All the way along the road from Harare to Chirundu there are guys on the side of the road selling worms for fishing. One guy adverstised his worms as “Anaconda Worms” and another said his were “Puffader Worms”.
We kept remembering about the worms too late and missing the stops so by the time we stopped we were desperate. This guy didn’t even have a sign up he was just holding a box. We bought a box of worms from him for $4. The box was full of earth with what looked about 6 worms in it and the soil was looking very dry but they had to do.
We had been invited by Ben who is the new manager of the croc farm, which used to belong to Dave’s family; to come and stay in Dave’s old house where Ben now lives. When we arrived Ben wasn’t there but we were greeted by his “cook boy”, Levison, who was wearing his best suit and tie. We unloaded our kit and checked out the state of the house. Dave’s family had left the house three years previously and it had been pretty much left to rack and ruin. The geyser had fallen through the roof, which hadn’t been fixed so over three of the rooms there was no roof. The kitchen was crawling with ants and stunk of rat poison, which coated the edges of all the work surfaces. The cleanest part of the house was outside but the mozzies were terrible. The fridge was in one of the bedrooms which had a crust of bread on the floor in front of it which was crawling with ants. The two mattresses in that room were also covered in ants. To top it all there was also no running water. So you can imagine how excited I was about spending the weekend there!! For super we ate the tiger fish I’d caught the previous weekend and we toasted the Nyami Nyami in the hope of catching more fish in the days to come. The Nyami Nyami are the River God’s that the Batonka tribe believe were separated when the Kariba dam wall was built. Mr Nyami Nyami lives in the river and Mrs Nyami Nyami lives in Lake Kariba. After the wall was built the Batonka people believed that all the earthquakes caused by the land around settling from the pressure of the built up water was actually Mrs Nyami Nyami trying to break the dam wall to reunite with Mr Nyami Nyami. When you are on the water you have to toast Nyami Nyami if you want to catch anything.
Kal and DK had brought there own mattress with them and decided that the coolest place to put it was the lounge. We brought in the two mattresses from our room once we’d brushed off all the ants and we turned the lounge into a dormitory. Kal and DK had also brought there fan with them which was lekker to have on us. Rodney who lives up in the main house heard we were staying and came to see us. He saw what a state the house was in and offered for us to come and stay with him. We were very keen but were already settled for the night. So we decided to move over in the morning.
We had a great day on the river catching 6 fish in total. I caught two, both about 1.5kg.
DK caught 2 and Chooks and Kelvin both caught about a 3.5kg. Dave and Karen still hadn’t even had a bite and were getting very frustrated. We found a great place to have lunch on the river bank under a big Natal Mahogany, which was lovely to snooze under.
When we got off the water we headed straight for Roddy’s house to confirm it would be alright for us to stay. He was very pleased to have us so we went back to Ben’s house to pack up our kit and go back to the big house. I’ve never been more relieved. Our rooms at Roddy’s were en suite and air conditioned so we were all very happy.
We got invited up the hill to a party by a friend of Dave, DK and Kal’s who was also staying in Chirundu. Dave and I rode in the back of the Land Rover, which is great for game viewing from. We saw two elephants on the road on the way there and one on the way back.
Chooks woke us up with a cup of tea at 6.30am. We’d all been very keen to get up early the day before but when it came round to it we weren’t so enthusiastic. Especially after all those gin and tonics, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. Thanks to Chooks we managed to get ourselves together and were on the water by about 9am. The river was much busier than the weekend before, we very rarely looked up and saw than less than three boats riding on the same drift as us. Kal and Dave started to get desperate about having no bites and even gave Nyami Nyami a chocolate Easter egg.
We found a different place to have lunch, which everybody was so excited about I was very nervous as we had to walk through a bit of long grass to get to our pic nic area, which DK had set up for us. I was worried about about crocs and snakes so once I got to tarpaulin I based myself in the middle and didn’t move for a couple of hours.
Our day fishing wasn’t as successful as the previous day. After a few hours of being unsuccessful Kelvin put his rod in just to prove to us that there were actually fish there because of course he caught a 3kg fish. That was the only fish we got in the boat all day. I’d had a couple of bites but I couldn’t land any of them. The boys started calling me Immy Zzzzzz as I seem to have all the luck with the fish. Kal put up a good fight with a log but apart from that we caught nothing. It was still a beautiful day. Kelvin dropped us off at the pump house on the estate where we’d left DK’s Land Rover. On our way back to the house we saw another ellie, ran over a cobra and we saw a croc, which quickly escaped into a pan next to the road.
I woke the next day feeling much better and we all had tea watching the warthog and a troop of baboons who were playing by the pan in front of the house. After tea we hit the road back to Harare. The roads were busier than on our way down I think I counted at least 75 cars!! Zimbabwe has had toll roads now for a few months and they’re a bit of a joke. They consist of about 5 cones in the middle of the road, which are gigantic and a policeman standing there collecting your money. The toll costs 1USD and they give you a receipt. To be fair it is working because the roads are much better than when I came up in December.
We stopped off at Nandos in Harare which was just what I needed; I always seem to be hungry at the moment. I hope I don’t have worms!!
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