EPT
We arrived in a cloud of dust, a literal cloud of dust. Four and a half hours in a car, travelling 400km of mostly hilly, narrow winding roads (about 20km of it was ungraded dirt road), chugging along behind 30 tonne trucks struggling to move faster than 40km/h and we had finally arrived at Lomagundi Lakeside in Kariba. The heat hit us immediately. The winter weather that had us running for our long sleeved clothing and thick duvets back home in town now had us changing into shorts and shirts and discarding our shoes.
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Us arriving in dust
We had come to register my younger sister for her first half marathon, a grueling 21km run up and down the winding mountainous road from the main Kariba service station to the famous Kariba Dam Wall and back down to the finish line at Lomagundi Lakeside camping grounds. Unfortunately I was too late to register for the 10km fun run, so I had to settle for being a spectator.
After registration we headed down to the little complex of lodges where we were staying with friends. They were set out on a finger of land, with the magnificent lake creeping up on either side of the buildings. They were single story, three bedroom thatched brick buildings, each with their own little pool and braai (Afrikaans for 'barbeque') area and a raised open platform looking out over the bush and lake. They were set out in truly African style, to appeal to the international tourists - animal print curtains, zebra and buffalo skin rugs on the floors, mounted tigerfish and impala heads on the walls, driftwood coffee tables and mugs painted with The Big Five. The complex was called 'Nzou Lodges' ('nzou' is an elephant in shona, and we soon came to see just how aptly they were named!).
Before I go any further, a small note on Lake Kariba: it is not a safe and secure place to be. A few friends have already asked why I didn't go swimming in the lake, and the answer is that it is currently overpopulated with crocodiles. This year alone there have been at least 10 reported cases of people being taken and eaten by crocs. One of them happened whilst I was there this weekend. You can't go near the water without seeing at least one crocodile either beached and sunning itself, or floating inconspicuously in the water nearby. One of the other nearby camps is infested with them, 36 counted in the ten minutes we drove around the camp!! Some as long as 14ft.
Not only that, the entire Kariba experience is set out in the bush, you are a guest in the wild there. You are surrounded by bush and thorny trees and long dry grass, the animals freely wandering around you. We were visited several times a day by wildlife; a small herd of zebra, a pesky jackal looking for scraps, several curious elephants, a hungry hippopotamus, a common duiker and more bird species than I had patience to count or look up.
We arrived at our lodge, 'Mvuu' (it means 'hippo' in shona), and were greeted by my parents' friends, all already nursing hangovers. Ian and Gaye, Nick and Pauline and the dashing young Brett (aka 'Betty'). We had barely finished unpacking our car when we were being hustled into packing cooler-boxes with beer and soft drinks for the ritual 'booze cruise', thinly disguised as a fishing trip. From there we drove the 400m or so down to the 'harbour' - a beautiful green floodplain populated by several grazing hippos, a few parked cars and some speedboats moored to temporary metal stakes. We hauled our gear aboard the two boats and set off over the late afternoon choppy waters to get to Nick's 'golden fishing spot', where he had caught a large bream earlier in the day. Sure as nuts we barely had a bite all the hours we were out there. This hardly bothered anyone, as it was the time of day for 'sun downers' and beer cans were cracked open all across the lake as the sun set magnificently over the water.
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The water was quite choppy out there.
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This is quite easily what Kariba is all about. Fishing at sunset with friends.
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Birds over the sunset
Arriving back at Mvuu, we plugged in Pauline's iPod to her little portable speaker and we swayed and danced while standing around the braai cooking meat, and I helped myself to potato salad, coleslaw and some garlic bread. My sister went to bed early, claiming a sore stomach which we all hoped was only due to nerves for tomorrow's big race. I had eyed out the raised platform for a bedroom, and as I was carrying my mattress and blankets up the stairs I heard a startling noise behind me. I froze and turned around slowly to find an elephant standing beside my dad's Navara, not twenty metres away. He was resting his trunk on the roof, dwarfing the otherwise bulky car. Everyone clamored around the base of the stairs to catch a glimpse of the beautiful ivory tusked giant. He flapped his ears lazily, looking at us out of the corner of his eye as though he were quite accustomed to putting on a show for startled guests, and he began to saunter towards a nearby tree and strip the branches of leaves. My dad hurried over to examine his car, but not a mark had been left. Everyone was exhausted and sunburnt and so we started filtering off to our rooms, leaving only Betty and my father drinking in the kitchen.
