Zimbabwe Trip Diary Part 1: Victoria Falls, Kazuma Pan and Hwange
Zimbabwe Trip Diary Part 1: Victoria Falls, Kazuma Pan and Hwange
We were on our knees in the sand of a dry riverbed, shuffling forward one shuffle at a time. Then down onto our backsides, edging closer still. Two big male lions somewhere between ten and twenty metres in front of us. Eye contact the whole way in. Never, ever show them your back.
Behind us a guide with a loaded rifle, making dark jokes about which one of us could run the fastest.
That was our first afternoon at Mana Pools. I will get to how it happened in part two.
This is our trip diary from September 2025. Nineteen days, 2,297 kilometres, one hired Land Cruiser Troop Carrier, and a loop through Victoria Falls, Kazuma Pan, Hwange, Bulawayo, Matopos, Lions Den, Mana Pools and finally Harare. It is a day-by-day recount of where we went and what happened, not a guide to any of it.
The practical stuff lives in its own posts. There is a full write up on hiring a 4WD in Africa, covering the vehicle, the contract and what to ask before you book, and another on driving in Zimbabwe covering roads, roadblocks, tolls and fuel. Plus the gear we are glad we took with us. Location guides to Mana Pools and Kazuma Pan are on the way.
This one is just the story. It is part one, and long. Grab a coffee.
Trip at a glance
- When: September 2025, nineteen days of driving
- Who: the two of us, joined by friends for the Mana Pools leg
- Vehicle: hired 78 Series Toyota Land Cruiser Troop Carrier, 1HZ naturally aspirated straight six, Zimbabwe registered
- Distance: 2,297km, odometer 156,769 to 159,066
- Route: Victoria Falls, Kazuma Pan NP, Hwange NP, Bulawayo, Matopos, Lions Den, Mana Pools NP, Harare
- Nights: four Victoria Falls, two Kazuma Pan, one Robins Camp, two Kapula, two Bulawayo, one near Lions Den, six Mana Pools
- The good: a pride of more than a dozen lion on a buffalo kill, wild dogs on three separate days, roan at Kazuma, eleven giraffe at a waterhole, and two lions at twenty metres on foot
- The bad: 417km in nine hours and forty-five minutes (Hwange to Bulawayo)
Days 1 to 3: Victoria Falls, jet lag, and getting there before the buses
We left home on the Friday and landed at Victoria Falls about thirty hours later, via Perth and then South Africa. I am not going to relive the trip over. I will say that a decent sleeping tablet on a long haul flight is one of life’s great inventions.
The airport caught me out. I was not expecting something that big or that modern, and you no longer step off onto the tarmac into the middle of the afternoon heat. We hadn’t been to the Falls for a long time, so a lot had changed since 2012. It was hot, but the good kind. A dry heat you can stand around in wearing trousers, although I had shorts on the second I could get to my bag.
Customs was quick and the people were friendly (Zimbabweans are fantastic). Visas are USD 30 each for Australians, paid on arrival. If you are hopping across to Zambia as well, the KAZA UniVisa at USD 50 covers both.
Fifteen minutes into town, monkeys and baboons on the roadside, and everything bone dry. That last part matters more than it sounds. September is the back end of the dry season here, there is nothing left to eat or drink away from permanent water, and the game piles up around whatever is left. Dry is exactly what you want.
We stayed at an old bed and breakfast, which is about as Zimbabwean as a building gets. Slate tiles, red whitewashed walls, sprinklers ticking over on the lawn, high walls and an electric gate. Big private room with an ensuite, opening onto a shared balcony. Honesty bar. Cooked breakfasts. And enough flexibility to pack and prep a vehicle in the driveway, which turned out to matter.
Sadza and nyama* for dinner, eaten with our hands, first night back in seven years. It was excellent, and it entertained everyone around us.
We had been warned to watch out on the walk back, because buffalo wander the streets of Victoria Falls at night. We did not see one and were not especially keen to. We were in bed by seven.
