hunter-gathers. Bantu peoples from the north arrived in the 17th century, and irritated by the Bushmen’s propensity to snatch their cattle, they drove them to the Kalahari Desert and other places no on else wanted to live. Later those Bantu clashed with white Boer settlers and their neighboring Zulus. The modern history of Lesotho began when a charismatic leader named Moshoeshoe united all the Bantu clans, placated the Zulu’s rapacious leader, Shaka, and worked out a deal with the Boers in which he traded a bunch of territory for independence. Sandile took us to the Thaba Bosui, Lesotho’s Plymouth Rock, birthplace of the landlocked little country that still survives.
King MoshoeshoeThis was a reproduction of the original founding community. Note that residents of Lesotho are known as the blanket people. Staying warm here is an issue.
Now that I’ve driven across it, I understand why both Shaka and the Boers decided it wasn’t worth trying to conquer the place. The land is harsh and high (over 9000 feet in many places), and icy winds slice through the passes, even now, in late spring. Massive mesas and buttes reminded Steve and me of a grayer, grassier version of the American West. It looks nothing like anything we’ve seen anywhere else in Africa but at times reminded us of the South American Altiplano or Tibet.
Most of Lesotho’s 2.5 million citizens are very poor. They survive by farming crops like sorghum and wheat, and grazing animals. Nowhere have I seen so many shepherds, young boys who’ve dropped out of school to spend their days and nights looking after various types of sheep (Merinos being most prized) or Angora goats or cattle.
One of the cutest herding dogs I saw.
More than once I did a double take when I realized the cowboy riding a horse near the road was black.
The biggest disappointment of this trip came in Lesotho, when I learned Sandile would not be driving us back into South Africa over the Sani Pass. Travel writers rank this road through the Drakensberg Mountains as one of the world’s great driving experiences. When I received Roof of Africa’s proposed itinerary, I assumed we would experience it, as it was on a straight line from our hotel Wednesday night and our destination Thursday (the city of Pietermaritzburg.)
But Sandile explained there was simply no road connecting the dots. Few roads of any kind cut through this brutal territory. Instead we had to cross the border at lonely place called Qacha’s Nek, then jolt for an hour to get back on good South African tarmac. (We learned that many South Africans like the idea of Lesotho residents coming across the border about as much as some Americans welcome Mexican immigrants.)
Neither Steve nor I regretted our little dash through the mountain kingdom. It’s fun to be reminded of the existence of places like Ha Moka (another stop we made Wednesday.) A tiny village today, it began in the early 1800s when a guy named Moka moved into a big local cave to hide out from the nearby community of cannibals. (Apparently they had been driven by drought and starvation to start catching and eating humans.) Moka married and eventually invited four other families to live in the cave. They built tidy little clay houses that look more like hobbit homes than anything we’ve seen outside the movie set we visited in New Zealand.
The inside of the cave houses was actually clean and pleasant.
Our guide at the site told us the last member of the fourth generation of the cave dwellers just died last month. She has descendants, but it’s not clear any of them will move into the family’s cave house. As for the cannibals, even though they had eaten his own grandfather, King Moshoeshoe got them to stop their evil ways by giving them some cattle. More proof that he was one of the world’s better kings.
A more accurate name for this post might be Lazy and Boring. After we reached the Zambian border and turned in our Land Cruiser, mostly what we did was luxuriate in a glorious setting. Great for us but not much to read about. Still, we did get wet and saw a couple of wild marvels.
One of the great natural wonders of the world lies at the far northwest corner of where Zimbabwe meets Zambia, so the first thing we did upon driving there from Hwange National Park was to go to Victoria Falls National Park (on the Zimbabwe side). I’d been worrying for months that only a trickle of water might be pouring over the escarpment. The end of the dry season is an excellent time for seeing animals but six months off from when the water levels are highest.
I had nothing to worry about. A poster near the park entrance makes it clear that high and low season at the falls offer very different experiences.
At the peak-flow times, the mist is so dense it’s hard to see much. Instead we watched a breathtaking amount of water plunge over the cliff in some places…
…but also got clear views of the rocky geology. It was spectacular, and seeing it in person fulfilled a long-held dream.
Friday night we ate crocodile croquettes and good pizza at the Vic Falls branch of The Three Monkeys then slept at the B&B where we dropped off the Land Cruiser. The next morning a local guy transported us to the Zambia border, where the passport-stamping formalities took only 20 minutes. A second driver drove us across the 118-year-old bridge financed by Cecil Rhodes…
and then on to our splurge for the trip — a beautiful lodge on the banks of the Zambezi.
Both of us were tired, so it was pure pleasure to enjoy the river views, nap, and swim in the riverside pool.
In the late afternoon of our full day at the lodge, we boarded a sunset cruise on the river.
Along with drinks and hot hors d’oeuvres, it served up views of animals strolling or snoozing on the banks:
…as well as our first hippo of the trip…
In his or her element!
…and some startling views of an elephant orgy featuring both sex…
…and snuggles.
Then it was time to pack up, say goodbye to ZImbabwe and Zambia and head off on the last phase of this trip: South Africa, Lesotho, and eSwatini.
Years ago when I was working as a journalist, I met a remarkable character named Bill Wheeler. Bill had abandoned his career as a San Diego anesthesiologist to devote his life to adventuring, mainly in Africa. He documented his travels using his prodigious photographic talents. In one interview, Bill recounted how he had spent his very first night on the continent: driving to a game park, getting out of his vehicle, and pitching a tent. He was terrified of being eaten alive, but all he could do was to take a couple aspirins, the strongest pain relievers he had with him.
I remember laughing and laughing at the thought of pitching a tent in an African game park. I couldn’t conceive of it. Now I know what it’s like, firsthand.
Steve and I self-drove and camped for a couple of nights because it made Zimbabwe affordable and accessible and because Ant Bown (of Manapools.com) convinced me we could do it safely. We did NOT do it because we love camping so much. Steve was a Boy Scout in his youth, and over the course of our long marriage, we’ve camped on a number of occasions. Still, given a choice between a cozy lodge and a sleeping bag on the ground, I’ll usually pick the indoor snooze every time.
