Kashawe

​Yesterday was a travel day, flying from Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport to Victoria Falls International Airport in Zimbabwe on a small, 48-passenger jet. 

As we were landing, we got a glimpse of Victoria Falls from the air. We’ll return here near the end of the trip to see the Falls up close, on the ground.

From the airport we boarded a small, 20 passenger bus (even though there are only 13 of us, plus our trip leader) for a three hour ride toward Hwange National Park.

The “highway” made the worst of Iowa or Minnesota potholes look like smooth sailing. So we were not exactly traveling at highway speed.

We had one stop at a very primitive roadside area. The people were extremely friendly, and our new best friend “Clive” volunteered to take us on a tour of the place that included the butcher shop, the sports bar, grocery store (where we met his father and uncle, above) and the porridge restaurant. Porridge is a stew of beef or goat, often mixed with or served on top of mashed boabob fruit (think sour mashed potatoes). We declined the taste test, especially since we had just seen the butcher shop where the meat probably had come from.

Later, a more modern rest stop had excellent ice cream cones for 50 cents U.S. The same soft-serve would have been $3 at home.

Our route took us through a series of huge open-pit coal mines that are disrupting thousands of acres of countryside. These are being operated by Chinese and Russian companies that bypass environmental regulations by bribing the inspectors. Bribes are common here for nearly everything. We are told that a U.S. 5 dollar bill can get a person out of almost any traffic ticket or hassle with a border guard.

The mines extend right up to the border of the national park. But the elephants don’t read the signs, so we passed a small family of elephants grazing in the midst of the mines.

Just inside the park we transferred from the bus to open-sided game ride jeeps for another hour+ ride to our home for the next 4 days, Kashawe Camp, owned and operated exclusively by OAT.

These roads made the highway I described earlier look like an interstate. Imagine the worst-maintained rural gravel road in Iowa.

The camp is quite nice. Our “tent” does have a canvas roof and sides, but a wooden screen door, electricity, wi-fi (albeit slow), and full bathroom with hot and cold running water. It’s not roughing it, and is a big step up from what we had in Tanzania 16 years ago.

Food is very good, and we have a full bar where we can purchase beer, wine, and mixed drinks at quite reasonable prices.

We crashed early, still dealing with jet lag, but slept well and were ready for departure on our first game drive shortly after sunrise this morning.

It’s just after the rainy season here, so everything is very lush and green. There are also a lot more trees than we envisioned. This makes seeing the animals much more difficult.

Nevertheless, our game drive driver, Garry, has very sharp eyes, and we were able to see impalas (larger deer), hydrax (rodent-like creatures), cliff springers (small deer), and warthogs, as well as many species of birds. 

At a lake, we observed hippos and crocodiles

On the way back to camp for lunch, a large bull elephant greeted us just outside the camp, and he was kind enough to pose politely for our photos before moving on.