* Sadza and nyama is the staple in Zimbabwe. Sadza is made from ground maize meal and when cooked properly is fluffy and white and eaten properly with your hands. Nyama is a shona word for meat. A western version of Sadza (although a bit different) would be polenta, not the same but similar.
The jet lag is real, so plan for it
Here is something I would tell anyone flying in from Australia. Do not put anything important in the first two days.
Thirty hours of travel caught up with both of us the moment we sat down with a drink. We slept ten hours that first night and still woke up flat. The second day I felt fresh at breakfast, and by mid morning it had gone again. Shayne could nap through it. I would lie down and simply not sleep, which is the worst of both worlds.
We had deliberately given ourselves four nights before the vehicle arrived and we needed all of them. If you fly in and start driving the next morning, you will be doing the hardest roads of your trip on the worst sleep of your trip. Do not.
Get to the Falls early
Alarms at five, driver at the gate at six, and this is the single best decision we made in Victoria Falls.
We tried Shayne’s expired Zimbabwean passport at the gate to get the resident rate. They were not having it, quite rightly, so we paid international like everyone else. That is USD 58 per person at the main gate on the current schedule, against a resident rate that is a small fraction of it. It stings. It is also one of the seven natural wonders of the world, so you pay it and get on with your day. This was one disadvantage of both immigrating just before we got our driver’s licence (no local photo ID) and not keeping our passports as it was just too difficult.
There was one other couple waiting when we walked in. That was it.
The sun was coming up over the Zambian side as we started along the walkways. Through the dust and the spray it was a huge red ball, and the light coming through it was as good as I have seen there. Cool air, no crowds, nobody in a single photo.
The noise is the thing nobody quite prepares you for. It is deafening, and the closer you get to the main section the wetter you get. Everything was clean and well kept. We walked right down to the viewpoint that looks at the bridge across to Zambia, then turned and ambled back, stopping at each viewpoint for a second look.
We finished at David Livingstone’s statue. He was the first European to see and document the falls, reaching them in November 1855, and he named them after Queen Victoria. Locally they had been known as Mosi-oa-Tunya, the smoke that thunders, for a very long time before he ever got there.
By ten past eight the buses were pulling in and people were filing through the gate in their hundreds. We had had the place almost to ourselves for two solid hours.
Go at six. That is the whole tip.
What we skipped, and what you probably should not
We did not do much else in Victoria Falls, and that is worth being upfront about, because there is a lot on offer.
Helicopter flights over the falls, sunset cruises on the Zambezi, and a long list of other things you can book from any desk in town. We have done them on previous trips, so this time we recovered from our jet lag and did a few other things we had not done before.
If it is your first time, do them. The chopper flight in particular gives you a completely different sense of what you are looking at, and a cruise on the Zambezi with a drink in your hand at sunset is a very easy way to spend an evening. Do not skip them because a returning Zimbabwean told you he skipped them.
What we did do was the vulture feeding at the Safari Lodge, which is free and takes twenty minutes.
The lodge is worth a look on its own. Big multi level building built of rock with enormous thatched roofs, sitting up on a kopje looking out over the national park. Nothing about it has changed in decades, and the bar has a view over the valley you could sit at all afternoon.
Just before one we were walked down and led in single file to some seating under shade. The guide gave a genuinely good talk about the pressure vulture numbers are under, then went out with a cooler box (esky) of scrap meat collected from restaurants around town. They came in as soon as he stepped out, marabou storks with them. We thought there were plenty. Apparently it was about a quarter of the usual crowd. In a few minutes there was nothing left but bone.
The smell is bad. Then again, I would smell too.
A red moon over the bridge, and a show I remembered differently
The Lookout Café that evening. It sits above the gorge looking straight down the Victoria Falls Bridge and it is stunning. You can see the rapids of the Zambezi at the bottom and the rock face is enormous. I had not appreciated the scale of that gorge on any previous trip.
A Zambezi Lager for me, a cold rosé for Shayne, and a table that took the lot in.