To say I was nervous about the camping portions of our Zimbabwe program is an understatement. Yet when we finally reached Ant’s base in Harare and had our 90-minute introduction to our vehicle, I felt exhilarated by the ingenuity of the Land Cruiser’s outfitting. It had AC and a two-person tent affixed to the rooftop. A sturdy freezer held the frozen meals and other supplies we had pre-ordered.
We could heat our meals and water for coffee on a cute little cooktop…
…using a compact armamentarium of kitchen tools.
We’d be able to recharge our battery with solar panels, if necessary.
In such a rig, I could see how we might actually be comfortable.
We had four nights of cottage stays (first in the eastern highlands and then in the Save Valley Conservancy) before our first taste of tent life. By then, Steve had become convinced he didn’t want to sleep on the Cruiser’s roof but instead would use the ground tent with which we also were supplied. Our destination was the Lake Kyle Recreational Park, not far from the Great Zimbabwe archeological site (one of our top sightseeing goals.)
A commanding but friendly official at the park’s front gate toted up our fees — $29 for the park entrance and campsite. We also opted to pay an extra $50 a person to go on a 4 pm “rhino walk” with a ranger guide. The entrance official told us how to get to the campground, and he said we could pick any site; we’d be the only folks there. Since we had time, we decided to set up our tents so we wouldn’t have to do that after the game walk.
Nothing disastrous happened during the set-up, but it reminded me of the contrast between staying in a hotel and erecting a ground tent. Hotel: you sign the register, maybe show your passport, then you can walk in your room and flop down for a nap. Tent: you have to haul out the cumbersome tent bag out of the Cruiser, find and roll out the ground cloth. Unpack the tent. Stake down its corners, find the poles, fit them together, get them to stand up so you can clip the tent body to the framework, pound in more stakes. It’s a pain!
Opening up the roof tent presented different challenges. You had to start by wrestling off its straps and cover, very tough to do since it was so high and we had nothing to stand on.
Here’s a view of Steve struggling to do it.
Once it was uncovered, one of us had to get up on the tires to extend the ladder.
Eventually I learned to scramble up there.
The other person then used the roof tent ladder as a lever to pop the structure open.
Ta-dah!!!
When I climbed up and into it, it felt solid enough, and unzippering the windows covers yielded some cool views.
There’s Lake Kyle.I particularly appreciated being able to see the sky.
Later I would have to get my gear up and into it (including the instant-coffee canister I’d bought in Harare to serve as a chamber pot. No way was I planning to climb down that ladder and toddle off to the “ablutions” in the dark.)
After this setup, we had a splendid rhino walk with a gun-toting ranger who led us straight to two large groups of the massive herbivores.
Shot with my long lens, these white rhino look closer than we actually got to them — but not by much.Although our guide said most white rhino were pretty chill, he didn’t like the stare we were getting from this big male. So we moved on.
Back at our campsite, Steve and I made dinner, which included grilled burgers, a nice salad, and brownies washed down with cold milk.
I thought the table cloth, supplied by Ant, was a nice touch.
Both of us went to bed early, slept well, and woke at 5:30 to pack everything up and put it all away. Because we were clumsy, almost 3 hours passed before we cranked up the Cruiser and hit the road. I felt grubbier than I had in memory, but we were otherwise fine.
We stayed in hotels for the next four nights. Our final two nights of camping came in Hwange National Park, one of the biggest game preserves in all of Africa. Ant had booked us into two separate sites, and they couldn’t have been more different from each other. The first, Tusker’s Camp, is located in a forested area just outside the east side of the park.
It’s not far from the property occupied by the Painted Dog Conservation group, a non-profit devoted to helping this highly endangered predator (not a dog at all, although they look like they could be relatives.) We spent almost an hour learning about them and visiting the only current occupant of the rehab facility.
After being attacked by a lion, Lucky (as she was named) was treated at the center. But she still limps too badly to return to the wild. So she’s a permanent resident.
We then found the park administration office, booked a 7 am game walk for the next morning, and made our way down some truly awful roads to find Tusker’s.
We never glimpsed the fancy Ivory Lodge that Tusker’s adjoins. Our home for the night was an unfenced piece of land overlooking a distant water hole lined with elephants.
That black clump at the water’s elephant consists of elephants…They looked like this through my telephoto lens.
A solitary, laconic attendant named Reginald showed us the amenities — a clean bathroom close at hand; a pleasant dining platform. I asked if any dangerous animals were likely to put in an appearance, and he replied that they usually didn’t come to where we’d parked but tended to stay in the brushy area maybe 50 yards away. Reginald then chopped some wood, built a fire, and disappeared. We never saw him or any other human again during our stay.
Some parts of the hours that followed were sublime. We set up the tents more efficiently than we had done at Kyle Lake. Steve made gin and tonics, which we carried up the viewing platform.
As the sun set, we sipped our cocktails and took in the action around the water hole. The elephants had tanked up and moved on, but dozens of baboons dashed in to get a drink, then retreated back into the woods. With the light fading, we dined on excellent beef stew (the last of our pre-ordered meals), and by 9 I had climbed up the stairs to my sleeping perch. Within 5 minutes, I was dreaming.
I awake with a jolt shortly after midnight to the sound of footsteps and soft rumbles below. Peering out my windows, I couldn’t see what was moving, but it felt very close. “Steve!” I hissed. “Do you hear that?”
“Mrmph,” I recognized Steve awakening. A moment later came the unmistakable sound of a big feline, growling.
“Oh my,” Steve said.
“Do you want to come up here?” My voice was pitched at least an octave higher than normal.
“No,” he said. “Go to sleep.”
