Bright and Early
We left Gutu around 5:30am and braced for the battle with the pot hole roads. It felt like a completely different road on the way back than it did on the way to Gutu. Turns out someone went in and filled the worst stretches of road while we were on the project trip at the hospital, so I guess in a sense it was a completely different road, but it went much smoother on the way back towards Harare.
We were treated to the most gorgeous sunrise and rainbow too (which made me wonder why I don’t wake up earlier and do this more often…but then I remembered I hate mornings and that thought quickly went away).
Directions
Because the roads change so much our driver was asking a lot of people for the best route to get up to Imire Conservancy. Everyone seemed to know where we were talking about, but everyone gave us a different route and different opinion. Google was pretty much useless because it can’t keep up with the road conditions so the driver just took off in a direction and kept asking for directions every 5 seconds.
We got onto this dirt road that was AWFUL but someone told our driver we should only be on it for 19km so we just sucked it up…turns out the real distance was 90km and let me just say it was a good thing there were no babies in the car because they definitely would’ve had a case of Shaken Baby Syndrome if they had been.
Shortcuts
We finally get to a tarmac-ed road and everyone let out their breath. Our driver decided to trust a 5-year-old child on the side of the road who pointed to this “short cut” to the pavement that ended up being almost 15km of a two tire path through the densely vegetated brush (pictured below).
Flat Tire
We had not been on the tarmac for all of 10 minutes before we felt the thud and heard the hiss and realized we had a flat tire. Luckily we had a spare and we were able to pull off on a great big shoulder with a beautiful view. The spare was put on in about 10 minutes and we were on our way again. Unfortunately the spare was almost as bare as the previous tire so we were back to holding our breath over every bump and pot hole hoping the tire would hold up.
Police
After passing through a small village we got stopped by some traffic cops. They asked our driver for all his documents and pulled him out of the vehicle. They were interrogating him for about 30 minutes before an officer came over to the car window and told us that our driver was missing one special test (or something) and that they were holding him for that. None of us really reacted strongly and just were like “Okay, what do we need to do? Can one of us drive instead? Etc…” and then one of the women in our van started talking to the police officer in the local language and the guy’s entire demeanor shifted. He got SO EXCITED and within 5 minutes, had let our driver go and we were back on the road without having a pay a single penny and with our driver getting all his documents back. The power of language yall. Right there.
We finally got to Imere but got very confused because there were a bunch of different gates with signs on them and no directions on where the main entrance was. We pulled up to one of the gates as there was a local villager sitting by it and he didn’t say a word to us and just opened the gate for us. (Turns out all the gates in the park are open because they are not allowed to prohibit the locals from passing through the park on their daily commutes - but we didn't know that at the time).
We realized very quickly that we were definitely in the wrong spot as we were literally just driving through the park. There were giraffes, elephants, (cows, lol) and antelope very curiously watching us as we tried to find any sort of marking of where to go. After about 30 minutes we determined we were lost – somewhere in the park and praying our poor spare tire would hold up so we didn’t break down IN the park.
With yet another set of instructions, we finally got where we were supposed to be.
SO THEN.
[Another] Shortcut
After the safari we had some ways to travel to get to Bushman’s Rock. After a great time and snack break at Imire after our safari we took off. In an effort to not get lost, our driver decided to retrace his steps and opened the gate to drive back through the conservancy to get to the main road (!!!).
We were all dying silently laughing as we drove back through the park and we were almost to the exit when all of a sudden a huge safari van full of tourists turns the corner and sees us - this random medical van full of tourists driving right through the middle of the park. The safari driver looked so confused and puzzled as we squeezed past them and once we got to the exit, this random school girl - no older than 7 years old - popped out from the bushes and opened the gate back to the main road for us. It was a good 10 minutes before we could catch our breath from laughing so much.
Ditch
As we started getting towards our destination our driver continued stopping and asking almost every person on the side of the road for directions and decided to take a “shortcut” that a young teenager gave him. We all didn’t have a great gut feeling about this one based on the fact is was the complete opposite direction to where we thought we should be going, but it is not respectful here to try to correct someone performing a service for you. He stopped to talk to a pedestrian who informed him that we were going the wrong way and decided to do a three point turn on a one lane road with drainage ditches running on either side. I bet you can guess where we ended up.
Side of the Road
All of us jumped out of the car to push the van out of the ditch and once we had, the driver just took off with the van door open down the road in search of some where better to turn around. That left the six of us just standing on the side of the road in rural Zimbabwe picking flowers and almost crying because we were laughing so hard. Our driver came back about 5 minutes later and we headed on into Bushman’s Rock lodges for the night.
The whole trip was such a great adventure. My stomach still hurts thinking about how much we laughed that day and I couldn’t have written our last day in Zim better if I tried!
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