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Mx1OYeV.jpg)
My bedroom at the top
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Pauline standing in front of Mvuu
DAY II
I was woken up at 4:30am by Pauline calling everyone to get ready. The half marathon and fun run began at 6:20 (any later than that and the runners wouldn't perform optimally in the heat) and we all shuffled into the kitchen and drank some coffee, put some clothing on and headed to the cars. It was a long dusty drive up to the service station and my sister was still claiming her stomach hurt and was cramping. She admirably insisted on at least trying to run. We arrived at the meeting venue before the sun rose. Five hundred participants, but only seventy five of them running the half marathon. Off they went! We drove along the road and pulled up in designated areas to cheer on my sister as she grimaced past us at a slow and steady jog. She reached the 7km mark as the front runners came past on their way back, at the 11km mark! At the 9km mark we climbed out the car and helped hand out water sachets and cups of watered down coca cola to the runners. My sister got a little past 16km of steady ups and downs before signalling to us that she wasn't feeling up to finishing the race. We rushed her off to a bathroom at the service station before driving her down to the finish line and registering her as a no-finish. Sad, but there is always next year, and many more running events in between. The front runners finished their 21km in 1 hour 4 minutes!
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The runners and fun runners preparing for the event
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Handing out drinks to the runners as the sun peeks around the corner
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The view from near the marathon start point
After that we all headed back to Mvuu and took turns showering and eating breakfast before we unspokenly agreed to spend the rest of the morning napping. The heat had crept up on me at about 12pm and I changed into my swimming costume and braved the swimming pool. Possibly the best part of that was that I got to boast about swimming in winter. + Show Spoiler +
No pics of that I am afraid 
Lunch was a spread of crackers and cheeses and cold meats and salads all laid out by our hired hand for the weekend, Onias. The iPod was once again plugged in and more alcohol was poured. The men went out for some afternoon fishing while the women sat around gossiping. I tried very hard to get some painting done, and despite the beautiful wild scenery and the inspiring smell of African bush, my paintbrush failed me and I only managed to ink out an abstracted zebra painting and some life studies of my sister as she slouched in her chair reading a magazine. The late afternoon yielded no animal sightings, so my sister and I strolled around the complex and admired the flora.
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That little black dot flaoting int he water is a croc!
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The Sabi Star flower
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I love the African bush!
In the evening we all regrouped and went back over to Lomagundi Lakeside for the afterparty, but it seems that most people had burnt out after the day's racing, leaving only the young and the determined at the bar. And there were some very determined young lads out there. I sat around awkwardly sipping a g&t with Brett when I recognized someone across the room. I went over to greet him and he introduced me to a bearded (and very drunk) young man named Adrian, with the most stunning big blue eyes. As I watched him talk to Chad about his hometown in Germany, a very vague feeling stirred in me that I knew him from somewhere. Then it hit me so hard I had to walk away for a few moments to digest what I had just realized. Back when I was just starting to discover boys at the ripe old age of 17 I had vaguely dated a German boy called Adrian for two months, and we had kissed once or twice before I decided he wasn't for me and broke up with him on the grounds I was studying for my exams. Which was true, but it disguised the fact I had just suddenly decided I didn't want to date him. + Show Spoiler +
Funny story - he came over to visit me the one afternoon at my house (possibly one of three occasions I had actually physically seen him in the two months we 'dated'), and my grandmother happened to be there. She asked where he was from and when he replied with 'Germany' she said (*FACEPALM*) 'oh, I hope you aren't related to Hitler'.