But how could I? Given what Reginald had said, I didn’t really think the lion or leopard would make it up to the Cruiser’s roof to rip my tent apart. I was less sure about Steve’s fate, and more than anything, I felt flooded with adrenaline, on full alert.
We didn’t hear the big cat growl again, but for the next two hours, a wild panoply of noises surrounded the Cruiser: snorts and chuffles and lots of footsteps. They would disappear for a few minutes, then some new creepy noise would make me sit bolt upright. At one point, I heard the loud improbable whisper of rain. Outside it was still dry as a bone, and I realized I was hearing the shish, shish, shishing of what sounded like a large group of heavy-footed animals moving through the nearby stand of brush and trees. Elephants? Buffalo? I think it had to be one or the other, but I couldn’t see well enough to confirm that.
And then the noises all stopped. The animal party broke up. When I woke up around 5, my fitness device showed that I had finally gone back to sleep a little before 3. Comparing our sleep scores later that morning, mine was 66, “Fair,” according to my Oura ring. Steve, in contrast, snoozed for almost 7 and a half hours, bagging him an “Optimal” sleep score of 88 (one of his best for the trip.)
Somehow I got through our busy slate of activities for Friday. We packed up our stuff faster (practice does help) then went on yet another great walk with a sweet and patient ranger. We slogged over some of the worst roads of the trip to cross a blackened section of the national park that verges on the Kalahari Desert.
The ravaged landscape was so grim, we began to wonder if we would find any place to stop and eat our lunches. But we continued to spot bunches of elephants, including a large group near a place on the map labeled Shumba. The entry gates looked almost Gothic.
But a large tree provided welcome shade.
One old female elephant made her way from the herd to near us. Steve and I argued for days over whether she was checking us out (my theory) or just hoping for a spare banana (Steve’s.)
Robin’s Camp was our final campsite. When we reached it, we concurred it was nicer than many campgrounds we’ve visited in America. Like Tusker’s, Robin’s abuts a lovely lodge equipped with an inviting swimming pool we could have used, had we more time, but again we wanted to get the tents up before the sun set. Unlike Tusker’s, the Robin’s campground was fenced, and two of the other campsites were occupied by tourists. Inside the spotless lavatories, overhead rain-shower heads provided abundant hot water. Our spot had a picnic table, a grill, even electrical outlets for charging up our devices. Once again we ate well and I was asleep before 8:30. This night I didn’t hear a sound other than the buzz of insects.
It almost felt mundane. But two final encounters transformed our stay into something extraordinary. While we were sipping our morning coffee, a pair of red-billed hornbills landed on our Cruiser’s doors and seemed amazed to see their reflections in the windows.
They acted fearless as they hung around, and when I tossed one of them seeds from my muesli, it gobbled them down.
Around sunset on Friday evening, I also had noticed a large group of what looked at first like squirrels — maybe 20 or 30 animals — bolting toward us. They came very close and then tumbled into several holes so close I could have tossed a pebble into one of them. A couple of them stood up on their back feet, and I gasped.
“Are they Timons?” I wondered, thinking of the Lion King’s comic meerkat.
Steve knew better. He exclaimed that they were mongoose. “I’ve never seen one before!” He sounded awestruck. (He now insists they are his favorite of all the animals we have ever seen in Africa.)
They didn’t reappear again until around 7 the next morning (Saturday), when one or two popped up. They looked around, clearly cautious.
Our Zimbabwe guidebook later helped us identify them as banded mongoose.
Within a moment or two, chirping noises erupted. The animals seemed to be discussing whether the coast was clear. They reached some consensus, and the whole group spilled out again and streaked away, shockingly fast.
Last Tuesday as the afternoon sun lowered, Steve and I stood over the grave of Cecil Rhodes.
This guy, after whom the country of Zimbabwe once was named (Rhodesia), occupies one of the most dramatic final resting places I’ve ever seen.
I knew almost nothing about Rhodes before this trip, but now I can tell you: he was a ruthless, rapacious visionary. The son of an English minister, he was so sickly as a child, his family sent him as a teenager to Africa in the hope it would toughen him up. Once there, Rhodes heard about about the diamond action in Kimberly (in what’s now South Africa), moved there, and raised money (from the Rothchilds) to start buying up mine leases. He wound up essentially cornering the world diamond market and founded the De Beers Company (still a powerhouse in the diamond world.) He also resolved to build a rail line from Cape Town to Cairo through all the British possessions along the way. To do that, he needed to take the land ruled by the Ndebele king (basically today’s Zimbabwe and Zambia) and fill it with Englishmen, who would ride in comfort upon those Rhodesian rails.
Using lies, deception, and the muscle of the English crown, Rhodes succeeded so well that by the 1950s and 60s, white people held all the power in Rhodesia, and they transformed the place into something that warmed many Western hearts. At the same time, resentment among the natives built, and a vicious guerrilla war began in the 1970s. The insurgents triumphed in 1980, when the Brits relinquished their claim on the place, and the modern state of Zimbabwe was born. For most of the time since then, the black Zimbabwean elite, every bit as greedy as Rhodes, has done a pretty dreadful job of ruling. But personally, I can’t fault them any more than I blame Rhodes. He started the mess. I didn’t spit on his grave, but if anyone else had been there and done that, I wouldn’t have objected.
Nonetheless Monday through Wednesday nights, Steve and I stayed in an institution that symbolized the heart of white Rhodesian rule for 127 years, and if I’m honest I have to report: we enjoyed it.
The Club Bulawayo, both a private social club and a hotel, today is still a grand old structure paneled in expanses of dark, very shiny wood.
We were more than comfortable in our large room, spotless and equipped with comfy beds, a nice shower, and decent internet. Food served in the building’s central courtyard was good, and the handful of folks on the staff (all black) were uniformly warm and welcoming. In many ways, however, the Club is as broken as were Rhodes’ dreams of continental mastery. The 300-plus-year-old grandfather clock on the second floor still chimes, but the elevator doesn’t work (so we had to lug our bags up 62 grand steps to reach the second story). The parquet in the lobby gleams, but the corridor outside our door looked shabby.