We had come for the full moon rising over the bridge and it was running late. We sat there wondering where it had got to until I spotted a faint red outline just above the bridge. It had been up a while, washed out by the light pollution coming off the Zambian side. Over a few minutes that outline filled in, and there it was. Big, red, sitting right on top of the Victoria Falls Bridge.
The other evening was The Boma, which I remembered from being a kid. You get greeted by dancers, handed a sarong, and dropped into what can only be described as sensory overload. Buffet with kudu, eland, impala, crocodile, bream and kapenta (a salty dry fish caught in Lake Kariba), open fires everywhere, smoke, singing, dancing and a lot of noise. And a witchdoctor looking to tell you your fortune.
I will be straight with you. I had been carrying a memory of that place from thirty years ago (when I was a kid) and it did not match. It felt commercial and the food was fine rather than good. I would not go back.
But that is a returning Zimbabwean talking, and it is not the review that matters. Every single person around us was having a ball, mostly Europeans on their first trip to Africa, and I could see exactly why. If it is your first time here, go. Kids will love it no matter what.
The best part is the end, and I say that without any sarcasm. Everyone gets handed a small drum and a bloke with more energy than the rest of the room combined gets a few hundred people playing roughly in time. Ten minutes of belting a drum is a superb release.
On the drive out we passed a buffalo grazing on the verge in the middle of town. So that was all true after all.
- Victoria Falls Bridge and the Gorge from the Lookout Cafe
- Dancing & singing at The Boma
- Warthog on a spit at The Boma
- Musicians playing the marimba
Day 4: Supplies, and the Troopy finally turns up
Not much sleep. I was quietly stressing about getting the food sorted and the vehicle actually arriving.
We had been pointed at where the locals shop, so that is where we started. A wholesale place for dry goods, which had some of what we wanted in sizes built for a family of nine. Fifty metres down the road were the butcher, the fruit and veg shop and the bottle store. Veggies, a few sauces, a slab of beer and a bottle of gin, and from the butcher there was not much beyond steak, bori (boerewors) and biltong.
Then we still needed the big supermarket for half the list, and the supermarket had everything.
Save yourself the morning. We spread it over four stops, saved a few dollars, and burned three hours doing it. Next time I will walk into the one supermarket and I am done in forty minutes. If you are collecting a vehicle in Victoria Falls and stocking up for a fortnight, that is my honest advice.
The handover
Four o’clock came and went. No vehicle.
I know African time is a genuine thing and I still cannot make my peace with it. By quarter past I had messaged the company, and five minutes later, before I had even read the reply, the bell rang at the gate.
It had been driven up from Bulawayo the day before. We got taken through the do’s and don’ts, what the roads are like, how to handle corrugations, all of it necessary if you have never driven here. Rental agreement signed again, USD 4,250 handed over in cash, and then out to the vehicle.
We had the Troopy rather than the wagon, which is what I wanted. More fuel, more water, more space, and a change from the 76 I drive at home.
The setup was basic but covered most of it. Dual ninety litre tanks, a decent fridge, a lithium second battery, plenty of 12V outlets, chairs, gas bottle and two burner stove, tools, a first aid kit, and cookware that had clearly done a lot of trips. A Front Runner roof rack carrying the same water tank I had just fitted to my own 76, a barn door table, and two rooftop tents.
We were shown how the tent goes up and comes down, which is easy enough but not fast. They also handed over a mobile phone with navigation loaded, a local number and a windscreen mount. Nobody had mentioned that in advance. It was old and slow so it did not matter, but it would have been nice to know before we sorted our own.
Two things caught us out. The pillows were small cushions, not pillows, and nobody had said a word about bringing pillows. We had been told to bring torches and sleeping bags and that was it. That gap was about to cost us.
The water tank was also not full, so I topped it up before we left.
We spent a solid hour packing, jamming the fridge and crates in as tight as they would go, because everything we had been told suggested the roads would shake loose anything that could move. They were right.
The full breakdown of what was supplied, what it cost and what I would ask for next time is all in the hire post.
