Day 24, August 17: Victoria Falls

 We woke at 5 a.m., only to discover the power was out. We struggled with flashlights and eventually I went downstairs to see if I could get outside. All the exterior doors were locked; we were imprisoned. I tried the key they'd given us, but it didn't open the doors. 

At around 5:30 a.m., the owners turned up. They struggled for about 10 minutes with the front door, eventually managed to get the lock to cooperate, and then turned on the generator, much too late  to provide hot water for a shower, but at least making coffee possible. I told Her Highness that locking people into a building was a feature of a prison, not a lodge. She argued she had shown me how to unlock the front door (she hadn't, and in any case the key didn't turn when I tried it). I told her I adamantly refused to be locked in for another night, and would sleep out on the deck if necessary. She said go ahead', but I noticed after we returned from our safari drive all the locks had been freshly oiled, and turned smoothly, and there was a key in one of the doors. The squeaky wheel quite literally got the oil this time.  

The real problem, of course, was the antiquated locks, which had no option to lock the outside while allowing exit from the inside. I am sure these violate all sorts of safety regulations -- locking people into a building has a long and terrible history -- but who knows in the corrupt state of Zimbabwe?

The madame of the house insisted that power outages are rare in Victoria Falls. Apparently the corruptocrats spare VF because it's a tourist Mecca. However, this is the weekend of the international SADC summit, and local theory is they choked off the power to VF to keep it on in Harare and con the local dictators of neighboring countries into thinking that Zimbabwe has a functioning electric grid. 

Anyway, the safari drive was surprisingly good, probably because we changed plans on the fly and drove down a long grassy valley and not through the miambo. Some critters, photos taken with my 75 - 300 mm lens because I broke the UV filter on my 200-800 mm and can't get it off in a lodge room...

Spotted hyena

Southern yellow billed hyena

Blue waxbill

Natal spurfowl.

Dinner, at Dusty Roads, was OK. They were pushing native township cuisine, which features spiced meat stews and rather crunchy, tart green kale-like stuff -- not bad at all. Oh, and caterpillars, which I refused. Talked to the maitresse-d, who extolled the virtues of the previous white hegemony and the ineptitude and corruption of black rule. Honestly can't say she's wrong about the latter, though I suspect Ian Smith's crowd were not quite as beneficent as she claims. But Zimbabwe can't go on like this, with an exploding population, massive unemployment and crumbling infrastructure. Harare probably has a population of 2.5 million, but no one knows. Newcomers won't admit they live there, because they needed permission from the gummint to migrate in from rural provinces and didn't have it. 

A country with incessant sunshine should be able to manage solar power. 

Day 19, August 12: Aberfoyle Lodge, Honde Valley

 A day from Hell. It started OK; we checked out of Seldomseen Lodge, only slightly singed by the charge for wine, and birded the Mambo for a couple of hours...A black-headed oriole...

A crowned hornbill

....and the ever popular Retz's helmetshrike.

...fortified afterward by some bacon-and-egg sandwiches ken and Sue had obligingly made.Then we headed north for Mutarazi falls, which Frank had visited 10 years previously. They are supposedly the second-highest in Africa. Beyond Mutes, the road through the pine plantations was heavily rutted dirt, and it took over an hour-an-a-half to get to the entrance...

Where we discover the entire place had changed. In 2019 they built a zipline and a skywalk (rope-bridge) over the falls. The gummint wanted $50 to cross the skywalk (special high price for international visitors!). We asked to walk out the 500 m to the view point, but all we could see was a small stream coursing over boulders and disappearing over the edge of the mountain. I wouldn't say I was disappointed, since I expected very little, and had already characterized this is Frank's lamest idea yet. Frank eagerly encouraged us to try the second viewpoint, a mere 800 m hike away. I resoundingly refused.  So Marjorie and I chugged down some vodka and soda concoction, Zimbabwe priced at $2 each, and then clambered back into the bus, The drivers discovered the real entrance, used by the Zimbabwean hordes. Just as rutted, but significantly shorter. 

It was nearly dark when we drove through the tea-plantations to Aberfoyle Lodge, a rather beautiful hotel founded, it turns out, by an Irishman, Bill Igoe. Bill had to sell out in the 1970s and then part of the property was a grabbed by Mugabe's goons. But the hotel, now under the management of a British company, survived, and is being managed by Ken and Sue's daughter and her English husband.

Day 11, August 4: Harare

We decided we'd exhausted the possibilities of South Luangwa National Park, so we lazed around the lodge on a birding free morning, desultorily viewing the local geckos.

We drove to the airport about 10 a.m., and then flew to Harare, changed planes and continued via Emirates to Harare. Zimbabwean immigration, despite looking like a Chinese fire drill, moved us through in only a little over an hour, and we boarded a bus to take us to York Lodge, a walled enclave in an affluent suburban neighborhood in Harare. 

The bus driver was scathing about Zimbabwe's political leadership, and pointed out that all the roads between the airport and various hotels had been redone in preparation for the summit of the Southern African Development Council, in a week's time; but the rest of the roads are potholed crap. His biggest beef, though, was that the government had sold all sorts of mining and development rights to China, in return for a spanking new parliament building, which does nothing for the average Zimbabwean. And the average Zimbabwean is pretty darn poor. All the power was out, and that includes traffic lights. Apparently Zimbabwe has two power sources: Kariba dam, which is at low capacity because of the drought, and an ancient decrepit coal-burning power station. Too bad they didn't ask the Chinese for a power station rather than a parliament building. 

The lodge itself was quite delightful, and is self-sufficient via solar power.  The gardens...