Day 31: Chizarira NP – Kariba

Somehow a "used" day today. One that we didn't really want anymore.

Although: The night was wonderful, quiet and starry.

This morning, however, we noticed that our right shock absorber was really oily. Either the really bad roads of the last few days have done it in or we haven't taken care of it for too long. Or both.

So next we need a place where we have a network and can communicate, so we're not going to the Matusadona NP but straight to Kariba.

Not too bad, as we don't know how much water the lake still has and whether the somewhat arduous route to a lagoon spot is worth it.

No matter how you look at it, we have 439 km ahead of us today, and that on some of the abysmally bad tracks. First rocky and potholed alternating with sand, then corrugated alternating with clay dust. At the very end, tarmac with lots of deep potholes and lots of trucks crossing the border to Zambia. We drive through wonderful landscapes, see mountains on the horizon, and hardly notice them because we have to concentrate so much on the road. We drive through the land of the Tonga and Shona, the former were driven from their lands by the construction of the Kariba reservoir in the 1950s. Some of the round hut villages are lovingly maintained, others are littered and neglected, and there is also a rapid increase in child begging. People walk, at best they have a bicycle, very rarely do we see small motorbikes and even more rarely private cars. All in all, the area is too densely populated to find a wild camp. It takes us almost 11 hours and we arrive in Kariba with the last bit of dusk. Tired, exhausted, on the road for too long, no breaks, no fun... As our travel guide (Hupe-Verlag) says: grueling for the driver and the vehicle.

An interesting anecdote of the day: the tsetse fly control at the Sanyati River with a net and poison spray. We had already seen some black and blue cloths in the forests – they are soaked in poison and since tsetse flies obviously like these colors, they die this way.

The place in Kariba (Lomagundi Lakeside Association) is occupied by South Africans. We sneak in between them, stuff ourselves with a burger in the restaurant and fall into bed in temperatures still just under 30 degrees.

Btw: A year ago today we embarked on this adventure and set off from Hamburg!