I’m not sure when this will be ‘posted’ onto the Blogsite at this stage as its now late Friday night & we have been without electricity out here at Dimbangombe since we got here at lunchtime yesterday…till just now. And there is no internet anyhow…

Apparently this is quite a common occurrence for the farm to go without electricity for this long, & is worse for most places in Zimbabwe, including the cities. There is a major back-up generator which is broken down & waiting on spare parts from China, which is another ordeal for the locals to have to live with.

We were the only two on the small bus from Kasane in Botswana back to Victoria Falls, & on another ‘hot tip’ from a tour operator we booked into The Rest Camp which at least was handy walking distance from the centre of town. I say ‘at least’ because the “rest” part of their name was some sort of poetic license on their behalf with Pec & I being attacked all night long by mozzies in a jail cell type room that could also have roasted a chook in while we tossed & turned till daylight. No towels at all & the poorest excuse for a pillow I’d ever seen rounded off the deal…

However we did have a decent earlier evening with a cruise on another little river boat along the mighty Zambezi River just upstream of the huge Falls the town is named after. These cruises apparently are often referred to locally as “Booze Cruises” due to the usual practice of customers being plied with drinks as part of the purchase price till you stagger off at the end. Ours was a pretty quiet affair, and in fact the name might hark back to the days before political instability & when the Falls were more patronized than they currently are. Pec & I shared a couple of beers with an Irish couple (another farmer) who were having an African honeymoon, and would have probably stayed on the boat if we had known how horrible the night ahead would become!

To make matters worse we had actually booked and paid for two nights at the “Restless Cramp”, and of course there would be a no-refund policy…

We booked for two nights as we had also booked and paid for a full day ‘white water rafting’ and thought it may be better to stay in town for the second night instead of getting a lift straight back out to Dimbangombe.

We decided against doing a ‘bungee jump’ as it was a little too expensive for our closely monitored budget…(Do you know those things can pop your eyeballs!)

Anyway, at our age the white water rafting was a plenty big enough thrill for us & we even had reservations about doing it (too late!) when faced with our first rapid, and even probably before that…when walking down the steep hill to even get there. The water was fantastic fun & it is hard to describe just how much water is hurtling along between those towering cliffs. We went through 20 individual rapids and didn’t get fully capsized through any which is unusual, although Peca & a few of the other guys got thrown out a couple of times. We had two guides & three Polish lads in the rubber dingy with us for the day & it was a lot of fun, with a stopover for lunch about halfway and a couple of swims, including one through an easy rapid. I’d highly recommend it except for one thing….the walk out at the end. It’s a bloody killer and is around 750 feet almost straight up some locally made steps that were pieces of branch pegged across the path, sort of mimicking steps… Actually having spent the last three months traveling, sitting on my backside & being the recipient of ridiculously good hosting, had me thinking that maybe the steps were more of a ‘hindrance than a help’. God, was I glad to get to the top & could not even stomach the thought of the cold beer they were offering us when we finally got there. What really got me questioning my dubious fitness level though was seeing these young African guys ‘running’ down the stairs to GO AND CARRY THE BOAT BACK UP.

People that fit just make me sick these days……

Weren’t we sore that night! And the thought of another night of battling Malaria carriers was not appealing either, so luckily we found some smoke coils in one of the shops for the bargain basement price of  Zim$200 or about $1 Aussie. A couple of quiet whiskey’s and a cooler night also helped the cause a little. We also had a look at the markets & the enormous amount of quality stuff these guys produce & have to sell for a fraction of its worth. And boy do they work it…every owners little stall individually  numbered & many great marketing names, as we met Mr. Honesty, Mr. Discount, Mr. Truth etc etc. Pity we have to travel so light, as it would have been great to be able to help them out & a lot of it is really good quality gear. Another bit of entertainment happened while we were down that street, with a brawl starting out just up the road… and as you can imagine people came running from everywhere & it all got very exciting there briefly. There was not any ‘alcohol’ involved (like I’ve seen elsewhere!) even though the shirts were ripped off, & it all evaporated just as quickly as it started. Even though you do get continually pestered by rip off merchants following you along the street trying to sell rubbish, we at no stage have ever felt threatened at all, & even when you tell them quite sternly to ‘go away’ or ‘no business’, they eventually do so with no malice at all.

Speaking of being sick earlier….

My traveling mate Peca woke very early this morning with the dreaded “vomiting & diarrhea” and has not been too good all day. At least he has so far held his dinner down tonight & hopefully its just one of those short lived bugs. Strange that I have not got it yet (and hopefully won’t at all) as we have eaten the same food & had all the same drinks basically all trip. He did not sound very good I must say & its one I’d gladly pass up if possible.

