They say the journey is part of the adventure. That couldn’t be more true when traveling to Zimbabwe’s upper most corner – Mana Pools National Park. A land of unspoilt wilderness, on the edge of the Earth.
The thing I like the most about travel in Africa is the people I meet. No matter where you start your journey, what your background is or your lifestyle – a safari in this land will plunge you wholeheartedly into a convergence of life, just like the Great Zambezi that gathers up its force before falling into the abyss at Victoria Falls. Fresh, unavoidable and boiling over with energy.
Take my pilot Chris for example – muttering to himself, counting on his fingers while looking over the gauges, seeming to pace back and forth in his own thoughts – he was a character of note. And quite a good pilot, I might add – doling out lessons whilst remembering to take in the view. His office exists in the sky and he spends his days traversing the sights of Zimbabwe, from Harare in the East to Mana Pools in the North, over Lake Kariba to Victoria Falls in the West.
We flew from Harare to Mana Pools, with the sun starting to dip to the horizon. Dry riverbeds twisted in gnarled form below us, stretching across the landscape in shades of red, sandy beige and dusty green. The land was like an unfurled blanket, flat until the the edges of the escarpment, rose up like a crumpled carpet. The air rose up in a smoggy mist, first a white haze, then turquoise, and higher through puffy clouds to the limitless blue above. Occasional roads cut like scars in geometric lines in this drought-ridden place, while rounded, organic clumps of shrubs speckled the surface in amoebic shapes of a thirsty existence, waiting for the rain.
Before I knew it we would land, I would be swatting at Tsetse flies, and we would take the last overland leg to Kanga Camp. It was to be an epic journey – a safari in Zimbabwe’s wild corner – but the adventure had already begun.