We saw so few other guests that at times I felt like we had sneaked into and made ourself at home in a museum.
Steve and I devoted one of our two full days in Bulawayo (Zimbabwe’s second largest city) to urban amusements: visiting the national Museum of Natural History, the old railroad museum, the central public library, and more. Like our stay at the Club, these provided more tastes of lost imperial glory.
Rhodesia’s railroad system was once a marvel.
Rhodes had ordered that the streets of this city be built wide enough so a wagon pulled by 24 oxen could make a U-turn. When the ox teams disappeared, hordes of cars never replaced them, so today you can stroll around the central business district without fear of being mown down.
For our other full day, we had to choose between two excursions outside the city. We could have visited the Khami Ruins built about 600 years ago by people who had abandoned Great Zimbabwe after it collapsed. Steve and I had visited the Great Zimbabwe complex a few days earlier. Considered the greatest archeological site south of the Sahara, it met my (very high) expectations.
A young archeology student named Shylet was our excellent guide.Part of the site, where a series of kings lived, crowns a high vantage point.The king’s chief wife occupied this enormous lower complex.
But Great Zimbabwe is basically a medieval castle, and the Khami ruins would have been more of the same (only smaller and younger.)
The alternative offered an experience of antiquity orders of magnitude older. So on Tuesday we drove about 30 minutes south of Bulawayo to the Matobo Hills. You could visit Matabo National Park just for the geology (or to see Rhodes’ grave, which lies within it.) Fantastic rock formations dominate the landscape, including gigantic boulders that look like they could crash down at any moment.
For us, however, the big draw was the rock paintings that line the walls of thousands of caves.
We visited two of them. The first was relatively easy to reach, down a shady dirt byway off the rocky main road. A friendly young museum attendant greeted us. His name was Knowledge. (“Yeah, seriously,” he said, aware of the humor in his parents’ choice.) He gave us a thorough, adept tour of the small but excellent museum, which filled us in on the humans who once lived in these rough shelters as long as 40,000 years ago.
Some time around 13,000 years ago, they started decorating their caves with paintings of the world around them. (Actually, even older paintings may exist; the layers underlying the cave floors have not been conclusively excavated.) The little museum contains reproductions of some of the best — far more complex than any cave paintings I’ve ever seen before.
I can’t explain everything that’s in this reproduction of a painting in the Botwe cave, but the guy at the top left was trying to hunt the huge lion and got his arm bitten off. The person two rows below him, horrified by these happenings, has his arms on his head — a prehistoric Munchian Scream.
After our tour, Knowledge led us to the Pomongwe cave a bit further down the path. The space is lovely, big enough to have housed a clan of maybe 100 folks, but sadly, the paintings were damaged around 100 years ago, when inept curators tried brightening them up with linseed oil (in preparation for a visit from some British royalty). Still, we could see how extensive and impressive they once must have been.
Knowledge urged us to visit Nswatugi Cave, less accessible but in much better condition. To get to it, we had to drive quite a bit further along dirt roads that were all but deserted. Then we had to find and follow a series of green arrows painted along the path.
This sign refers to just the short final bit. The beginning part was much steeper.
Parts of the hike required scrambling up steep rocky inclines lined with brush where black mambas and puff adders lurk; other sections went up stairs and across flats. What we found at the top was worth it all.
The entrance to the cave.
A wonderful menagerie parades across this cave’s walls…
The images moved me in a way I find hard to articulate. Thousands of years before the Egyptians began playing in their sands, these simple hunter-gatherers stood in this space, re-creating the world that surrounded them. One thing we’ve learned on this trip is that traditionally, Africans have seen their ancestors as a link with the divine. I’ve never been able to empathize with that. I’m not particularly interested in my own great-great-grandparents and certainly can’t conceive of worshipping them.
But it strikes me now that the San people who lived in and decorated Matoba’s caves are also my ancestors. Now that I’ve seen their art, it’s not that big a stretch to imagine kneeling before them.
Throughout the course of our travels, Steve and I have stayed in a handful of places that felt like the ends of the earth. Our time in the Save Valley Conservancy adds another to that short list. After turning off the Mutare-Masvingo highway, we had to jounce for almost two hours over fawn-colored dirt washboard. Steve had to drive the Cruiser through the Turgwe River. During the dry winter and spring, it shrinks to a fraction of its high-water levels, but enough water still flows through it to get my adrenaline pumping.
Steve locking the hubs to engage the 4WD, to help us get through the water ahead.
The guard at the gate off the main road had radioed that we were on the way, so a guy on a motorcycle was waiting to lead us to our lodging on the Humani Ranch: “Goma 2.” It’s very clean and comfortable, and after a delicious dinner, I felt cozy and relaxed. Around 7:30, a sound shattered the night. A growl verging on a roar exploded close enough to be on our porch. This lion sounded murderous. He (or she) emitted its blood-curdling threats 3 o 4 more times. Then another scream pierced the night. The shrieks went on and on, terrified and pleading (if an animal can plead). I don’t know what it was (maybe a bush pig someone suggested the next day) except that it was prey about to be eaten alive.
I felt astounded to be so close to such noisy exotic violence but not particularly scared. Goma 2 was built from stout concrete blocks. It has big windows, but a lion would only crash through one of them in a Hollywood movie. And soon this would not be a hungry lion. I did feel a bit nervous the next morning, as Steve and I set out on a walk led by a 32-year-old guide named Justice. He wore a green uniform and had a handheld radio but brandished no weapon.
It soon became clear his English was minimal. He knew the word “lions” but didn’t understand my question: “Are they dangerous?” I tried “Will they hurt us?” He still looked uncomprehending. I went for something simpler: “Will they eat us?” He said they wouldn’t.
We walked for awhile alone a broad dirt road, and at one point passed a gaggle of kids of various ages heading to the ranch’s school complex. If little kids could be out by themselves, I figured, we three grownups would probably be okay ambling through Lion Country.