He did become well enough after lunch to jump in the back of a truck & Allan Savory took the two of us for a tour of Dimbangombe, which was the combination of a farm tour and a safari. We saw stacks of grass which Allan commented that he does not know how the manager will get the cattle around to knock it all over before the wet season starts. Not enough cattle on here & given the countries predicament they are not easily sourced. Interestingly he views the cattle as simply ‘a tool to promote greater grass growth for the wildlife’, of which there is plenty. On our drive we went past Kebu, Sable (if they had stopped we could have had a shot), Zebra, Giraffe, Impala & plenty of Guinea Fowl, which we would also have had a crack at if we had a smaller gauge rifle. There are also elephant, lion & buffalo and pretty well the whole gamut of species that this amazing country produces. Then back to he’s place for a couple of ‘Sundowners’ overlooking the river with him & Jody who incidentally split their year almost evenly between here and their house in New Mexico. That is when they are not traveling to other parts of the world for business & pleasure. Before arriving here (the same day we did) they had been on a horseback safari with a group, including some Australians up in Kenya for ten days which would have been fantastic. They saw enormous herds, estimated at well over a million head, of Wildebeest followed by Zebra etc migrating after the dry season, & that is something that will now definitely be on my ‘to do list’ for a family holiday.

We didn’t hang around their camp for too long as walking through the bush back to here after dark can be quite different to home, and its about a mile back over to our camp for dinner. We didn’t want to “become the dinner” for something else you see, or disturb wandering elephants which was probably more of a real threat to our well being than ending up an entrée for a lion would actually be.

Another early start this morning with Shane (the manager) picking us up to go for another drive around the ranch explaining the nuances of grazing management for the cattle herd & how they incorporate all of the wildlife into that strategy. I also managed to have some communication with Cathy via text messaging from the one small area near the workshop here that the phone will work in. And then very surprisingly I was standing up on the back of the truck while we were driving around the ranch & my phone went off again with a message from home. Talk about a surreal setting….

I was meant to be spotting Kudu, as Shane had mentioned we might get a chance to knock one over with the rifle we had with us…a “Holland & Holland .375” which is also capable of dropping an elephant. Well we didn’t get to kill something… although we did both have a shot at a tree & the power of that thing was quite impressive and seemed to be really well balanced.

Now we are about to join Allan & Jody down at Shane & Rose’s house to watch the rugby that is on here at midday our time. The winner out of Australia and the All Blacks will decide who is this years Tri-Nations champions, so as you can imagine all these guys will be barracking for the miserable All Blacks to beat the Aussies just because South Africa finished off by flogging us. Maybe it’s a good thing that we are leaving here tomorrow as this lot are going to be sad by two o’clock……

We’ll see…

Well, we saw allright….not quite like I planned but a very good game none the less. I thought the Aussies went very well except for letting in three extremely soft tries to let themselves down to lose only 24-28 again to those girly bloody All Blacks.

Peca is still crook but has some tablets now (including a few more that I have belatedly remembered that I have!) and he’ll be hoping no doubt that it improves markedly before tomorrows flight back down to South Africa. It will be hard to leave here as we have been so well looked after by all the staff, as well as Allan & Jody who have invited us down for dinner tonight.

It really is a pity that this country has had to suffer so much with internal conflict & foreign sanctions as well for so long & now with a new cabinet being announced on Monday there is finally a hope that there will finally be some sort of better future to look forward to. Probably a little while yet before Mugabe will relinquish all control as he still dominates with the use of the military of course, but at least it’s a start. The latest inflation figures for here are an unbelievably staggering 320 million percent!! I’m pretty sure that even the treasurer of the century Peter Costello would not be able to rein that one in.

How do they even measure that??  

I do know that most of the economy is running on U.S dollars or the SA Rand & that there is massive lines outside the banks & people are complaining bitterly because their money is severely devalued from when they first join a queue till when they actually get their money…..and then there isn’t much to buy anyway.    

Hardship and adversity can drive ingenuity, enterprise & entrepreneurship in a lot of situations, but this is ridiculous. Allan believes that a lot of the hardship, sanctions and politically turmoil actually produced farmers in Zimbabwe that he rated the best in the world a few years ago. Trouble is, things have got so bad that a lot of those farmers either quit, left or were kicked off their farms, & ironically (or tragically) they are the very ones needed here now to rescue this desperately struggling economy.

Just had another interesting morning with Shane, having a bit of shooting practice. Or at least that’s all it turned out to be as we only bagged a couple of pheasant type birds that the young guy on the back was pleased to take home. Those Guinnea Fowl are hard to hit off the back of a moving truck…

Yep, its all about the farming!

Off to Jo Burg now and no doubt a new adventure…