We arrive at the gate to Matopo National Park, just south of Bulawayo, where the Black and White Rhino are to be found. While I take care of the permit, Jim goes over the craft shop with the ground nuts in hand to get local advice. The proprietor laughs and informs him they are “round nuts” not ground nuts. Duh. She says this is real African food – “you must boil them for at least two hours – or you will be sorry” she tells him. “Then they will pop out of the shell and you have them with coffee”. We leave her with half the kilo, we can’t eat so many. I boil them in the DO, leaving them overnight in the slow cooker. Mashed with avocado on toast, they make a delicious breakfast.
Today Jim is riding shotgun – with an actual rifle across his lap. Shelton the guide is on top of the truck looking for rhino. I am driving, well aware that Shelton could fall off the truck, or the gun could go off. Or both. And while we don’t find the rhino after driving and hiking through the bushveld for hours, we do collect a mass of seed heads and sticky weeds in our socks. Some of these will come home with us no doubt. We’d spotted White Rhino the day before, so we are not getting skunked. There were two adults and a baby, the baby running around just out of camera view and we watched them all by ourselves until they wandered off. Rhinos in the wild, amazing. Matopo Park has another feature – fabulous dolomite rock formations, granite boulders balanced against the sky. These are much easier to spot, believe me.
The hills of the park were sacred long before Cecil Rhodes, who is buried here, bequeathed the land to the government. The landscape is remarkable for its early and middle stone age archaeological finds and for its exquisite cave paintings. Drawings created by San peoples dot the park; they are spectacular, transcending time and place in their beauty and simplicity. San people were hunter/gatherers, moving with the seasons and sheltering in the many rock overhangs and caves. Their artwork was first thought to be “art for art’s sake” but through research and interviews with the remaining San people, it is now believed that the painting were used to teach. At the Pomongwe Cave a small museum contains representations of paintings from some of the inaccessible caves – a brilliant collection. Thembe, the docent, gives us a tour and we stand in awe of giraffes and rhinos and buffalo who seem to race across the cave walls. “These artists were compelled” he says. “They were geniuses in their talent”. To walk to caves and see the drawings is a profound moment on our trip and we see no other people.
We are also the only people camping at the main site for the first two days. There is a solar water heater that works and an entertaining troop of baboons as well as a pair of fish eagles that scream at each other across the lake. I watched as a Giant Kingfisher bashed a small catfish against a tree trunk. I did not know kingfishers did that. A couple from Holland show up late one afternoon as well as a single older white man. Next morning, the Dutch couple take off for Bulawayo and the single guy leaves his tent and table set up and drives away. He never returns. What happened to him? Who knows? We leave word at the park exit, and on we go.
Bound for the Great Zimbabwe Ruins south of Masvingo, we pass through six different police stops. The number plate light which was broken and cost us a $10US fine is now fixed and we are waved through all the cordons. Roads conditions are passable in places and abysmal in others – a sign announces “Road Failure Ahead” and it isn’t kidding. More potholes than road for a long way, with big trucks dodging the potholes and us dodging the big trucks.
This is the center of the center of Zimbabwe, a land of small farms, bushveld, and villages interspersed with bus stops. Along the road people are selling a small dark purple fruit and since we aren’t going anywhere very quickly, I pull over to see about what the fruit is. Fruit sellers come running when we stop. They can’t tell us what the fruit is, they don’t speak much English. Only thing to do is try eating one, after washing it off with our drinking water. I was hoping for a plum or cherry taste, but it was mealy and sour. No one seemed offended that we didn’t purchase any. Wish it had worked out, they were such a pretty color.
Visiting Great Zimbabwe Ruins is a dream come true for me. John Reader, in his book Africa: Biography of the Continent, painted a vivid picture of the stonework walls and the artifacts discovered here – even if you don’t read the entire book, the chapter on Great Zimbabwe is remarkable. Being here is even more remarkable. The ancestors of the Shona people built colossal dry stack enclosures using the readily available granite, with pieces all about the same size. This alone is mind-boggling. The amount of stone touched by human hands is difficult to fathom, every single stone had to be picked up and shaped and placed or filled into the walls. Walls 30 ft high and 6 ft thick, stretching 850 ft in places, some with lovely curves – what did the people building them think? Were they proud – they should have been. How many people worked on them? What did they eat while they worked so hard? A time machine would be nice right about now. The ruins are the fourth largest stone structure, after the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids and Machu Picchu.