- Clean Troopy at drop off in Victoria Falls
- Costa from Mana Pools 4x4 showing us the setup
- Rear of the clean Troopy before our trip
Day 5: The ninety minute drive that took six hours 218km, six hours behind the wheel
This was not the best way to the start this leg of the trip, and not one minute of it was the country’s fault.
First we had to buy bedding. No sleeping bags had appeared and there were no spare sheets to borrow, so into town we went. Two sheets, USD 50. Directions to a shop with blankets, one blanket, USD 37. Almost ninety US dollars for bedding that ended up not being warm enough. We should have planned this part a little better.
I had the right route and I threw it away
I had Kazuma Pan plotted on Tracks4Africa, which I had bought specifically for this trip.
Before we left, someone who had been there suggested a better way in. Get off the main road sooner, away from the trucks, maybe pick up a game drive on the way. Two hours, he reckoned. He showed me where to turn and which roads to avoid.
That advice was given in complete good faith by someone who had genuinely driven it. What none of us knew was that the road had changed.
We found the turn off five minutes out of Victoria Falls and were straight onto dirt with a car full of excitement. Two vehicles in the first quarter hour, then nothing. A couple of u-turns to stay on track, which is normal on a road you have never seen. The further in we went, the less used it looked.
An hour in we climbed a steep sandy hill that I should have locked the hubs for. At the top the track forked, and the branch we needed had not seen a vehicle in years. It dropped away on the far side, steep, washed out, thick sand.
In my own 4WD I would have driven it without thinking. In this one, on narrow tyres with two rooftop tents sitting up high, I was not confident. And be honest with yourself for a second: Kazuma is a popular location. There is no chance the locals are getting in this way.
I walked a bit of it and turned us around.
An hour and forty-five minutes of detours later we were back exactly where we had started, at nine in the morning, having achieved precisely nothing.
Four hours to cover 120 kilometres
We went back to the route I know gets there. Thirty minutes of bitumen, then off into the Matetsi Safari Area and onto gravel. This route was mapped based on another person we knew who visits Kazuma frequently, but for reference to my comments later, they were always coming in the opposite direction.
That road carries big trucks and the corrugations were something else. Twenty to fifty kilometres an hour, mostly thirty to forty, and none of it comfortable. Stock suspension, two tents on the roof, a full load, and a rattle from the back that never let up. You watch the map and you cannot see yourself moving while the clock keeps going.
Between the bedding, the wasted morning and the noise, we had both had enough. We can normally take a rough road on the chin. That day everything eventually became an irritation.
We eventually reached the Zimbabwe and Botswana border post at Pandamatenga. There are no signs to Kazuma anywhere, so I went and asked the gentleman operating the border post how you actually get there. His answer was to walk over, unlock a side gate next to the Botswana border gate, and wave us through. A dollar tip and we were away. I had no idea that was the process. Now you know.
Hoping we were nearly there, I asked how far. At least forty kilometres, he said.
It was just gone one. Four hours of driving, a bit over 120 kilometres, an average of 30km/h.
That last stretch was far better because no trucks use it. It runs the border line and we made Kazuma Pan just before two.
- I think we took a wrong turn!
- Bumpy gravel road between Hwange and Kazuma Pan
- Pandamatenga border post between Zimbabwe & Botswana
- Checking in at the Kazuma Pan Parks office
And the parks office is 24km the wrong way
We drove straight past our campsite, because you have to report to the parks office first and it sits at the far end of the park, twenty four kilometres away. A fifty kilometre round trip on top of everything else, with no real entrance where we came in.
There was game at least. Elephant, tsessebe, zebra and giraffe, and plenty of it. But we had to keep moving, and eventually it thinned out and we just drove.
We were lucky at the office in that we were expected, through friends who knew the parks manager. You cannot plan for that, so budget on the gazetted international rates. Kazuma is USD 12 per person per night at the accommodated rate, plus the vehicle fee. The Corner Pan Platform is charged per site rather than per head on the international schedule, currently USD 235 a night for up to six people, which changes the maths a lot depending on how many of you there are.