After a half hour or so, we left the main road and struck off through a lightly wooded area toward the Turgwe. Descending into the riverbed, the terrain was so open, it seemed clear no killer animals were close enough to menace us. Soon, however, Justice pointed out a buffalo far in the distance.
We advanced toward it, and I realized it was part of a group.
Closer still, we could see them watching us, wary.
We’ve read, recently, that African buffalo aren’t as dangerous as their reputation. Only the cranky old solitary males are life-threatening, Justice told us. But he didn’t imply the rest were petting-zoo animals, and we soon left the riverbed. The buffalo herd thundered off, surprisingly fast. Over the course of the next few hours, Justice pointed out bushbuck, eland, kudu, and the always charming impala.
Shocking fast, they also leap higher than you can imagine.
He spotted some kind of monkey high in a tree (I only saw the branches swaying.) We noted a pair of warthogs trotting across a field, and we laughed at baboons stealing oranges from the farm’s huge grove.
Toward the end of our walk, our guide directed our attention to a solitary zebra, camouflaged by the thicket of branches.
We saw no lions or black rhino or elephants, all of which live here. What flabbergasted me about the game walk, though, was how present all those big animals felt too. There! A fresh black rhino track.
Enough elephant poop to fertilize a substantial organic garden.
Trees smashed up in the unmistakable manner of elephants. (SUCH messy eaters.)
Our guide explained that a hungry elephant had stripped the bark off this tree (which would die as a result.)
Justice said the mysterious holes in the ground were the work of “antbears” (later clarified for us by Google as aardvarks.)
When we found this single elephant bone…
…Steve asked, “Where’s the rest of him?” Justice replied, “Hyenas.”
On foot we drank in the sight of things we would have missed entirely in a vehicle: spring blossoms…
Wine-colored sap bleeding from a tree…
The beauty of thorn-tree needles up close…
By the end of our walk, I felt completely at ease. My epiphany was: of course! Humans evolved living with these animals for tens of thousands of years. Long ago we got established as the top predator along with a couple of others. (That lion!) But in a game reserve, we don’t compete with lions or leopards or buffalo for resources. That doesn’t mean we can blunder into their spaces or threaten them. But if we’re careful and respectful we can walk among them without fear.
After a break for lunch and a rest, Justice came back around 2:30 to accompany us on another outing, this one in our Land Cruiser, with Steve at the wheel. Crashing through the bush, we filled in some gaps in what we’d seen. We passed giraffe that reminded me how much I love those guys.
We watched a solitary elephant bull happily chowing down on dinner.
And at the wheel, Steve had a wildly macho experience that he loved.
Throughout our time together, Justice never grew more talkative. At first, his lack of English disappointed me. I would have asked so many questions, if he could just understand them! By the end of the day, however, I was happy about his linguistic limitations. If he’d been more fluent, we would have spent a lot more time yakking. Being quiet forced me to see more,
My one big regret was that we never met the owners of the Humani Ranch. Everything I know about the ranch and Conservancy comes from my guide book and the Conservancy’s website. The Whittal family sounds larger than life: former cattle ranchers and legendary big-game hunters who were leaders in getting their neighbors to tear down their fences, fencing only the perimeter and creating what the guidebook says is the largest private game reserve in the world. I had hoped to write more about all this but it’s too complicated. I give up. I can just say I’m happy to have glimpsed the life there.
I was nervous about the driving part of our “self-drive” Zimbabwean safari. Steve also was worried. We’d heard the roads haven’t been maintained for 30 years. That drivers were almost suicidal in their obliviousness while speeding through intersections. That potholes and other obstructions turned traveling on rural roads into a potentially deadly game of Chicken.
As we approached the start of our trip here, I awoke on a couple of nights thinking about how easy it would be to die. But we’d heard from several sources that we’d be fine if we just took it easy. Were they right?
Now that we’re two long drives into the adventure, I’m think they were. A little before 9 Monday morning (9/25) we climbed into our loaded Land Cruiser and drove east from Ant’s guesthouse, heading away from the heart of Harare. The few stoplights we encountered seemed to be working, a rarity, according to what Ant had said. Traffic was light and no one did anything crazy. Soon we paid our two dollars at a toll booth and were passing fields and wooded areas. The further east we went, the lighter the traffic got, and I can tell you I this: When you’re almost alone on the road in a bruiser of a vehicle that can blow over potholes and other rough patches with ease, you begin to relax.
That’s not to say driving in Zim is just like driving in La Jolla. Paved roads are narrow but shrinking, the edges nibbled away by rain and wear. Those ragged fringes often are an inch or two above the adjoining dirt, and if one went over such a mini-escarpment at high speed (say, to avoid a head-on collision with a bus trying to pass someone), one could flip one’s vehicle and come to a messy end.
But Steve never drove at high speed, and the sights and landscapes entertained us: folks unloading huge truckloads of oranges…
,,,or making bricks or selling wooden sheds (or were they tiny homes?)
When we got hungry, we lumbered off the tarmac and parked on a dirt stretch near an informal bus stop. We opened up the Cruiser’s back, unfolded two chairs, let down our cooking shelf, made ourselves cheese and tomato and avocado sandwiches, and gobbled them down with chips.
To reach our destination in the northern highlands we had to pull off the main road and bounce over dirt and boulders for more than an hour. That wasn’t pleasant, but I don’t think we saw any other vehicle along the entire punishing stretch. We had that night and another full day to relax and enjoy the glorious countryside.
This self-catering “cottage” where we stayed was actually a four-bedroom house. Although we had only candlepower our first night there, we still enjoyed a delicious dinner of chicken lasagna (pre-cooked and frozen and packed into our Cruiser’s freezer by Ant’s team), a nice salad, and brownies.Tuesday morning we hiked for five miles around the lovely lakes down the hill from our cottage. It was one of the most peaceful walks I’ve taken in memory. I think we saw one other person the whole time.Pines like this scented the air.That pink house in the distance is our cottage, with the Cruiser parked next to it.