When I returned to stand by Chad, Adrian was still rattling on about what his brother was studying back home in Germany, and he turned to look at me when I asked a question, his eyes widened when he suddenly recognized me. Chad decided now was a great time to bugger off and I was left standing with Adrian, trying to find some common ground in the 6 or 7 years since we had last seen each other. He was scrawny and wearing tattered clothes. His hair was thinning and his beard was a bit scraggly, and he had clearly been affected by his 5 years of heavy drinking and doping. As we talked he rolled a joint and asked me why I had broken up with him. NOT AN AWKWARD QUESTION AT ALL.
I managed to sneak away back to Brett after some painful conversation, when a noise from across the lake had everyone's heads turning. A small boat had arrived with four young men aboard, and a spotlight. Not one of these four young men were wearing a speck of clothing, and were proudly showing us so with the spotlight. I'm moderately surprised they didn't roast their genitals under the blaze of that big torch. There were cheers and whistling from the crowd up at the bar as they offloaded onto the shore and carried themselves up to us, drunkenly stumbling over every rock and root on the way up. One of the youngsters had tied a dirty muslin cloth (known to us Zimbabweans as a 'nyongoro jira', or 'worm cloth' used for cleaning mud off your hands amongst many other things whilst fishing) and the other three had managed to source various hats, life jackets and a woman's bikini top to tie inefficiently around their junk. The youngster donning the bikini top around his waist stumbled over to greet Pauline and Brett, and it emerged that this was his bachelor party - he was marrying the ex girlfriend of Pauline's son. Nyongoro boy approached me with a big grin and offered to buy me a drink, but I couldn't take him seriously in just a strip of cloth, and so I just clutched Brett's drink and clinked glasses with him.
DAY III
The day started bright and beautiful. A day of relaxation. It was uneventful for the most part and despite the best efforts of everyone staying at Mvuu, there was no 'ndindindi' ('party'). It seemed that the runners had all gone home or gone out on more serious fishing adventures by taking out their houseboats for the rest of the week. I bravely took a walk through the bush to the harbour and encountered a pair of mating black mambas. You know, only the most deadly snake in Africa. Luckily they didn't notice me and I escaped unscathed. I watched a few hippos graze and a small herd of zebra cross the floodplain. Exciting stuff.
Returning back to Mvuu, everyone was relaxing and reading magazines and books and chatting idly. I managed to round everyone up to play a few rounds of Thirty Seconds, which was fairly entertaining. We then played The Story game - in which a piece of paper is passed around and everyone writes a sentence or two, before folding the paper and letting the next person only see the last word or two. They have to continue finishing off the sentence. At the end of the page the story is unfolded and read out to everyone. It is usually horribly disjointed but hilarious. This particular story centred around how Betty used his gherkin to attract women. You had to be there I guess. As evening rolled by we decided to take a 'game drive' (which despite Heyoka's optimism is NOT a session of chess with wild animals, but a safari trip through the bush looking for wildlife). Unfortunately, without a spotlight we could only see whatever happened to present itself to our car headlights... which wasn't a lot. Brett drunkenly blasted Bryan Adams and Roxette from the back of the 'bakkie' (twin cab without a a canopy on the back) while we stood on the back and counted the anthills we thought were animals. The grand total number of animals by the end of the drive were: a small duiker, some monkeys screaming in the distance, a zebra's butt disappearing into the brush and twenty two anthills. Of course I am sure the loud music had partly to do with the low wildlife count. It turned out I was wrong though - the reason we didn't see any game was because they were all at our house. We returned to Mvuu to find an mvuu (hippo) grazing between the cars, the zebra on the front lawn and an elephant around the side.
DAY IV
It was a long drive home. Every 30 tonner in Africa was on the road.
Some pics because wtf an Africa blog without African wildlife.
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Also I will post the elephant video in the comments whenever it decides to finish uploading.
i will finish it for you tonight. Jesus, I have a massive backlog of art to do for people.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DsJpPIz.png)
