Bulawayo

Remote camping.

Inside the truck.

Possible upgrades at the campsite.. but there was no electricity so the huts were dark even in the day time and the facilities were the same as the campers.

The topography around the camp reminded me of parts of Australia.

A beautiful lizard.

Weaver bird nests. They are made with the entrance facing down to confound enemies.

Tuesday, October 17^th.

It was interesting listening to the sounds of the night. There were unidentifiable calls but no animal visits to the camp.

We left the Tusker Campground by seven and began our journey south to Bulawayo. We drove past huge tracks of bush veld with few signs of habitation and almost no traffic except for a few trucks.

Zimbabwe is a bankrupt country and uses police on the roads to inspect vehicles and apply fines on the spot. We were stopped three times today and asked questions about the safety of our truck: do we have fire extinguishers? Do we have the emergency triangles that you put on the road if you break down? Two of the police asked us for water because they were dehydrated. We are having a heatwave here and the temperature during the afternoon hits 40 Celsius. Luckily it is a dry heat, but it is exhausting. You drink and drink and don't have to go.

Anyway, I digress, we passed all the police checks and wound up at the city of Bulawayo. This city was one of Rhodesia's main cities for the white settlers and their businesses. But when Mugabi nationalized all of their farms and businesses the economy of the area collapsed and now it is one of the poorest areas of the country. Unemployment is at 88%!! We drove through the city and Timon told us to look at the colonial architecture but he didn't want to stop anywhere in the city. We stopped on the southern suburbs at a small plaza that had two groceries stores and a few shops. There were lots of older white people here and I asked Timon about that. He said when their businesses were taken from them, they were told to leave, but most of them had been born in Rhodesia and they had no home country to go to, so they bought houses in the safer suburban area. I have no idea how they survive. The grocery stores were upscale and were fully stocked with most of the food we would expect at home. I helped Enock with the grocery shopping for the next couple of days.

After having our lunch there we continued on to our new campground the Big Cave Camp in the Matobo Hills. We arrived about two and set up our tents again in the heat and then hid at the camp bar to get out of the sun.

Later when it cooled down I went for a walk to the main lodge. It was a short walk around a pile of huge boulders. The view from the top reminded me very much of Australia, in particular Wilson's Promotory.

Tonight, some of the group gave Enock a break from cooking and made chili with baked potatoes. It was quite good. Then we sat around the campfire, enjoyed a beer and had a briefing about tomorrow's activities. It promises to be a full day.