And this isn’t the only such site in Zimbabwe, it is just the biggest. Artifacts in the museum include pieces of Chinese pottery and beads found on site as well as the important bird statues the Zimbabweans take great pride in. Looters took the statues in the early 1900s but somehow they have survived to be displayed here for everyone to see.
We are reminded of Chaco Canyon and other Desert Southwest ruins we have seen. Those settlements too fell into disuse, the area around them depleted, about the same time as Great Zimbabwe, half a world away.
“You must buy some nuts!” the street vendor says, holding up his bags. They look interesting. “What are they?” I ask – and I swear he said “groundnuts” which are what Africans call peanuts. They don’t look like any peanut I’ve seen but he is so cheerful and friendly I buy a kilo. Down the road I break one open. There are two round white fruits inside the shell. These are not peanuts. I eat one. Jim eats the other. Chewy with a raw taste. I think I need some local help with this food.
Bulawayo (B-yo to the locals) is Zim’s second largest city after Harare. 
Matebele kings are buried near here and other high ranking Shona and Ntebele leaders. The altitude is 4,455 ft, population around a million (although it doesn’t seem like it) and winter is upon us. Beanies and pile jackets are what the locals are wearing. We fit in, at least by our clothes. There are black people walking everywhere; we are the only white people. Downtown has some tall buildings and many small businesses tucked in-between: food stalls and hair stylists and muffler shops. We leave the Beagle at the Toyota dealer for a lube/oil/filter and we take off walking too. Zimbabweans greet us with “how are youoooo?” everywhere we go. Courtesy is a given. Zim has its problems, of course.However we don’t see children in rags on the streets and no one accosts us or begs. People are well-dressed, and not in oversize American hand-me-downss either. This is a smart city, once the industrial hub of the country. It is clean and neat – even the vehicle repair shops have clean shiny floors. We easily find everything we need.
In need of hair cuts, we find a salon. The stylist is a 40+ black Zimbabwean who loves her country despite being fleeced by the government at every turn. She states: “Zim is a peaceful country, no one will rob you at the traffic robot” and I believe her. I ask her what she does when she is not cutting hair; she reads a book at home. How ‘bout a picnic on your day off? I ask. Picnics are a big thing here. She says no, no picnics. Too busy trying to make a living with two older children. We wish her the very best. Another Zimbabwean tells us “We are not all politicians. You must see it on the ground for yourselves”. He is right.
At the Africa.Com shop, Ope (pronounced ‘ope) has a great time helping Jim with the satellite phone repair. He is a character – quick talking about the places we should visit, he has been to them all! The shop is full of workers who know their trade, the place is busy as a beehive. The sat phone is repaired and while we don’t need anything else, it is a pleasure to hang around and chat for a few minutes before heading off to Matopo National Park.
Robin’s Camp is on the northern end of Hwange National Park and we are the only campers. Prosper, the enthusiastic National Park employee, explains the park’s accommodations and gives us a tour of fire-lookout building circa 1939. He also shows us this darling Scop’s Owl which we’d have missed without Proper’s pointing it out. That’s the way it is with self-driving, there is no guide to find the animals first and take you to them. So we ask others (assuming there are any other people) and in turn we tell them our sightings. The advantage to self-driving is the thrill of spotting something yourself, and the leisure to spend time with your sightings. No hurrying off to the next lunch or tea appointment. Plus, we get to camp in the wildest places.
At the Guvalava waterhole picnic site, we wait in the Beagle for an elephant to finish drinking before we set up camp. Guvalala is one of the wild(est) camps. No fences, not that a chain linked fence would matter. There’s a nicely-built hide above the waterhole and the afternoon brings a parade of creatures; elephant, baboons, giraffe (fighting over the lone female), zebra, wildebeest, a 100-strong herd of buffalo, impala, kudu, warthog, jackal, and scores of birds. It is chilly so we make soup and take it up to the hide to have dinner. Then the hyenas show up. . .
