Our days in Zimbabwe are drawing to a close. Time to start ticking off any last
to-dos! One of those was to visit
Gonarezhou National Park in southern Zimbabwe.
It’s an 8+ hour trek from Harare, so we needed several days to be able
to make the trip and have time to enjoy it.
Since Good Friday and Easter Monday are holidays here, that long Easter
weekend seemed to be an opportune time.
So we loaded up the car with all sorts of supplies and joined 6 friends
to head to a self-catering camp for a few nights.
We got lots of rain here from January to March, so the park was green
and lush, which made the views stunning… but the wildlife pretty hard to
spot. The Save (SAH-vay) River passes
through the park, and the rains also meant the water levels were pretty high
and the rapids and falls were paying off.
We hiked out to see the falls our first day, and they did not
disappoint.
 |
| A view of the falls on the Save River. |
We filled the rest of our days with some game drives and a trip out to
see the “gorge” – a huge sandstone cliff along the river that is kind of the showcase
of the park. We also did our fair share
of eating and drinking too… seems whenever we’ve gone on self-catered trips
with friends, there has never been a shortage of either.
 |
| A nyala - first one of these I'd seen in the wild. |
 |
| A male nyala watching over his ladies (the females are the striped antelope in the foreground), along with impala behind him. |
 |
| Mandatory elephant photo. |
 |
| View of the gorge from our lunch spot. |
 |
| The landscape in Gonarezhou NP was beautiful. |
We spent the last evening with sundowners on the beach along the river. The sunsets put on quite a show every night,
and we had a great time watching our last one from the riverfront.
 |
| Getting ready to watch the sunset with the whole crew. |
 |
| A lovely way to end the trip. |
It proved to be a memorable trip since I managed to get bit by a tick
that left me with African tick bite fever for a week or so. Ten days of antibiotics cleared it up. I’m sure my Portland friends will not be at
all surprised that I managed to contract some weird ailment while I was here.
 |
| Note: When hiking around checking out giant baobab trees, watch out for ticks. |
This trip was also memorable since it will in all likelihood be our
last in Zimbabwe. With only seven weeks
left here, we’re pretty much in countdown mode to get packed up, wrap up work, and
organize lots of final details for our move (though we do have one last trip to
Cape Town planned later this month).
While we may be done with road trips here in Zimbabwe, we’re looking
forward to where the next road takes us.