Wednesday we drove eight and a half hours, stopping midway to refuel at a Total Station. For 13 gallons of diesel, we paid $88 (plus a dollar tipto the friendly guy who cleaned our windshield) — more than the price at home. But it was still a relief to see confirmation we wouldn’t be dealing with fuel shortages (another Zimbabwean thing, at least occasionally).
Descending out of the mountains, we dodged more animal traffic…
And I thrilled to this sight of our first baobab trees on this trip.
I bought that large colorful rug from the lady on the right, who made it.
Human automotive competition for the road remained light, and it disappeared entirely once we turned onto the washboard lane leading to our destination in the amazing Save (pronounced Sah-vay) Valley Conservancy.
The other scary byway in Zimbabwe is the Internet highway. If good paved roads are scarce, access to the global information stream is rarer. Here our beloved T-Mobile phone service, which gives us instant connectivity in more than 100 countries, provides only text and phone coverage, No data. Ant’s guest house was equipped with good WiFi but we haven’t been anywhere else that has had it.
As part of his services, Ant did provide us with an aging Galaxy Android phone, and we bought $20 of air time from a roadside vendor near Ant’s Sunbird Guest House. It took some work, but Steve finally figured out how to use the Android as a hotspot for all our devices. That’s how I was able to publish my Zimborientation post from our remote mountain shelter Monday night. It felt miraculous.
Since we left there, however, we haven’t had any phone signal most of the time (and if the Galaxy can’t get a signal, we get nothing.) If you’re reading these words, that means I finally found a spot of service. In the meantime, we’ll have to make do with focusing on the actual world around us. That’s not a bad thing.
I’m starting this post around 7:30 pm in a farmhouse in the Zimbabwean northern highlands, very close to the Mozambique border. Thanks to Apple battery power, my iPad screen is lighted, so I can see what I’m writing. But when my touch-typing fails me, it’s tough to make out the keyboard. Steve and I are alone in the house, and a single candle provides all the illumination except for the dim glow from the big stone fireplace. We need that fireplace, as the temperature outside has plummeted. This doesn’t feel much like Africa.
We’ve now been in Zimbabwe for a bit more than two days, and Zim’s eccentricity is starting to feel routine. Our Rwandair flight Saturday morning from Kigali could not have been smoother or more pleasant, and we touched down at Harare Airport a few minutes early. We were sitting at the very rear of the plane, so when we got to the Passport Control booths (just outside the luggage-collection area), long queues had formed at the two booths designated for foreigners. We chose the shorter one, and it still took almost a half hour to get to the official. “We want a KAZA visa,” I told him.
“Over there,” the man in the booth barked, gesturing to the other line, which was at least as long as it had been 30 minutes earlier. It seemed to consist mostly of young Chinese men and a few women. But our tour outfitter had told us to insist on a KAZA visa. Such a stamp allows you to enter Zimbabwe and Zambia multiple times and cross back and forth between the two countries, something that will be important when we wind up at Victoria Falls 10 days from now. Surely anything would be better than having to get a second Zimbabwean visa AND a Zambian one (and paying $50 a pop for each one). So we gritted our teeth and moved to the back of the long line.
A solid hour passed as we inched forward, watching the sole bureaucrat in the booth doing lots of stamping and writing on each passport that finally made its way before him. By the time we reached the booth, literally every other passenger on our plane was gone. The luggage carousel had stopped running. “We want a KAZA visa,” I said, considerably less perkily.
I sneaked this photo of Steve at the window. (Taking pictures of immigration officials anywhere is a risky business.)
The official knew what that was. But it soon became obvious he couldn’t find his pad of KAZA stickers. He left the booth. Came back frustrated but full of reassurances he and his colleagues WOULD find the pad eventually. More folks joined in the hunt. More time passed. I began losing hope. But damned if they didn’t eventually locate the missing book. The official collected our $50 per, releasing us to pounce upon our bags (which were still, miraculously, on the deserted carousel.)
The visas are VERY fancy, with lots of writing on them and our receipts.
Outside, I was thrilled to finally meet Ant Bown.
Outside the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport and about to meet our outfitter.
Ant, 47, started Mana Pools Tourism Services Ltd., a “self-drive safari” company, about 6 years ago. His grandfather moved to Zimbabwe back in 1935, when the country was known as Rhodesia, and his mother for years had run the country’s safari company operators’ association. Ant got a degree as an agricultural economist and for 15 years lived in South Africa. But he missed Zim and returned to Harare in 2010. Today he’s passionate about his birth country’s attractions and optimistic about its future.
When I started planning this trip, almost a year ago, I had no desire to tour it with Steve at the wheel. I say that with no disrespect for Steve’s driving skills, which are competent even in places where traffic flows on the left. Just 20 years ago, Zimbabwe appeared hellish. Between 2000 and 2004, all but about 300 of the country’s 4000 or so white farmers had been forced off their land; many were beaten or hacked with machetes, and about a dozen were killed. The farmers’ black workers also lost their jobs, and the UN later estimated that a million people were displaced. In the years that followed, the Zimbabwean dollar became worthless, as annual inflation exceeded 900%.
Today the official economy is still dismal, although the “informal” sector — businesses and side hustles so small they can escape government notice — is booming, according to Ant, who thinks Zimbabweans rank among the most entrepreneurial folks on earth. There’s effectively no banking system. Most people use dollars — the paper ones — for almost all their transactions. But political violence has all but disappeared, crime is low, and racial animosities have evaporated. Steve and I were curious to see how today’s Zimbabweans were faring, after their torturous experience in the 20th century. But still, I didn’t want to DIY it.
So I got the latest copy of Lonely Planet’s Zimbabwe and emailed probably a half-dozen of what sounded like the best tour operators, seeking one that would drive Steve and me around. No one responded, even through I tried a couple of approaches with some. I finally contacted Ant’s 4×4 rental company, thinking maybe he could recommend a driver. Ant and I wound up chatting extensively in email and then via WhatsApp, and in the end, he convinced me we could handle self-driving.