“Welcome to Zimbabwe” says the border guard at Pandamantengo. “What did you bring me from the United States? Some pounds?” We’ve been in Zim all of one minute. I ponder the question and answer with “We bring you greetings from President Trump!” “No cold drinks?” Nope. Not today. Those we are saving for the traffic stops.
Other than that not-so-subtle ask for a favor, crossing the border is a pleasant experience. The immigration officer is efficient, explaining how to easily extend our 30-day visas. The customs officer quickly fills out the vehicle carnet. She is aghast that Botswana customs did not take their carnet departure copy. I cringe, thinking I should have mentioned it – gees, what a process all this is. Zimbabwean customs has a good African solution – just tear out that departure copy, she says, and throw it away so there will be no confusion.
Pandamantengo is the border crossing to use to avoid Victoria Falls, 100 kilometers north. We are the first vehicle that day. There was only one vehicle the day prior, and one the day before that, according to the register. Once we’ve departed Botswana, we drive through a chain-link gate and migrate to Zimbabwe. After immigration, customs, and the police inspection (he admires the truck and writes down the plate number), two guys go over and raise the boom gate, and wave us through into Zim – and we are shocked out of our senses.
“Is this right?” I ask Jim as we stare ahead of us. I grab the map. Jim is still staring. The road ahead – it is a dirt track, two wheels wide with bumper-high grass on both sides and some down the middle. This is the entrance to Zimbabwe.
All this time I’d been fretting over paperwork, the carnet, passports, vehicle registration, all that piddly little stuff that seems to disappear in the truck after each border crossing. Up until a few days ago in Kasane, I didn’t even have a map of Zimbabwe. For three years maps of African countries had been plastered to the walls at home, except for Zimbabwe. It was never a given that we would go there, yet here we are. The road is a dirt track, it is the correct and only road, and it is really beautiful. Welcome to Zimbabwe indeed.
We travel through the Caprivi Strip, with its neat villages and colorful people walking down the road where war raged just a few years ago. The Chobe River Lodge had rough camping under a huge tree; we are alone the first night and then are invaded by six safari rigs pulling caravans the following day. Next stop, Chobe Safari Lodge (not to be confused with River Lodge) in the town of Kasane. Chobe Safari Lodge boasts being in business since 1959 and I think that might be the last time the campground ablutions were updated. It has to be hard to keep up thatch roofs and camps that flood nearly every year, I imagine. On the upside our campsite is hidden right on the river and filled with singing birds, mongoose, monitor lizards, monkeys, and warthogs.
We stay two nights then move on to Senyati Camp, 10 kilometers away and much drier. They have an underground bunker at their waterhole and one can sit down there to film or watch animals at ground level. If you are not claustrophobic and don’t mind the odor, it is interesting. Check out the extra “trunk” in this photo!
We spend one night in Kubu camp, on the river again, but they are renovating the campground and we must move down the road to Big Five Safari Lodge – an excellent choice. Kasane and its sister town, Kazungula, has everything we need to prepare for Zimbabwe.
Jim has been concerned about tires and the SupaQuick tire shop is Kazangula has some choices that he likes. We ponder exactly what to do: buy all new tires, change brands, get only a spare, get two spares – if decisions burned calories we’d be hungry all the time. So we get one new tire, a different brand, one that Jim likes, on a rim, and he spends the better part of a day affixing it to the top of the Beagle.
Now armed with two spares we take off on an all day game drive, and guess what happens next. . .
Continue reading…
We bought a duvet comforter a couple of weeks ago, in Tsumeb. We’d been getting by with a couple of lightweight techno covers and Jim’s 30-year-old down sleeping bag that he made from a kit – remember those? We almost brought my down bag (purchased in Jackson Hole in 1978) but couldn’t find the room. Just as well. The new comforter is the right size and the color even matches the “interior decorating” of the camper. I’m surprised how pleasing that is. However, the cozy comforter does make it harder to get out of bed in the morning. The weather has gotten colder and drier.
Creature comforts are expendable. A real toilet? Whatever. A functioning shower? If there is hot water everything else can be ignored, such as the enormous spiders sharing the stall. “Donkeys”, the so-called wood-fired boilers found all over Africa, heat the water. The Beagle has a gas geyser that heats a bit of H2O, enough for rinsing off before bed. It’s been a month since we have been in a hotel room.
