Zimbabwe

After departing Lake Malawi we spent a couple of nights in the capital, Lilongwe.  It was a good stopover because I had only one page left in my passport.  A day spent going between the US embassy and the Mozambique embassy and I had 23 new pages and a visa for our two day pass through of Mozambique.  We camped on the side of the road in Mozambique, about 50km from the Zimbabwe border.  An early rise the next day and we we’re off for the border crossing into Zimbabwe and to our destination the capital city of Harare.  Here we stayed for two nights at the Larbon Bird Park about 30km outside the city center.  The property is situated on Lake Chivero and is home to a bird sanctuary and lion breeding center.  The owners managed to keep their property during Mugabe’s property redistribution act (a period where farms were redistributed from the white owners to the black Zimbabweans who supported Mugabe) by bringing the lions with them to the front gate when the “war veterans” showed up to claim “their” land.  Xi and I took a trip into Harare on Sunday to see the city center.  Our method of travel into the city was a “matatu” (a fifteen passenger minivan that transported us and 25 other passengers).  The Zimbabwean people were incredibly friendly and hospitable to us which is pretty remarkable given the white-black tension of the last few decades. On the way in my “seat” was in between one mans legs with my face in another mans armpit.  Xi was fortunate by having a seat on a scalding modified fuel tank.  On the way back she got the front seat with two others – luxury.  Time seems to have passed Harare undisturbed as evident by a sign still pointing the direction to the Yugoslavia Embassy.  The next day we drove half a day to our camp site at Antelope Park – a massive commercial lion breading program.  It was by far the nicest campsite we’ve stayed at.  The organization is funded by “volunteers” who pay $3,000 a month to be there.  While there we went to a lion feedings and did a carriage ride. The carriage ride was a good way to see the animals without scaring them – they don’t seem to mind the mules pulling the carriage.  The lion feeding was a most exhilarating yet utterly terrifying experience.  To be within several feet of starving lions fighting for food on the other side of a whimsy fence was incredible; those lions are massive up close and really, really intimidating!  We then went to see the Great Zimbabwe Ruins on our way to Bulawayo.  The ruins are remnant from the Shona who lived there from around 1200-1600AD.  The Great Enclosure there is the third largest man made object after the Pyramids and the Great Wall.  In Bulawayo we’re staying at a random woman’s estate.  Here we’re just relaxing, as evident by how much we have written.