Since we wouldn’t be able to get any money from banks or ATM machines, we had to bring all the cash we envisioned spending in Zimbabwe, including paying Ant for our two-day stay in his guesthouse, the 11-day Land Cruiser rental, and a bunch of food provisions.
I came to trust him partly because of how quickly he responded to my every query and how well-organized he was. But he also charmed me with his directness and good humor. He’s very emphatic and often funny and he didn’t seem to be whitewashing the realities of life here. Zimbabweans were atrocious drivers, he told me early on, but we would be okay if we drove slowly and defensively. The electrical grid was a joke. But his Harare guesthouse never lacked power or hot water because he’d installed solar systems years ago.
At the Oktoberfest gathering.
Steve and I got more exposure to Ant’s quick wit and open-mindedness the night we arrived, when he invited us to join him at a local Oktoberfest. It was being held in a private “sports club” that had been brought back to life in the last year or so. We had a blast taking in the high spirits and diversity — tipsy old white guys, black families with kids, a younger black and white cohort, all partying together. Some seemed to be there for the live music; others for the pizza…
…which was delicious.
Still others had come for the rugby game that started at 9 (Ireland versus South Africa.) Since neither Ant nor Steve nor I are big rugby fans, we only stayed a few moments to take in the chaotic action on the field. (Steve marveled, “They look like American football players who are all drunk.”)
We were looking at the outdoor screen backwards, but it didn’t matter.
We also wanted to get to bed because we had such a busy schedule lined up for Sunday. First we piled into one of Ant’s small SUVs and got a tour of Harare from Friday Mugwisi, one of Ant’s oldest employees. He took us first to Mbare, the huge, densely dizzying street market near the center of the city. We parked (for $5) then Friday led us throughout the maze of vendors, pointing out one item after another that he insisted was stronger than what you’d find in the big chains and half the price (and often fashioned from recycled materials.) Sadly, we couldn’t take many shots of the wildly photogenic scene. Friday had warned us we’d be pestered for payment if we were obvious about capturing anyone’s image. Still, we caught a few.
Later Friday drove us through the central business district and past many of the most important government buildings. We made a quick visit to the vast botanical gardens, then Steve and I ate lunch amidst the city’s ruling elite at The Three Monkeys, a chic oasis in an upscale little commercial center not far from Ant’s guest house.
We spent a chunk of that afternoon getting oriented to our Land Cruiser and its ingenious contents. But I’ll save those details for later posts. I know first-hand that too much information and sensory input can leave your head spinning.
Rwandan roads are at least as good as those in the US, so I’m starting this post from the third row of seats in our 10-passenger van as we drive the two final hours to Kigali, the Rwandan capital. We crossed the border with Uganda a few minutes ago. Writing on the Ugandan byways, which range from good (occasionally) to abysmal (far too common), is pretty much impossible, given the jouncing. Off the road, our three and a half days in Uganda were so packed I couldn’t find a spare minute to get on my iPad when the sun was up. By the time it set, I’d run out of gas.
This is what the Rwandan highway looks like.
But I can summarize what we did.
We slogged out of Kampala through mind-bending traffic…
The street in front of our hotel, as seen from the rooftop terrace, was pretty quiet at 6:50 am.But by 8:30, the streets were crazy.
…then moved westward across the country to finally struggle up the broken dirt roads that lead to the village of Nyakagyesi. The trip ate up ten and a half hours — pretty much all of Monday.
Wednesday we devoted to meeting with the grandmother groups and their members who are receiving micro loans funded by Women’s Empowerment, the San Diego organization for which Steve and I serve as liaisons.
This was the first time Steve and I got to see loan money actually being distributed to a group.
Thursday we toured the first primary school built by the Nyaka Foundation, its beautiful secondary school, and its health center, then we met with yet another set of grandmothers, these specializing in making jewelry, baskets, and other handicrafts.
After that we drove a couple of hours to Buhoma, where you can catch glimpses of the mountains on the other side of the border in Congo. Buhoma is a base for gorilla trekking, but everyone in our group had already done that (Jose and Mari two weeks ago; Steve and I in 2013.) Instead we paid a quick but fun visit to the office of a non-profit organization founded and run (by a woman I know in San Diego) to help the desperately poor local Batwa community.
The setting for all these activities has been a landscape that’s among the most beautiful on earth. A dozen shades of vibrant green, the land is all rugged mountains intermixed with verdant valleys and reddish soil so rich it produces almost every crop you can think of.
This morning an unexpected treat was when our drive to the Rwandan border took us over an 8000-foot pass in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest (today in fact penetrated by a fairly smooth dirt road.) This forest, home not just to mountain gorillas but also forest elephants, is 100 million years old. Because it didn’t freeze during the last Ice Age, it harbors fantastic biological diversity. We didn’t see any forest elephants on our passage but Deus, our driver, pointed out fresh deposits of their droppings on the road.
This was our fourth visit to Uganda, and another landscape, an invisible one, has also been coming into focus over the past ten years. It’s the network of relationships we’ve acquired. Some are with people we’ve come to love, like Jennifer Nantale, head of the whole Nyaka organization in Uganda and one of the smartest, toughest women I’ve ever met.
Or Sam Mugisha, the remarkable guy who in his youth jumped at a chance to travel to Japan, became fluent in Japanese, and returned home to start a travel business catering to visitors speaking that language. (He’s also been the outfitter for all our WE trips.)
Dozens upon dozens of encounters with various individuals have been more fleeting but still vivid. Some fade quickly, but they’re still part of the tapestry composed of all the warm, kind, hard-working people we’ve gotten to know here. The impression made by others remains sharp for longer, like Norah, whom we met her early Thursday afternoon.