Beauty, an aptly-named young woman, works at the entrance to one of the smaller parks. She shows me on the park map (decidedly not a 4-color, tri-folded brochure map, but a plain black/white piece of copy paper) where the border of the park is. “There is no sign”, she says. “We do it the African way”. The park ends where the paved road begins. It is the African way.
Jim and I now say that to each other every day. The African way is signing in and out of the parks on ledgers so full of scribbled names, no one will ever put them in a data base. To always be asked “where are you going” is the African way. Stopping your truck in the middle of the road to tell the boss man you have a park permit, that is the African way. And on we go.
Following two months in Namibia, on May 10 we pulled up to the Botswana/Namibian border and after about 20 minutes on each side, we were in a new country. We don’t expect every border crossing to be this smooth. Still had to request a signature on the carnet – we were ready for that. Some highlights from Namibia:
Trees. The variety of trees is absolutely astonishing. From Quiver trees to baobabs, to hook and poke acacias and enormous sycamores, Namibia is a mind-boggling forest.
How absolutely black the darkness is there. One night coming back from a camp reception, even with my headlamp on I could hardly see the thoughts in my brain. The darkness sucked the light away. I found our camp just by sheer luck and managed not to break an ankle for the effort. There are many ways to hurt yourself on a trip like this.
The Himba village visit. Wouldn’t trade that for anything. Our Himba guide shared that the only thing Himba parents expected from schooling was for the kids to learn how to ask white people for water. That explained the common cry from little kids (and adults) “give me water”.
Those loathsome crickets. Interesting at first, mildly entertaining for a day or so, then just plain disgusting. They went from brightly colored to a greasy grey as we traveled the length and breadth of Namibia, and they covered nearly all of it. I think we finally shook them off at Eupupa Falls.
The army of rocks in the Palmrag Conservation Area. Red granite rocks nearly all the same size and shape, covering thousands of acres. Seemingly just waiting for time to pass and brains to develop so that they could take over the world. It will be a long wait but they have the numbers.
Rough camping at Spitskoppe Nature Reserve. Best in scenery, with the monolithic red spires and massive boulders just the right texture for scampering on.
Sitting amid a family of elephant in the Mahango Core conservation area. Just us, 20 or so elephant, and no one else. Big ellies, and tiny ones, busy and placid, they were a pleasure to observe in the small park. Etosha is Namibia’s big park, but we were just as happy in the small reserves.
The Namib/Naukluft National Park, which covers huge amounts of territory, most of it flat sand with the occasional Welwhitschia plant. Dramatic in its sameness but after two days of that we were ready for the coast. And the coast, parts of it so painfully long and boring we turned around, but other sections full of life.
There is more, of course, there’s so much more. The tribes, the women (and children) carrying everything on their heads, the many many people walking down the roads. . . and on we go, into Botswana and on to Zimbabwe. Cover photo is just your average Meve’s starling.
Epupa Falls, Cunene River, border of Namibia and Angola, and a wonder to behold. We don’t know a lot about it and the surprise of how big it is, and how many baobab trees line its banks is worth the drive. We’d been wild camping for so long, the laundry has piled up to a half day’s project that I am dreading. 
Epupa Falls camp has plenty of water (none of it potable) and plenty of room to take care of this chore, but who wants to do that when there’s so much else to do? Enter Marianna! 
She came up to us as I was pondering setting up the wash station, asking if we had any work or laundry for her, please? Oh, yeah. She took it all and I was free. Her daughter and I walked into the village and purchased some staples for the family – I had learned from our Himba guide that villagers like maize (a 10 kilo bag that an 8-year old carried on her head, sorry, no photo), sugar, and laundry soap. Give when you can.
The map shows the road from Epupa to Rucana to be 93 kilometers – and to take 10 hours! Good god. That is frightening even by African standards. But because of the military presence on the border the road has been 
“improved” and the time cut in half. Still it’s a mean ride. Halfway to Rucana, we pull into a tropical paradise camp on the Cunene and there we meet up with our river crossing compatriots, Sven and Bridget. 
