First of all i have to give myself a HUGE slap on the wrist! I'm not sure how i managed it but i forgot to blog about one of my FAVOURITE places in all of Africa! this was the Great Zimbabwe ruins in Zimbabwe (if you couldn't guess) it was the first place we visited when we got to Zim we stayed in the campsite inside the gates of the ruins but as we arrived late in the afternoon we didn't go to the ruins until the next day....we only spent just over 2 hours there but ideally i would have loved to stay all day we had a great guide (Phillip who asked me to be his second wife ...he offered LP 20 cattle...and a cellphone for me!) the time just flew by as he told us all the history and we walked around taking in the stunning views from the hilltop enclosure and marvelling at the 5m thick walls in the great enclosure 5m thick and way way high all built without the use of any mortar!....and then we went to Antelope park
well let me catch you up what we have been doing since...on Sunday 5th December we left Antelope park we were going to have a city stop off in Bulawayo to get to the post office,Internet etc but as it was Sunday the place was shut down just loads of peeps in their church clothes so we continued on our journey to Motobos national park we only spent one day there i wish we could have spent more as its way up there on the list of favourite places we arrived in the afternoon and went on a bush walk with the campsites main man Brown he showed us heaps of bushman paintings dating back 1000 years and pointed out all the spoor (poo and footprints) of various animals we saw a bunch of klipspringer bound across the road and then headed back to camp just as the skies let rip and the rain pissed down on us that night was so dark as the campsite was on day 7 of a power cut there wasn't even a moon or stars in the sky annoyingly this was also the night my torch ran out of battery's whoops!....
on the Monday we headed off with 2 local guides in 4x4s they were experts in the area and the park we spent the morning travelling to different caves filled with bushman (san) paintings and heard loads of information and tales about this absolutly incredible race. next stop was a local village where we met the chief poundo (named for the pound coin) an 80 year old guy with such spirit! he was dancing all over the show and even thought he didn't speak a word of English he told us all about himself and his family and asked after all of us (through our guide as translater) then his kids and grand kids did some traditional dancing for us and sung us songs Zimbabwe defiantly hasn't the warmest most welcoming people we have met so far! in the afternoon we tracked Rhino in the national park we saw one bull on his own with a horn over 75cm long! we got up ridiculously close to him and sat in the grass and watched while he went about life...in the park we also saw klipspringer,giraffes,steenbok and a ton of birds including black eagles snake eagles and a giant eagle owl...we then tracked some more rhino finding 4 in a clearing again we walked up close and were within metres luckily one of the guys looked behind us just in time to see a massive bull rhino strolling towards us no sooner had we moved when he charged towards the others running right across where we had been sitting!....
Tuesday we said a sad goodbye to Zim as we crossed the border into Botswana where apart from finding a post office Internet (and Nandos haha) we haven't yet done anything tomorrow we head into the Okavango Delta in canoes....
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