Then I made the mistake of asking whether there was another way in.
Of course there was. A new road built about a year earlier that comes in right beside the parks office. I asked him to show me, and it was the exact road Tracks4Africa had recommended. The one I had been talked out of.
We did not drive it, so I am not going to tell you what it is like. What I can tell you is that it leaves the Victoria Falls to Bulawayo road past the airport, there are two turn offs and both feed onto the same road in, and that we could have been standing in that office ninety minutes after leaving Victoria Falls. Hopefully this helps, as all maps we could find of Kazuma Pan show the entrance by the parks office as not accessible, but now they are.
Instead it was three in the afternoon and we had been driving for six hours. Turn around, drive another 24 kms, and we got to camp at four.
The actual lesson
The obvious takeaway is do not trust local advice, and that is the wrong lesson. The bloke who sent us that way had driven it and was trying to do us a favour. He just did not know it had changed.
The real lesson is two things, and they have stuck with me since.
Ask when someone last drove a road, not whether they know it.
And do not throw away a mapped route without a concrete reason. My app had it right from the start and I overruled it on the strength of two separate conversations. After making the error on the first conversation, I knew the second recommended route was going to get us there, as they regularly visit. So we went with a guaranteed route not knowing the newer route that is far quicker from Victoria Falls. Unfortunately there is limited information on Kazuma Pan and the information we could find was dated, so hopefully this helps someone out.
Corner Pan Platform, which fixed everything
The camp was superb, and it was a genuine shame we now had one full day there instead of the planned two.
It is called the Platform because that is what it is. Two storeys, looking straight out over the main water source at Kazuma. Upstairs is a covered deck with proper directors’ chairs and a bar height table, plus steel beds and mattresses so you can sleep up there instead of putting the tent up. That is exactly what we did. Downstairs there is a sink and a separate room with a toilet and a cold shower. The whole thing is wrapped in steel mesh and bar, so the breeze comes through and the game stays out. In front of it a small trough runs all day off a solar pump, with the overflow trickling down into the pan.
We grabbed a drink and sat watching elephant directly in front of us, Egyptian geese working the edges, and then a very good sunset.
- Corner Pan Platform Hide campsite at Kazuma Pan
- Firepit area at Corner Pan Platform Hide
- Lower level sink, toilet and shower area
- Upper level bedding
The worst steak I have ever eaten
Once it was dark I got a fire going. The park rangers leave you with a good stock of the best firewood you will find. Mopani makes superb coals once it takes, and I cooked the rump steaks we had bought in Victoria Falls with olive oil, salt and pepper (nothing else ever required for a good steak). Elephants moved around me the entire time I was cooking, which is a very good argument for having a fire.
The plates did not look clean, so everything got washed again before we ate.
Then we sat down and the steak was inedible. Genuinely the toughest meat I have ever put in my mouth. That is a shame and not our usual experience with Zimbabwean beef. Every other steak on this trip was fantastic and exactly what we expected.
Ask which butcher. Everyone we spoke to afterwards named the same shop in town (The Butchers Daughter). We had not thought to ask, and we paid for it for the next four days.
It was cold that night. Full tracksuits, beanies, and the two thinnest blankets ever manufactured. The wind, the elephants and the geese carried on until dawn, which was great (the animals not the wind). It was the cold that got us.
Day 6: A full day at the hide 0kms
Awake before sunrise and neither of us had slept well, between the cold and the cushions. My neck had given me a headache. Shayne did better.
Nothing at the pan that early, which surprised me after the racket all night. So the kettle went on and I got the coffee going. Coarse grind into the plunger with the boiled water on top to sit and brew, fine grind into the AeroPress for something to drink while it does. Condensed milk in both, rusks for dunking, sunrise to watch. This is why I carry a double insulated plunger. It will brew as long as you like and never go cold.
After the day before, the plan was simple. Do not leave.
A revolving door
It started with the Egyptian geese and the smaller birds (Hamerkops mostly), and then as the sun came up the game began filing in.