They had waited out the water level and crossed the next day with no problem. So we learn we could have waited, and not had to spend the night out in the rough brush on a squirrel track to nowhere, in the pouring rain. Oh well. The four of us share a sundowner boat ride and dip our feet in Angolan sand. Darkness is a cacophony of frogs, night birds and who knows what else all night long. Next day, we take the refrigerator out of the Beagle and Jim works on it for hours in the heat. The fan is shorting out – he jury-rigs a fix and on we go.
Etosha National Park – April 30
Namibia’s crown jewel. As big as Yellowstone, if Yellowstone were flattened with a warped rolling pin. The Park border fence is lined with giraffe and zebra, and we make our first mistake. 
Instead of waiting outside the park for a new day to begin, we charge in and get a permit for four days starting now. The very friendly but not-so-helpful park permit man (I hesitate to call him a ranger) says it’s no problem to make it to the first camp by sundown. Camps are fenced and gated and no one wants to be outside the gate at night. Before we can get going we are met by the Namibian police – they, as always, ask us where we are coming from (we usually can’t remember) and where are we going (we usually don’t know). They ask if we have a “drone-y”. Of course we don’t declare the drone, who knows what that would mean. Then they tell us we will have to drive 60k an hour or more to make camp. What?? It’s nearly 4pm, there are animals everywhere and the road is the dreaded Namibian washboard. 10 kilometers later, we give up and return to the West gate, finding camping right outside the park and giving up a night on our permit. We were seduced by the giraffe and zebra – we own that – but ill-advised by the help. Live and learn.
Entering the next morning, we find the Park thick with high brush and grass – and there is water in every low spot. Probably the worst of game spotting conditions, but there’s a family of elephants with babies to watch, and the zebra and wildebeest are frisky in the cool morning. All in all, Etosha gave up scores of birds, zebra and giraffe, and a special sighting of a male and female lion. The male picked up what looked like a side of zebra and carried it off; the female was barely visible in the long grass – a good reason to sleep inside a gated camp. 
That said, camping is marginal in the Park; expensive by Africa standards for a parking lot experience. We stop at a store about halfway through and two days in, and I decide not to buy anything, unwisely figuring that the next store will carry the same stuff. How wrong could I be? Mistake number two. Buy it if you need it at the first place you find it; never assume you will find it again – unless it is Eat-Sum-More cookies which are piled high everywhere. Good thing we like them. Sometimes they are dinner.
We take the long route – beset by flooded roads, flooded rivers and semi-bad decisions, it is a wonder we made it.
Oue first riverbed drive enroute is a sweet experience, baiting us to do more. Nice sandy tracks with overhanging trees adding to the ambiance. We stop for a leisurely breakfast and vow to keep on with this riverbed driving; it’s great. 
Only the track eventually goes from sand to a fine powdery dust. In the rear view mirror there is nothing but a dense dust cloud and you know it is blowing into every crevice. Just as the end is in sight we bury the Beagle in the biggest hole in the road (cleverly hidden) and a tidal wave of dust comes over the bonnet and through the aircon, blasting into the cabin. We can’t breath or see or stop. We ride the wave onto firm ground and come to a halt. Mind you, we are only in second gear, going maybe 15k at the most. It doesn’t matter. We may as well have shoveled the dust/dirt into the cab and all over the truck, and oh, let’s not forget about the engine compartment. It is coated with dust like it was spray painted on.
We limp into Sesfontein, a tiny town with fuel. There’s a guy riding a galloping donkey down the main street – he is bareback on the ass end going hell bent for leather. There’s a post office that is closed for lunch. At the small safari lodge the guys who hook up a hose for us are happy to wash the truck. You might think “what’s a little dirt on a safari rig?” How wrong you would be. We can hardy get near the Beagle, it is so filthy, and to touch the dust is to spread it further. The propane tanks are invisible under the brown stain and the spare tire had an inch of dirt on it. Opening the back would be like sleeping naked on the ground, there would be so much dust on the bed. Nope, getting it washed is money well spent. Sorry, no photos!
Not to be discouraged, we head for another riverbed drive. Halfway there, a localized rain and hail storm creates first a wet road, then a riverbed road, and finally an entire lake of water to drive through in order to reach the town of Puros. The pan lake is kilometers long – the only way to determine where to drive is to look for the deepest water with the most waves in it as the roadbed is slightly lower than the pan itself. We wild camp after the deluge, finding a drowned scorpion right next to the truck.
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