Gem and Stu’s World Tour

After 3 nights on the houseboat we came back to Kariba town and drove, half walked, to the Dam. It was so hot but the dam very impressive. When seeing it Stu started to have misgivings about the bungee he had said he was going to do in Vic Falls.

Next on the trip was Antelope Park - it was such a lovely place on the river (with free tea and coffee). I was also very excited that I could get my washing done in washing machines (by this point it was a bit desperate)! We spent 3 nights (2 days) there and I managed to walk with (and pet) lion cubs (very cool if not a bit scary). \

we have loooooads more of these lion photos on our flickr page. There was even a friendly Impala in the campsite:

(Edit\stu: for the record, we did not always stay at campsites as nice as this - it is just that we didn’t really feel inclined to take photos of the grottier ones that we stayed at; we don’t want people thinking we were accommodated in luxury all the time )

Me and Stu also went on an early morning bush walk to see animals on foot and went on a horseback safari (my horse seemed like it was about the keel over at any given moment though). We did not see that much that we had already seen but it was good to see animals when you are not in a car/truck as you can get a lot closer to them - apparently they only recognise human threat as being standing upright.

Our next stop was Bulawayo. We did not get to see much of the town (apart from driving through) and we got there quite late we decided to upgrade to a room for a few nights - luxury! The next day I think we had one of the best days on the trip. We were picked up in 2 trucks and taken to Matopos National Park. Our guide (Andy or Mr Peanut) was the most knowledgeable guide we had (he was also a professional hunter). He has us eating all the fruits from the bush (that you could without dying). I loved chewing on the sugar cane! We then went tracking rhino on foot with him. He knew exactly how to track them (and other animals) he even could tell how old dung was (and had a love of getting it in his hands and smelling it)! We saw a huge rhino up so close I was a tad scared of getting trampled. We also got to see a 2 week old baby and it’s mother. It was particularly good to be able to do a safari on foot. With such a knowledgeable guide, we learnt so much more about the animals’ behaviour, rather than just pointing at them from the car.

Later that day we visited a village that the other guide (on the other truck) had been brought up with - as a kid he used to go walkabout and go and stay with the tribe. Chief Pondo was hilarious apart from the fact he was old but still had top look after his grandchildren as most of his kids had died of Aids! We also saw the bushman paintings (in Nswatugi) and when the guide was talking about how the bushmen had been driven out (he was so passionate about it) I was nearly crying.

After such a cool day we got back to camp and found a treat - lots of pizza to eat (worth 4 billion Zim dollars)!