Zebra first, and a lot of them, playing, rolling in the dirt and making that ridiculous noise they make. Then common tsessebe, with a fair bit of biffo going on between them. Warthog, giraffe, impala, kudu, elephant and jackal.
Roan came down too, and that is worth going out of your way for. Kazuma is one of very few places in Zimbabwe you will see them. There are also hippo living in the small pan and one crocodile.
The giraffe were the pick of it. We counted a herd of eleven coming down to drink, and they are our favourite animal to sit and watch by a long way.
That was the day. We sat, we watched, we did nothing else at all, and it was fantastic. Easily the best day so far, and it put the frustrations of the day before somewhere in the distance. I could have stayed three more.
- Hamerkops having some fun
- Tsessebe having a drink
- Nervous jackal at Kazuma Pan
- Revolving door of wildlife all day
- Roan antelope
- Love giraffe drinking
- An elephant having some fun chasing impala
- Herd of elephant drinking
The fire that lit itself
Getting the fire going was easy this time. The mopani coals from the night before were still hot underneath, so a handful of dry grass and a poke and it was away. Worth knowing. That wood holds heat for a ridiculous length of time.
Bori over the coals and one of the packed pasta packs we had brought from home. Those things earned their space ten times over. They pack down to nothing, cook in ten minutes and turn a bit of meat into an actual meal.
Day 7: Into Hwange, and a lion in a riverbed 114km including a game drive
The Pandamatenga gate first, where we tooted the horn as instructed and the same bloke ambled down to open up. He asked for the same dollar he had got on the way in, which he was getting anyway.
That was the good part of the road. What followed was a few hours of slow, rough, heavily corrugated going.
Two hours in we reached the Hwange National Park entrance, a big thatched structure with a boom gate that I am fairly sure has been standing there forty odd years, like a lot of the infrastructure in the country. Sign in, boom up, through.
Another twenty kilometres of ordinary road and we pulled into Robins Camp just after midday. Seventy eight kilometres from Kazuma in a little over three hours. That is an average of 26km/h, and it is a number worth sitting with if you are planning a Zimbabwe itinerary by looking at a map.
- Far better road between Pandamatenga border post and Kazuma Pan
- Gravel road between Hwange and Kazuma Pan
- Approaching boom gate at Hwange National Park
A part of Hwange we had never seen
We have been to Hwange a few times over the years, and never to this part of it.
That was the whole point of routing the trip this way. It would have been easier to go back to the areas we knew, and we would have seen plenty. Instead we ended up on roads we had never driven, at waterholes we had never sat at, and it was one of the better calls of the trip.
If you have been somewhere before, go back to a different corner of it. Hwange is enormous and the sections do not feel like the same national park.
Robins Camp
We checked in at reception, then drove round to the parks office to pay conservation fees. Neither of us holds a current Zimbabwean ID, so international rates. On the current gazetted schedule Hwange is USD 12 per person per night at the accommodated rate, which is what you pay if you are camping, plus the vehicle fee. Our vehicle was Zimbabwe registered, which saves you the foreign vehicle rate, though on the current schedule that is a couple of dollars a day. A small bonus, not a reason to hire in country.
Robins itself is great. Very colonial, well maintained, a lovely pool, a proper restaurant, nice furnished rooms if you aren’t camping, and a classic old bush pub called the Hyena Bar. They cook one dish per meal, so you eat whatever is on. Ours was lasagne at USD 10 a head and it was good. Dinner was three courses for USD 15 each, which out there is remarkable.
We took site 18. One thing worth knowing, and I have no idea whether it is official: there are 240V power points near the campsites even though it sells as a non powered site. I used one the next morning for the Starlink.
Go and look at the sightings map at reception, and photograph it. I asked the barman where to go and he said Big Toms and Little Toms, and pointed me at the map. It had several lion sightings on it and a cheetah. We were out the gate by half two on the strength of it.
Sixty metres, perfect light
The roads through this section were noticeably better than anything we had driven in two days, which I suspect comes down to the private camps maintaining them.