Mari and Norah
Norah is a 72 widow who’s currently raising four grandchildren ranging in age from 12 to 4. She greeted us with a warm smile and explained that she joined the Kyepatiko granny group four years ago. Now she’s the chairperson. Over the years she’s gotten two loans from the group, the most recent one for 500,000 shillings (about $133). She combined that money with the 3 million shillings she had saved from her coffee crop and used the money to buy a cow and calf. When the calf was a baby, Norah was getting 5 liters of milk a day that she could sell for about 37 cents a liter. But now that the calf has grown, it consumes all its mother’s milk. Still, she had bred the cow about a month before our visit, and she was hoping to have a birth in about 8 months. She would then sell one of the calves.
Norah has a warm and confident presence, and she led us to the back of her substantial house to the clean and well-organized enclosure she has built for her cow and calf.
Besides her fledgling dairy business, Norah has also built up an apiary; today it houses 50 beehives. We couldn’t visit it because the bees would sting us during the day. (Norah and her family collect their honey at night when the insects are sleeping.) It’s a good business. The grandmother can charge about $68 for 5 liters of honey. It adds up to more than $500 over the course of a year. Still Norah said she wants to develop the market further.
This is what the honey looks like, freshly collected from the hives.
The path to the apiary passed through healthy coffee trees laden with berries. And Norah also seemed proud of her field of emerald spears of elephant grass. She harvests it to feed to the dairy animals (which can’t just wander around, munching other people’s crops.)
Later, we watched Norah direct the grandmother group meeting. She commands attention with ease. Reflecting on our meeting with her at dinner a few nights later, Jose and Mari and Steve and I agreed she was hard to forget. “If she were in the US, she’s be the CEO at some big corporation,” someone said.
But I have to confess: my attention is drifting away from all that. It’s now Saturday morning and in a few minutes Steve and I will board our flight to Harare. Compared to the cozy familiarity of Uganda, Zimbabwe is terra incognito.
The start of this trip has been pretty flawless. Our flight from Chicago to Addis Ababa (capital of Ethiopia) landed behind schedule on Sunday morning, leaving us only 20 minutes to get from one side to the other of the chaotic terminal. Yet somehow we caught our flight to Entebbe, and then were thrilled to find our duffel on the luggage carousel of Uganda’s international airport. Later that afternoon we met up with the other couple from San Diego accompanying us on our mission to visit Women Empowerment’s Uganda partner.
Monday morning, our foursome enjoyed an excellent meeting with our partners at the Nyaka Foundation in Kampala, then we checked into our hotel and ate delicious Indian food in its second-story restaurant. In the afternoon the four of us spent more than an hour at the Ugandan national museum (not dazzling, but worth the visit.)
Then… how to pass the several remaining hours until we could reasonably go to bed? Jose and Mari opted to hang out on the hotel’s rooftop terrace, but Steve and I strolled the few blocks to the Acacia Mall, considered by locals to be the fanciest in the capital. A slew of ATM machines line its perimeter, and its facade indeed promised a classy experience within.
We passed the scrutiny of gun-touting guards and metal detectors, then made a thorough tour of the interior. We found a decent complement of clean, bright shops that could have been plucked from any run-of-the-mill American mall, as well as a busy Carrefour supermarket.
The movie theater was pulling in some customers.
But the last screening of Barbie had started hours earlier.
The mall’s bookstore looked impressive, but it was closing as we arrived.
And the dearth of offerings in the food court depressed me.
We could have patronized the Colonel’s big eatery next to the front entrance.
The Indian food back at the hotel seemed a lot more enticing, however. So we made our way back in the dark over the broken, intermittent sidewalks, dodging puddles from the steady rain earlier in the day. Steve and I shared a butter chicken, vegetable pulao, and some garlic nan, washed down with a couple of Lion Special. Once again, it all tasted yummy.
That’s what Steve and I will be doing Friday morning (9/15): buckling up as we take off on perhaps our most ambitious adventure.
We’re flying off to Africa (via Chicago and Addis Ababa), disembarking in Uganda, which has become one of the few countries to which we’re happy to return. Once again we’ll be visiting the remote village of Nyaka (near where Uganda meets up with the borders of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo), to take the pulse of the microfinance project there supported by the Women’s Empowerment organization in San Diego. (For almost 10 years we’ve volunteered to be the liaisons between the villagers and their American patrons.)
We will then make our way to Harare, capital of Zimbabwe (once known to the Western world as Rhodesia.) We’ll be renting a Land Rover and driving it into the country’s beautiful eastern mountains (said to be reminiscent of Scotland), then down into a big-game hunting preserve where, trust me, we will not be shooting any animals ourselves. We will move on to the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, the biggest and most impressive stone-walled city in sub-Saharan Africa. After sleeping in a tent on the Land Rover’s roof in Hwange National Park, we’ll wind up at the awesome Victoria Falls, spend a couple of nights at an upscale lodge on the Zambezi River in Zambia, then catch a South African Airlines flight to Johannesburg.
Joburg will be our launch pad for exploring a few more of the world’s microstates. This won’t match our tour of the smallest countries in Europe two years ago. But we should end up knowing more than most folks about the mountain kingdom of Lesotho and mellow little eSwatini (formerly known as Swaziland.) If all goes well, we’ll be home again Oct. 19, five weeks after taking off.
The arrows are my crude effort to show our route. The red encircles the rough area served by the microfinance program. The blue lines are flights and the green ones hint at some of the ground we’ll cover in vehicles.
Preparing for this trip has been a challenge. We’ll have to check a duffel bag to carry sleeping bags and towels and other gear for the Land Rover. A motley zoo of electrical adaptors will be necessary to plug into power in this part of the world.
Here’s what we’re packing.
Of course the power is not always on. We know the grid often fails in Southern Africa. I’ll be writing as much as possible, but it may take me a while to post some of my reports. I’m trusting my readers will understand any such delays.
That’s what Steve and I will be doing Friday morning (9/15): buckling up as we take off on perhaps our most ambitious adventure.
At home and abroad 