Our welcome to Lake Kariba was a fuel station and a kiosk on the edge of the jetty, where a converted houseboat was parked waiting to take our convoy across the lake. Incidentally, it was the same boat which had been hired by the Top Gear guys for the Grand Tour across Zimbabwe. There was some precarious reversing across ramps onto the floating barge.  Lake Kariba was formed in 1958 with the building of the Kariba dam. It is over 223 kilometres long and up to 40 kilometres wide, so journeys can be long. Luckily we were going to take about 3 hours to cross to Spurwing island. The breeze of sailing took some of the heat out of the midday sun, and the beer helped with the remaining heat. About half way across the skipper asked if we wanted to swim. Kariba is notorious for crocodiles, but as he was happy to jump in first, the rest of us followed suit. 

As we docked on land we entered Matusadona National Park, where our parents holidayed as kids. We had to drive about 70km into the park which again had a different scenery. The outlook of the lake perimeter is on the submerged trees of the mopane forest which now are now petrified. Our camp overlooked the water where elephants, hippos, baboons and impala were grazing and frolicking.

On our first morning we enjoyed our first lie in of the trip, foregoing a game drive for a relaxed start to the day. Nevertheless, the sun was up at 6am so most were out and about. We milled around doing puzzles, playing cards and painting until the heat of the day began to subside.  The game came to us with an elephant coming right outside the tented chalets!

On our evening game drive we saw lots of birds of prey. The dead trees made perfect silhouettes for spotting the wingspans of impressive African Marsh Harriers, Bateleur Eagles and vultures. We had an impressive sighting of a hippo, standing out of the water in a tributary, looking unamused. 

The excitement about the hippo was shortly replaced by three female lions with four cubs lounging in the dusk. 

The next morning we tried something new  – we were picked up by an open safari vehicle for a game drive. Although the bigger animals remained shy, we learnt lots about the flora.  The beautiful Mopane trees have a defence system which is releasing tannins into the leaves to give a bitter deterrent to herbivores. Their amazing warning system spreads to the surrounding trees to protect the network. There was also a fragrant flannel weed spreading across the park. Unfortunately we learnt this was non native and unpalatable to the native fauna, making it a competitive cover for all the native plants. 

For our evening game viewing we headed to the water. We were taken to a boat parked on the lake edge and our skipper navigated through the fossilised trees. Rob fished from the back of the boat and we enjoyed sundowner drinks and snacks. We approached a noisy group of hippos who splashed and grunted. The driver dropped us to land for a wild wee, just in the spot we had watched a large croc vacate into the water. 

Our drive out of Matusadona was the full length of lake Kariba and beyond as we headed west to Zimbabwe’s biggest National Park – Hwange. We all prepared ourself for our most gruelling drive, only 350km but estimated at 12 hours on unsealed, eroded roads.