The Global Guy

So far Zimbabwe has been amazing. Despite the terrible policies of the current government, the people and the landscape have been great. We spent three days in a private game reserve near the town of Gweru. There we got the chance to go on a horseback safari, walk with lions in their natural environment, and even go swimming with elephants. The place was amazing, if a little bit expensive. Talking to the owners of this place tells a lot about the current political situation. This was originally a white owned farm, but the owners decided that a game preserve was more fun than growing plants. Legally it is still considered a farm, and there have been several attempts by Mugabe’s cronies to take over the farm. Every time this happens, all the owners have to do is to threaten to just release the lions, and the locals always decide that this farm might just need to stay with the current ownership!

We’re in Zimbabwe at the moment. Yesterday we left Malawi and transited thru Mozambique to get here. Even though we were only there for about 4 hours, it still cost 20 bucks for the transit visa! The drives have been really nice. There are a lot of bush fires right now, and when we’re driving at night, the fires on the mountains look like lava flows coming from a volcano.

Coming into Zim yesterday was the toughest border crossing so far. The truck and all our bags were searched. Right now the Zim dollar is plummeting in value, so when you change money you end up with a pile of the local currency. We went thru a trader and ended up with a huge box of local currency that we distributed. I’ve got about an 8 inch thick wad of cash I’m carrying around, and it’s only equal to about 100 bucks in US dollars. Tomorrow we’re exploring the capital of Harare, and then we’re headed out to a private game reserve where they raise orphaned lions. Should be interesting at the very least.

Today we took a side trip to the Great Zimbabwe ruins. Zimbabwe means "stone house" in the Shona language, and sometime around 1000 AD they had themselves a pretty advanced city life. Great Zim is the largest of the ruins left behind. The construction was extremely advanced. The walls were built with no mortar between the bricks, and it was designed to fit into the landscape as much as possible. Defenses were abundant with lots of walls, and narrow approaches that an army would have a hard time crossing. The ruins have been abandoned for hundreds of years, but there are quite a few local monkeys that have moved in.

We’re in Malawi right now. We’ve been here for about 5 days, and today is the first time we’ve found internet access. The biggest feature about this country is Lake Malawi…it’s the 9th largest lake in the world, and it’s main feature is the abundant freshwater fish in it. Diving the lake is like diving in a freshwater aquarium! There are over 1000 species of chiclids, and they’re colorful and all over the place. The water temp is pretty warm, and the visibility wasn’t great, but since the fish were so small it didn’t matter much.

The 2nd night at the lake we cooked a whole pig on a spit. We’d bought the pig the previous day, and had the locals butcher it for us. It’s not the first time I’ve seen an animal go from alive to my plate, but it was the first time I’d seen it done with a pig. Cute and tasty…that’s a great feature in any animal!

Yesterday we had our first breakdown in the truck. We hit a huge pothole, and shattered the front right leaf spring. I was extremely impressed with how well our driver was able to replace it right on the side of the road. It took about 5 of us helping, but we were back on the road again within 90 minutes.

Today we’re in the town of Blantyre arranging our visas for Mozambique. We’ll only be in that country for about 3 hours in transit to Zimbabwe, but they still want 20 bucks for that privilege.

I’ve been thinking about the benefits of doing this trip as an organized tour and doing it independently like I’ve done the rest of this trip. It’s certainly easier to let the driver and guide do everything for us, but it seems like it’s cheating. I also don’t like the fact that our itinerary is so set, and there’s no flexibility to go explore other areas. This is a nice overview of Africa, but if I come back, I think I’ll do the independent dirty backpacker route!