Robs says when she wakes up in the morning, she lies there for a few moments and tries to remember where she is, we can all relate to this. After 99 days on the road and the most time we have spent in one place is 5 nights, we can be forgiven for feeling disorientated, from time to time.
Kirst, after a few days at home; visiting family, spending lots of time with her new cousin, Luke and her boyfriend, Teddy – returned to a freezing cold Cape Town today. She has a few days to sort her life out before starting lectures on Monday.
Our plan for the next two days is to visit the Masvingo area, home to Great Zimbabwe, formerly known as the Zimbabwe Ruins. The trip was 280km km and the scenery was very different to what we have seen so far. The terrain is extremely dry and there is no grazing for the hundreds of goats that are around. Clearly they live off the trees, as the leaf growth on the trees starts once past the browsing height of the goats. There are also hundreds of baobabs along the way, in one area, squares had been cut out of the bark of every tree, not sure why but I assume it was for natural medicines or to make baskets. This is a very populated area and there are rural huts and villages along the road.
The scenery is great, the landscape is littered with hills and mountains, covered with sheets of black rock that are in a permanent state of exfoliation, looking like an onion that is being peeled layer by layer. Along the main road were numerous road blocks, more so than usual for Zims. There were also men, flagging us down, using the hand signal of a diamond. This is a big diamond mining area and putting two and two together, we realised the guys were probably trying to sell us illegal diamonds and hence the number of road blocks.
We crossed a major bridge, the Birchenough Bridge, over the Save River; this huge metal bridge seemed so out of place in this area.
With 40km to go, Gray decided to take, what was signposted, as the scenic route. It started off as a bit of a disappointment as we travelled through some not very exciting forest areas. It was more fun waving at the little school children, on their way home from school. The forest gave way to some farming areas. We had an interesting chat to one of the managers at Inn on the Vumba. We were chatting about how much we were enjoying Zim and he was cautiously optimistic about the country, it seems to be a matter of waiting for the ruler to pop off. He was saying that as far as the farming situation was concerned, the black farmers, who were given land, were really struggling. A lot were now getting together and consolidating neighbouring farms, getting the white farmers back in to manage these big farms and all were getting a share of the profits. This is truly turning out to be an eye opening visit.
The highlight of the trip was crossing the dam wall over Lake Kyle. The scenery was once again amazing, as the lake meanders around the mountains and through the valleys. A few kilometres later we drove into Norma Jeanne’s Lakeside Resort (not named after Marilyn Monroe but after the owner). After requesting to see the cottages, we realised there was a wonderful camping site, with all the necessary facilities, in a beautiful garden, overlooking the lake. Camping was saving us about R1000 a night and we were all happy to get back into our tents, especially Ga, who is convinced this will clear up his sinuses.
We were the only people around and so had the whole place to ourselves. The camp assistants made us a huge fire, for warmth and to braai on. Red wine, braaied chicken, atmosfire, in a beautiful natural garden overlooking Lake Kyle – Life is good.
View from our camp site
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