Our first stop of the morning was Hwange National Park. We had heard something about the park not allowing motorbikes, but we imagined part of it might be open to us, or, at the very least, we could hitchhike in as we had done at Etosha. But, upon our arrival, Ken, the gatekeeper, informed us that we were forbidden to access any part of the park and, perusing through the logbooks, it seemed extremely unlikely that many tourists would be coming through anytime soon. Our only option seemed to be to pay $35 for a short game drive, and that was in addition to the $20 park entry fee. We told Ken this was too much; he thought for a bit and eventually came up with the alternative that we could 'only' pay the $20 admission fee and he would drive us a few kilometers to the park office where we could see the hotel; this was a steal in his opinion. It seems likely that Zimbabwean park rangers work on commission.
We drove onward to something that was marked on the map as Halfway House National Monument. There we found a lodge and bar, but no one who had any idea where the monument might be. In Lusane, we got some delicious sadza and beef, coupled with a Fanta, for $2. We discovered that the petrol station listed on the map was dry and had to pay $2/liter for blackmarket gas. After spotting the umpteenth adorable kid hoisting a watermelon over his head, we finally gave in and shelled out the 5R - even though we had just eaten not half an hour before; I am of the opinion that watermelon is one of those foods that can be enjoyed regardless of how full you are, but Matt felt differently and so found a way to integrate it into his already precarious packing strategy.
With a million people, Bulawayo was the by far the biggest city we had seen since Cape Town. Traffic was heavy, and was made all the more interesting by the fact that most of the lights were malfunctioning. We stopped by a massive street market which had tons of dirt cheap fruits and veggies, including avocados for 2R. We set up camp in the yard of a hostel for $10 each and cooked a dinner of pasta and ox-tail flavored soy chunks; Matt nixed the idea of adding the dried caterpillars I had picked up in the market earlier that day.
Matopos is a National Park south of the city that promises cool rock formations, leopards and rhinos. Once again it seemed we wouldn't be able to access it with bikes, so the previous night, we had spoke with a man by the name of Mike, who was staying at our hostel, about the possibility of going with him in his jeep the following morning. He was amenable to the idea and we were supposed to meet him at a bar for drinks and to discuss specifics. This never happened and so we didn't realize that we would have needed to be ready at 6am for his pre-dawn departure. I walked across town to catch 6:30AM Mass in the cathedral; the assembly consisted of me and two dozen nuns.
We decided to set out on our bikes and figure everything out upon arriving at the gate. Matt's front tire was now going flat in only eight hours and he had to zip around town to four different garages to find air. In the process, he misjudged who had right of way at one of the many malfunctioning stoplights, swerved to avoid a crash and wiped out. Other than a broken headlight casing and a cracked mirror, he came out remarkably unscathed.
At the entrance, the ranger informed me that even the eastern side of the park, where there were zero animals, was off limits to motorbikes (apparently because our 150cc engines would generate too much noise), but he would make an exception and let me ride a short paved circuit if I paid the $15 entry fee and an additional $10 for the bike. The sole attraction in this section, a cave with paintings, was owned by a separate concession and would cost $10 extra. After reviewing our options, we decided to continue down the road and attempt to sneak into a different cave which was a 3km hike off the public highway and had lots of drawings.
Arriving at the gate to the Bambata Cave trail, we found no one and resolved to just ride our bikes to the top. As we awkwardly tried to raise the gate and push each of the bikes through, a guard appeared and asked for our receipt. Since we had nothing of the sort, we had to go another kilometer down the road to the game park entrance. At this gate, we found Mike signing in, preparing to drive through that section; we quickly stashed our bikes in the bushes, paid the admission fee and jumped in his jeep.
The park had dozens of kilometers of 4wd roads. We never actually spotted any animals besides a loan giraffe and some hippos, but a car that followed close behind picked out a leopard that we had apparently missed. We stopped at a watering hole for a good two hours; Mike smoked half a pack of cigarettes while we watched the sun sink further and further in the sky.
We got back to our bikes an hour before sunset and raced back to the cave trail. The guard suggested that it was probably too late to make it to the cave and back before dark, and we reluctantly agreed. We took off towards town, racing down the single-lane road at 80kph, intent on getting back before dark so we would have no need to rely on our anemic headlights. This was awesome fun, as the road was incredibly windy and scenic, and there was tons of traffic coming from the other direction that needed dodging. In order for two cars to pass each other on a road such as this, it is necessary for at least one to pull onto the sandy shoulder, but since there's a six-inch dropoff, no one likes to do this, and a tense game of chicken begins every time a new vehicle pulls around the corner. Since I was the smallest thing on the road, it was universally assumed that I would pull onto the shoulder, and while Matt did this each time, I was considerably less comfortable with sand, and so I just drove at full speed towards the grill of each oncoming truck and van, trying to make myself look as hefty as possible so as to convince the driver that I would in fact leave a very nasty and expensive dent.
At one point on the ride back, I spied some big rocks that I reasoned would make an excellent spot to climb and watch the sunset. This split-second distraction that this thought provided caused me to momentarily forget about the upcoming turn and drop off onto the shoulder; as I hit the deep sand, I panicked and slammed on the brakes. This led my bike to slide sideways and me to take a flying somersault into the sand some six feet ahead. Miraculously, I came out of it with only a few abrasions and some new holes in my jeans. The bike was another story; the handlebars were twisted, the gear box was shattered and just barely hanging on by the ignition column, the headlight and casing were destroyed, the tachometer cable (my only remaining method for guessing my speed) snapped and the gear lever was twisted onto the foot peg. Somehow it still started, and once we bent the shifter back into place, I could even change gears. When we reached the police checkpoint, the officer just waved us through as if my bike were actually somewhere close to roadworthy.