Big male kudu almost straight away. Then a herd of elephant with calves that mock charged us several times, ears out, trumpeting, dust everywhere. I reversed, let them cross, and carried on once they settled.
Big Toms has an elevated hide over a bore fed waterhole with a good breeze coming through it. We sat and watched elephant of every size drinking, shoving each other about and generally carrying on. A few zebra grazing out the back. Then a lone old dagga boy (buffalo) trotted in, much to the elephants’ disgust, and they hassled the poor thing relentlessly. He could not have cared less and waded straight in until only his head was showing.
- Male kudu just outside Robins Camp
- This is my road mate!
- Lean on me...
- Tired trunk needs a rest
- Buffalo cooling off before its demise
A few minutes after leaving we came to a dry riverbed crossing. I was in first gear, easing over the ruts, when Shayne said one word very quietly.
“Lion.”
I stopped dead. Sixty metres up the riverbed stood an enormous male, lit up perfectly by the afternoon sun. Engine off, camera up, and I got the photos I had been hoping to get for years. He did not care that we were there. He walked slowly across the road behind us and into the long grass, and I turned around quietly and followed him until he was gone.
Two minutes either side of that and we drive straight past and never know.
That is the whole thing, really. You put in the hours on terrible roads for days, and every so often it hands you something.
Back at camp after five and I set the rooftop tent up for the first time. It went up quicker than I expected. Shayne made the bed with our expensive rubbish from Victoria Falls, we watched the sunset with a drink, had proper hot showers at the campsite ablutions, a couple drinks at the Hyena Bar and a very good three course dinner.
- Setting up the roof top tent
- Setting up the roof top tent
- Rear of the Troopy and roof top tent setup
Day 8: The whole pride 74km
Up after seven, which was a little too late. Cold in the early hours and my hips let me know all about it. I am too old for a thin mattress and two thin blankets. A decent sleeping bag from home would have sorted both the cold and the padding, oh well. That is going in next time.
Tent packed before it got hot, Starlink up off the 240V point, calls home, and we were away just after nine.
Big Toms, empty
After the lion, it seemed rude not to do that loop again on the way out.
Little Toms was quiet. On the way over we found a group of ostrich, all female by the brown colouring where the males are black. That was Shayne’s knowledge, not mine. We had not seen ostrich in years.
Big Toms was stone dead. Full waterhole, no customers, the exact opposite of the afternoon before. A couple of birds of prey and some vultures a long way off and that was your lot.
We slowed at the riverbed crossing. Nothing.
Then, not far past it, a vehicle stopped beside a small waterhole. And under a big tree on the far side, lion. Lots of lion and vultures circling.
Two hours we will never get back, and would not want to
We eased past the other vehicle, pulled up with a clear view and switched off.
It was the big male from the day before and his entire pride. We sat and counted them. At least six cubs of wildly different ages and sizes. Another five or six lionesses. And him.
We have never seen a pride that size, and I doubt we will again.
Off to one side lay a ribcage, and then a skull and a set of horns, so we knew it had been a buffalo. There was not much left beyond bone, hair and horn. We had a fair idea it was the lone dagga boy we had watched wallowing at Big Toms the previous afternoon. Probably.
A bit further on, several hundred vultures were going at each other over the scraps, and a jackal trotted off with most of a buffalo leg.
We sat there for two hours and could have done another two.
Two other lions came in through the scrub from behind, hesitated, and thought better of it the moment the male lifted his head and looked at them. He then got up, walked to where they had been, and settled under a small bush a bit further out where you would never have picked him if you had not watched him go. A single giraffe started making its way toward the water, took one long look at the situation, and left promptly.
The cubs played, drank, and wandered back to the carcass every so often to check whether anything had reappeared. At one point one of them threw a buffalo leg in the air.
- Tired pride after a big feed that night
- Cubs relaxing by the water
- I don't think you are welcome here!
- Yeah, maybe I will go this way!
Two wrong turns and a road that got worse
We eventually pulled ourselves away, mostly because nobody knew what the road to the next camp was like. Bad, was the working assumption. Correct.
