Lake Kariba

LAKE KARIBA

In all of my visits to Zimbabwe, I've never before been to Lake Kariba and have always wanted to. So, when Katy suggested we do a weekend there, I was thrilled! Kariba is one of the largest manmade lakes in Africa and is best explored by boat. We went during the first weekend in October and, though early signs didn't bode well for a successful trip (the entire wheel falling off of David's car the day before we left; Eliza getting carsick and throwing up no less than four times in David's replacemnt car; our two cars getting seperated and all of us getting lost for a spell,) the weekend turned out great!

We stayed at a lovely place on Spurwing Island - with tents set up right by the water. Lovely sunrise views. Hippos, crocs and monitor lizards as neighbors. The sounds of drums signalling meal time in the open air restaurant. Lots of space for children to run amock. A nice pool for cooling off.  It was perfect.

Spurwing Island resort from the water - those are our tents!

Breakfast in the open air restaurant

David and Katy enjoying their porch

The kids watching the hippos

Sunrise from the porch!

sunrise and kiddos

Eliza and Zavi - so cute :)

Inside the tents. Zavion thought sleeping under the mosquito nets was pretty much the coolest thing ever!

Zavion playing the drums while Eliza performs an interpretive dance

splashing around in the pool!

We took safaris via boat and open-sided jeep.  Slightly disconcerting being only yards away from giant elephants while completely exposed in the vehicle, but, hey, what are you going to do? Mom and Mike were lucky enough to see lions on their game drive.... Here are some highlights:

FROM THE BOAT:

        

FROM THE GAME DRIVE:

The very open truck. Not much protection from charging elephants, is it?

Elephants were definitely the main attractions

How YOU doin'?

baboon

Look, ma - ellies!!

bum shot

Eliza and Zavion comparing their hands to a lion print

Look - I'm kissing an elephant!

Exploring this huge termite mound - note suckling elephant in the background

sand angels

dead hippo

real angels :)

Great sunset ending to a great day!

 Ok, I'm going to cheat for a minute and post a couple of photos that Mom took of the lions they saw (they went on a game drive the night before we did,) even though we didn't see them.  Still pretty cool :)

See ya next time!