After several very sketchy kilometers with no headlights on the dark city streets, we dumped our struggling bikes at the hostel and went to find food. Though it was seven on a Saturday, the place was largely empty and nothing really jumped out at us. We eventually found a hair salon that seemed to be one of the few open businesses around and asked there about restaurants. The assembled women jovially discussed this for a bit and then one of the patrons led us through a backdoor and through a series of maintenance tunnels and back alleys which eventually fed into another hair salon (I can't imagine the circumstances that led to the construction of secret passageways to connect the city's network of hair salons). From there, she pointed in the direction of a club that apparently served excellent food, as well as raucous music and dancing.
We went to the club and talked to some of the assembled youths; they seemed like a fun group but given our level of fatigue, we had to opt for something a little more low key. Nearby was "Dickie's Traditional Foods." It was adorned with full-size dioramas of primitives hunting animals, and it certainly appeared to be something of a tourist establishment, but was completely packed with locals. It had a menu a mile long that no one had bothered to write down, so the waitress would take ten minutes to recite it as if it were a piece of epic poetry. We ordered sadza, kudu chunks and greens with peanut butter. We started to walk back along the increasingly quiet, unlit streets, got propositioned by some prostitutes and drug dealers, and finally decided to shell out the $2 for a cab ride.
We putzed around town all morning and didn't get on the road until after noon. A few kilometers down the road, we came to an animal orphanage, and since we were at risk of arriving in the daylight if we pressed on, we figured we had better stop for a bit. The orphanage had seen better days and many of the cages were overgrown and several of the fences had doors hanging off the hinges; it was rather reminiscent of Jurassic Park after things had gone downhill. There were still a few leopards and some monkeys that closely resembled Dobby the House Elf. We met a kid from Harare who was applying to the computer science departments at MIT and several other Ivy League schools; apparently there is stiff competition for such spots, with an average of two-hundred Zimbabweans applying for a single space. He tried not to be too patronizing when I told him I had graduated from the UF CS department.
When the sun set, we still had thirty kilometers along a backcountry road to reach the campground at Great Zimbabwe. I had only running lights remaining and Matt had a loose connection which caused his headlight to flicker constantly. Progress was slow. With no way to see the sign, we passed right by the park entrance, but fortunately a guy in a pickup, guessing our intent, pulled to a stop right in front of us and informed us of our error. We pulled into the campground and some random girl with a flashlight immediately found us and took us to the ranger's station to get registered for our $5/person campsite which sat only a few hundred meters from the ruins. I considered going on a midnight romp through the complex, but opted to sleep instead.
I was up before dawn and at the gate to the ruins at the appointed 6am opening time. The guards had just arrived, so I could no longer just walk through unimpeded and was advised to go buy a ticket. No student discounts were offered and my Matopos ticket from the previous day didn't transfer, so I had to shell out another $15; however I was assured that, as long as I never left the property, I could visit the ruins for up to 21 consecutive days - I thought it a veritable shame that this didn't better fit our schedule. Returning to the gate, the guards asked if I had my ticket, and when I responded in the affirmative, they waved me through; never was it verified that I was in fact in possession of said ticket.
I climbed up into the hilltop ruins, clambering up giant boulders, and playing mind games with the baboons that were presently doing the same. Never during my two-hour exploration of the site did I encounter a single other tourist. While the scenery was not as spectacular as Macchu Picchu, or the buildings as ornate, here was a site with zero fanfare, a reasonable admission price, and a chance to watch a fantastic sunrise aside a handful of laconic monkeys, without the fear that a fleet of tour busses might abruptly disgorge six-hundred geriatric Asians all over my solitude.
Back at camp, we made scrambled eggs and okra, then set out on another superbly fun and scenic road along Lake Kyle. Many a time we considered stopping at a random village, introducing ourselves, dropping off our stuff, and spending the rest of the day scrambling over the endless sea of rock that beckoned us at every turn. A star on our map and a highway sign led us to believe there was a cave of some interest 8km down a gravel side road. There was no further signage, so once the indicated distance had passed we just started asking random villagers. We wandered across a few farms and met Pete, who had the previous year bought several acres of farming land in a stunning valley, a nice brick hut, and a shed for the grand sum of $250. 'Zimbabwean farmer' was suddenly a rather appealing and very realizable career path. Pete directed us to return to a point a few kilometers back and ask someone else. When we believed we had arrived at the prescribed point, we found Prince, a youth from Harare who claimed to know the caves. He and his two young cousins guided us on a mile hike up the road to a boulder pile, where he directed us to an overhang that contained a handful of pretty standard bushman paintings. We had our suspicions whether this was actually the advertised cave, but we gave him a $2 tip anyway and returned to the highway.
We were determined to stay in a village and so pushed right on past the town of Birchenough Bridge and up into the mountains. Dusk approached and we had yet to encounter a single quaint, traditional village; we stopped at a line of three bottle shops with a crowd of people out front to ask for advice. Not surprisingly, most of the men were reasonably wasted and offered little in the way of constructive input; one ranted about how much he hated Americans and the others either assured us that our plan was 100% safe and we should not hesitate to continue on and approach the next village we spotted, or told us that the idea was ludicrously stupid and insisted that we return to the town immediately and get a room at the hotel. When a non-inebriated guy in a pickup truck pulled up and strongly advised us to return to the lodge, we reluctantly assented and returned back down the mountain with little more than the light of the moon to guide us. The hotel was under construction and lacked certain amenities to which we had become accustomed - like running water and electricity - but for $5 each, they let us set up our tent on the lawn next to the empty pool.
