zimbabwe october 20

patsenojexpedition
patrick and susan jones
Sat 20 Oct 2007 10:52
yesterday was a travel day from chiefs camp in botswana to matetsi water lodge in zimbabwe. took a little 12 passenger plane in the morning from chiefs camp airstrip (after all the baboons and warthogs were cleared off the field,)and flew for one hour and fifteen minutes to the kisane airport in botswana at the zimbabwe border.  the landscape from chiefs to
kisane airport is compelete wasteland, with scrub bushes, no roads, no water, and few animals.  but at kisane, this is where the zambesi river is very wide and where
the countries of botswana, zambia, namibia, and zimbabwe all meet in the corner. and that area is where the huge national parks are.
 
after landing in kinsane, took a little van to the botswana border where stood in line with a bunch of other safari camp arrivers.  little place, disorganized, but non-event to get passport stamped leaving botswana.  then went down the road 50 yards for the zimbabwe immigration formalities.  zimbabwe is not a friendly government to either its people or to the usa, so was always going to be a bit iffy (rember that mugabe is the president).  in fact i was taking a little photo of the little immigration building (size of a one car garage, but full of people and officials), and was told to put the camera away or it would be confiscated because i was taking pictures of a government building.  amazing, because the building was just a run down garage .  and each person entering has to pay a 30 dollar visa fee, in a hard currency, which is how they make a lot of hard currency reserves.  total trip from kinsane to matsetsi lodge was around 90 minutes, passing a lot of really third world villages, with hand painted signs, then through miles and miles of bush territory.  on the way, saw the government billboards with messages to control aids, exhorting the populace to follow a policy of abstinence as a safe practice.  somehow i think that policy probably will not be very popular in this part of the world/
 
at matetsi, arrived to find a nice litte camp with 6 chalets along the river bank all nested among a lot of large trees, right on the zambesi river, and overlooking the  opposite shore which is zambia.  was delighted to find that the bedroom was airconditioned since the midday temperatures are over 95 degrees here.  accomodations are quite nice with a nice large but no airconb'room and a little private pool in front of a raised deck,  i suppose this is nice thing to do, but that is the same area where baboons, monkeys, hyenas, warthogs and bushboks play----the latter being a type of antelope that has both stripes and spots.
 
the daytime temperature is so hot, that they bring lunch to the little chalet, but you must be careful or the monkeys will steal your grub. heard a hippo snorting while having lunch, which is interesting since we are in the trees next to the river and the hippo could very will be 20 feet away ready to eat us and the grub stealing monkeys at the same time.
 
went on a game drive, and are pretty jaded by this time---zebras are getting boring, as are impala, kudu, cape buffalo, giraffes etc, but whenever we start thinking we have seen it all something else pops up interesting.  for example, as we returned from the game drive, saw at least 30 elephants just after sun set all walking to and through a pond---sounded like a train, and all the elephants were marching purposefully in the same direction like british soldiers, not stopping, just drinking and walking into the water and out the other side and just kept walking.  also a male lion cut short our evening "sundowners cocktail time" when the guides stop the vehicle near the end of the game drive at some nice place that has a
convenient termite mound or big tree where guests can "mark their territory" .  but the tracker (who accompanies the guide on the land rover) told us all to scurry back on to the land rover since he saw this male lion advancing on out little party.   so we then packed up and followed the lion as he went in search of his dinner.
 
perhaps the most interesting species discovered during the whole trip was discovered right in our own camp.  there was this lady from dallas, who was probably at least
130 years old, who was probably a texas socialite around the time the alamo was being attacked.  she had bleached blond hair, owl-like sunglasses, lots of garrish jewelry,
hot pink lipstick and fingernail polish, and wearing a shiny white llamay (spelling) shirt. looked totally out of place, and kept calling baboons "apes" and asked the guide where the
"prairie dogs" were. she was much more scary and bewildering than any warthog we have ever seen.
 
perhaps you recall from your school days some poet or writer (i was not concentrating very hard on poets in school as you can tell), who wrote about the "mightly baobabs">
well i can report to you that the baobabs are truly mighty.  they often reach over 500 years old to even 1000 years old and are virtually indestructible.  elephants try to pull the bark off and fail.  fire does not faze them.  drought does not fase them (huge trunks, little foliage normally, deep roots) and they look like trees turned upside down when the leaves are off (like now, before the rainy season)----with the branches with no leaves looking like a huge root system and the huge trunk looking like it is pointing into the ground.
 
today, game drive left camp at 6am and we returned for breakfast at 9am.  had to shoosh away 7 warthogs that wanted to dine with us and are not only quite ugly but also bold.
only guests in our little camp today are a young russian couple (he 33, she 26) from moscow that had spentthe last week all over south africa.  he is an attorney, with very broken english, but nice people.  they lost their camera in south africa, so i took a couple of photos and got their email address to send to them later.   they are taking a side trip this afternoon to go to victoria falls (we are going there oct 23/24), which apparently includes bungee jumping.  had an interesting conversation with them last night in totally broken english about thier commute in moscow (2-3 hours each way) and also about the risks of bungee jumping over victoria falls.
 
no pc or internet connections here, so am sending this via satellite phone again.  but i think that there is cellphone reception (zimtel)at the reception area(very aptly named location), which is quite a hike in the hot afternoon sun, so will check it out later in the day.