First a rocky track that was meant to lead through to Crocodile Pools, blocked by a broken down truck sitting square across a bridge. Turn around.
Then, having spent the Kazuma day learning not to second guess the mapping, I followed the recommended route past a strange half broken sign reading “no entry”. Twenty minutes later the track had narrowed and turned rocky and I turned around again. So much for the lesson. Read the sign mate!
Back on the correct road, the corrugations came back, with rain washouts wherever it was not corrugated. Slow, rough, and no game to take your mind off it. The bush beside the road was thick so seeing anything was near impossible. We got to Kapula a little after three.
Day 9: A king bed, and rescuing the worst steak in Zimbabwe 38km
I had booked a recently built camp there called Jackalberry, and I had not properly explained it to Shayne. I thought I had. She was expecting something along the lines of the platform at Kazuma Pan.
It is not the platform at Kazuma. It is a raised private tented camp with a king size bed, a big ensuite, an outdoor shower and bath, an outdoor kitchen and a firepit. Somebody came and laid and lit our fire before dark. After three nights of cold and cushions this was quite the adjustment.
Shayne had a hot bath outside under the stars. We went to bed on a soft mattress with actual pillows and a duvet, and slept like the dead. There is a full review of Kapula and Jackalberry coming separately, with what it costs and the honest downsides.
Almost every track says private
We took the next day easy, with a big drive to Bulawayo coming. Elephant, kudu and warthog were in front of camp while we sat with coffee, which is a fair way to start.
The road was bad, so we took our time and looked for game. Not a lot beyond zebra and impala. Every track I had planned on taking turned out to be signed private, no entry, which left us on the main one whether we liked it or not.
Shumba Pan hide was already full when we got there, so we carried on. A side track with no private sign looked far nicer to drive, so we took it. Better road, less game. One warthog and a distant ostrich. It looped us back to the hide, now empty, with a few elephant drinking.
On the way back we found a secretary bird stomping the daylights out of whatever it had cornered, which was excellent. I cannot remember ever seeing one before.
We pushed on to Masuma Dam and got there just after twelve, which is good timing for lunch. There is a cracking viewing spot above the dam under a thatch and stone structure, and we sat and ate sandwiches watching baboons, giraffe, impala, hippo, kudu and crocodile. Three buffalo on the way in as well.
- Large secretary bird up to something
- Elephants drinking and cooling off
- Lookout over Masuma Dam
- Baby baboon up to mischief
Twenty minutes with the back of a knife
Which brings us back to the leftover steak from Kazuma.
I had worked out there were two ways to make that meat chewable. Slow cook it into a curry or a stew, or crumb it. We only had what we needed for crumbing, so I spent the late afternoon on a plan while watching the game infront of our camp.
I had brought my toaster, so four slices of stale bread went in and came out as the crumb. I trimmed every scrap of fat off the rump steaks and then beat them senseless for a solid twenty minutes with the back of the knife I had just used to trim them. There was self raising flour on board for making bread at some point, so a couple of cups went into a sealable bag and each steak got floured. Shayne broke the toast up and I seasoned it with salt and pepper, because salt and pepper was all we had. Milk into a bowl, floured steak into the milk, then into the crumb.
Gem squash that needed using went into boiling water for ten minutes, and the steaks got about ten minutes in the pan.
We ate it by the fire and it was superb. The best meal of the trip to that point, made from the worst meat of the trip. Sometimes the camp kitchen wins.
I will write that up properly as a recipe, because twenty minutes with the back of a knife will rescue almost anything.
Early night. The next day was the one everybody had been warning me about.
- View from Jackalberry Camp
- Saving our steak
- Homemade crumb with bread, flour, salt and pepper
- Pan fried crumbed steak and gem squash
You can read part 2 of this trip diary here.
For more information on hiring a 4WD in Africa for a self drive safari, read our post here.
To read more about the roads in Zimbabwe and what to expect, read it here.
To find out more about the gear we packed, you can read it here.
Thanks for reading.
The thoughts of Peter.
