Tag Archives: Zimbabwe

The Viewing Game – Krueger National Park

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Giraffes!

Giraffes!

After a little taste of wildlife viewing in Zimbabwe and Botswana, we were pretty psyched to head to Krueger National Park in northeastern South Africa for a four day safari. We were even more excited to be sharing the experience with friends from the States. Our friends Mary, Paul and Jack met up with us in Johannesburg for a week of sights and safari before they head to Uganda for a two week cycling trip. (Very cool!)

The thing about Krueger is that it’s huge – the size of Wales. As a result, you have to be extra patient while you ride about in an open vehicle with every ounce of clothing on wrapped up in a wool blanket. It is winter here. The chilly mornings and long drives are definitely worth it. Krueger has the greatest variety of animals in Southern Africa and is home to all of the “Big Five” – lions, leopards, buffalo, elephants and rhinos. Did you ever wonder why they call them the Big Five? I didn’t know and couldn’t figure out why the buffalo rated as one of the Big Five. I mean, we have buffalo in the U.S. Big deal. Turns out Big Five means the five most dangerous land mammals – or so I was told. Mr. Buffalo is big and bad.

While we didn’t spot any rhinos or leopards, we had many encounters with elephants and buffalo along with many other animals and birds. But perhaps the biggest highlight of our time in Krueger was watching lions. Our first sighting was on a night drive. As Dave was holding the spotlight in search of eyes glowing in the dark, we rolled right up on a pride of 10 lions laying at the very edge of the road. We were speechless. Uh, uh, uh stop please. No wait. Move ahead just a little. It just didn’t seem right to be sitting in an open vehicle feet away from these guys. Really amazing. And we were just about to give up on the night drive which until the lions had only resulted in seeing the glowing red eyes of the bush baby hopping from tree to tree. Not that I am underestimating the bush baby. he was cute too.

It always seemed kind of strange to me the whole idea of going on a safari. Like something you have to have a lot of money, khaki clothes and a funny hat to do. But observing wildlife in its own environment is absolutely fascinating and can be done for a resonable amount of money. Of course sometimes the animals don’t always stop and pose for you, but just watching a giraffe chomping on leaves is entertaining. These animals are just surreal. Well, ok not the buffalo so much, but we’ll still respect his bad-assness.

QANTASed Again!

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It really never ends. It’s actually become quite comical. The wrath of QANTAS Beijing is still upon us. One of the changes we made was adding return flights to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe from Johannesburg. Again, after much confusion, we believed that these flights were confirmed.

Much to our delight and surprise, we were upgraded to Business Class on the flight to VF, but we had less luck on the return flight to Jo-burg. In fact, we arrived at the airport only to learn that we were not booked on the flight at all. This isn’t good when the flight is fully booked for the next week. I guess our paper tickets were for some mystery flight. We’re still not clear. After some insisting and digging in our heels, we made our way onto the flight without a seat to spare. It really does help to have a paper ticket to wave in front of their faces. It seems to add just a little more legitimacy.

We suspect that we may not have been on the flight to VF, but that the airport staff passed the buck until we got to the gate and they realized that there were already people in our seats so they just quickly bumped us to solve the problem. That’s my kind of solution!

So now we’ll be calling ahead for every flight just to make sure (1) there is a flight and (2) that we’re on it. Sometimes those basic details are really important.

So You Wanna Be A Millionaire

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Fuel Shortage

Fuel Shortage

Who doesn’t want to be a millionaire? Well, if you travel to Zimbabwe your dreams can come true with less than $10. The problem is that you can’t legally change money at the “real” rate and when you do become a Zim millionaire, there’s very little left on the shelves to purchase.

You may have heard about some troubles in Zim. They’ve been brewing for several years now, but seem to be taking a serious turn for the worse. Inflation is nearing 5000%. That may seem a little abstract to really grasp so let me give you an example of how things were working during our brief visit.

Thanks to the wonderful people at our hostel we were able to exchange money at close to the “real” rate which for us was 140,000Zim$ to 1US$. So when we paid 1US$ for a bottle of water at the hostel, we were paying the equivalent of 140,000Zim$ for it. If we had exchanged money at the official rate of 250Zim$ to the 1US$, the same bottle of water would have cost the equivalent of 560US$. I am not making this up. If you don’t have the good fortune to be able to change money illegally (and safely), then you’re forced to pay in US$ – which means less value for the dollar but of course is still better than using the official exchange rate. Using an ATM or a credit card is absolute insanity as the official rate is used.

Once you have the money you may have a hard time finding something to spend it on. It’s quite common to walk into a restaurant and have them tell you there’s no more food left (at 2pm), or no pizza since they’re out of flour, or sorry no more bottled water. The shortage of food and fuel is largely a result of President Mugabe’s mandatory call to cut prices in half. Merchants are losing their shirts, and recently many that have closed shop or broken price controls because they can’t make ends meet are being jailed. The owner of our hostel figures he earns up to 32 years of jail time a day with all the laws he’s breaking to keep his business running.

You’d think that in a country where the economic situation is beyond desperate, crime would be an issue. This was not our experience in Victoria Falls – a town that once boomed with tourism. The people we met on the streets were friendly towards us and simply wanted to trade their carvings and curios for our shoes or even our leftovers. It’s really a sad situation, and it’s soon going to be a regional dilemma as refugees pour into neighboring countries. We can’t speak to the safety of other places in Zimbabwe at this time, but we can recommend giving Vic Falls and the surrounding area a chance.  They’re really glad to have you!