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  Masvingo, Zimbabwe
Monday, November 24, 2008

Suddenly Zimbabwe felt a bit unsafe.

One of Oscar del Toro's (the truck's) fuel lines sheared off while we were driving to Masvingo. We noticed a diesel leak, but didn't realize how lucky we were to arrive until we stopped at a campsite that had been recommended to us by a group that had passed through on their way to Mozambique.  Unfortunately, they passed through a few months before.  Before the camp had been burned down by the government as the owner is an opposition MP.  The camp had been set a light in June and was "closed for refurbishing".  We found out the truth a bit later after they graciously let us stay.  They cleaned out the bathrooms for us and put some Fanta in the fridge so we could have cold drinks.  The grounds were infested with scorpions and we made our dinner fighting off beatles and flies. 

We slept well that night, but woke up realizing we may not be going anywhere quickly.  Jase, our driver/mechanic planned to pay someone to drive him to the nearest town to see if we could somehow get the part, and if that didn't work he would drive 150km to the nearest city, and if that didn't work then we would get the part DHL'd from the UK through Mozambique where he would have to pay someone to take him to go get it.  Thankfully, while waiting for a ride, he met a guy who knew a guy who had a dog who found another guy who happened to have a workshop up the road.  Jase left, hoping he could put something together.

In the meantime we took a walk to a giant Boabob tree that the MP knew about.  We walked across a bridge to a dried up river and through a seemingly abandoned village.  We came across the large tree and took turned going inside the hollow trunk and climbing up as far as we could.  Afterwards we went back to the camp and played cards until Jase pulled up.  He didn't say anything to us, so we kept playing cards figuring the news wasn't good.  One of our group members decided to go check it out after 30 minutes of no news and shortly after came skipping back hollaring "PACK UP YOUR TENTS!!!!".  They had managed to fix the part good enough to get us out of Zim.  We were releived as we realized we were in the middle of a cholera epidemic, there was stuff potentially going down with the government in the next two days thanks to Kenya and other African nations getting involved, and our surroundings were less than ideal. 

We set out on the road and reached the border about 3.  We went without lunch and kept driving to our first stop in Mozambique.  We are all looking forward to the beach now and the possibility of snorkelling with whale sharks, dolphins and manta rays! 

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