Next day it was the seven-hour trip down to Livingstone and called on Alan & Oriel to see if they had a free room or place for a tent. But their place was bedlam with the school party still there and an ablution block that was still under construction - as a result everybody was having to use the showers in the house and every time they did this Oriel's cooker went off. So instead it was a night's camping at Jolly Boys where I just managed to squeeze in my tent into the last free bit of lawn. The next day before heading across the Zambezi bridge to Zimbabwe, I called in to see Nick at Foley's to make sure that he had saved my failed battery so I could eventually take it back to the UK to see if I could get my money back from Optima! I reassured him that the Disco had been working fine apart from the other battery.
I should really learn to keep my mouth shut! After a fairly painless (but expensive) & friendly session through the Zim customs and immigration, I was driving up the hill into town and a knocking started from under the Disco. I thought: another UJ has gone on the prop shaft - no problem, I've two spares in the back! Luckily I came across a local Landy driver and he gave me directions to a bloke who specialised in their repair. He had a crawl underneath and pronounced that it was the 'pre-tensioned' pinion in the transfer box. We had a look in my workshop manual to see how much tension was needed but it was silent on this particular issue. Whilst I booked into the Sprayview Hotel, he promised to ring a mate in Bulawayo to see what he knew. On my return he said he had not been able to find anything out yet and, when I pushed him for an opinion, he said the Disco might become undriveable at any stage and could well not last the planned trip down to the Hwange National Park.
Now this was desperate news as Michele was flying in from Jo'berg the following day for a few days in the National Park with me. It was going to be unfair for her to come all this way to join me just to sit around town or to be stranded in the middle of the bush if we broke down. Luckily, I saw a hire company's site as I drove back to the hotel and went in to talk to them the new twincab backie they had for hire. I then went away to play Monopoly money in the local bank changing about £40 for 45 million Zim $s - about three inches of notes! The country has now reached the sad stage where it costs more to print bank notes than they are actually worth. Consequently, they started printing 'promissory notes' on cheaper paper but these have an expiry date.
The next morning I was able to negotiate a decent discount by paying in US$ but was still going to know a big hole in my budget. So whilst they sorted out the paperwork I risked the Disco out to the airport to pick up Michele. Back at the hire place we spent 30 minutes transferring all the camping and cooking stuff across and then headed South towards Hwange. For a well-populated country, the roads were virtually deserted and the only place where you saw any number of vehicles was at the frequent roadblocks. Whilst the locals seemed to be having a hard time with the police officers, we were waved on having shown my driving licence, passport, insurance certificate and proof that I had paid my Carbon Tax. The latter seems to be a fuel related tax although some travellers seem to think that it pays for the Government's carbon paper supplies.
The road skirted around the town of Hwange - the country's largest coal mine is there - and, after another hour or so, we turned off down the dead straight road to the National Park's Main Camp. This was just outside the Park's gate and surrounded by the remains of a high wire-link fence. It had a couple of dozen small bungalows and a large area for camping - this had dedicated area for caravans and many pitches for tents. However, as we were the only ones there, we had the pick of them all and after a short debate chose one at the back, close to the fence and convenient to the ablution block. Whilst we were setting up, one of the staff came across to light a fire under the donkey - this is basically a fire under a boiler/oil drum which generates hot water. The camp also had a small shop which last time I visited had a good selection of basics for people self-catering/camping but this time it had a small collection of very odd items: a few cans of jam; firelighters; a few small bottles of local whisky and some aspirin.
The next morning we headed into the Park to see what we could see. It wasn't much - the game was very sparse and even sitting at a couple of waterholes didn't produce much: a few Crocs, a couple of nervous Giraffes and a few bustling Warthogs - even the birds seemed to be in hiding. Driving around produced a few more specimens: Impala, a few small groups of skittish Elephants and, surprisingly, quite a few Sable. I had hoped to camp at one of the waterholes where you could sleep on the platform or in its hide but the ranger on Reception duty had not been able to oblige. He said that it was no longer possible as other visitors had complained when they had arrived at a waterhole and found the over-nighters still asleep!
As a compromise, we were allowed to stay at one of the picnic sites. This was an area in the middle of the bush surrounded by a dilapidated chain link fence with gates that seemed to be defying gravity as they seemed to have very little means of support. There were a few thatched picnic areas with a table and benches around the edge - you needed to have telescopic arms to reach the table when seated. In addition there was a small ablution block and a couple of small rooms for those without a tent. The area was immaculately kept by to girls and a scout who lived on site. They were very pleased to have the newspapers and magazines with which we had finished. There was very little for them to do given the lack of visitors to the Park - whilst we were in residence only one other vehicle arrived and that was only a brief stop to use the toilets.
During the night we heard Lion not far from the camp and as soon as the gate was opened we set off to see if we could find them. Eventually, we came across a single female hidden in the grass a couple of miles away but there was no sign of any other: she may have been calling in the night to re-establish contact with the rest of her family. Most of the afternoon we were content to sit on a couple of platforms overlooking waterholes. We had occasional company from animals and other visitors but on the whole it was a quiet day. One visitor was a young French girl who was studying Zebra - initially she was asking where and when we had seen them but we got chatting and she showed us her identification book with pictures of dozens of Zebras she was able to individually identify by their stripe patterns - each being unique. She said that back home she was working with some computer experts to adapt fingerprint recognition software for Zebra stripes.
All too soon it was time for Michele to go back to SA and for me to head back home.So the Disco was left in Nick’s custody until next year and for me to place myself back in BA’s hands!
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