COGH Into Zimbabwe

[Charlies1]

Wow, that was quick. Sue posted when we entered Zambia over the weekend.

Today, @JOP61 took us across the border into Zimbabwe.

[JoP61 Graduate10]

So proud! Had no idea we were so close. This has been a brilliant project 😀👍🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️

[RunaroundSue Graduate10 in reply to JoP61]

Well done at the border!

[JoP61 Graduate10 in reply to RunaroundSue]

Thanks - isn't this fantastic? Has made me get out every day to walk and/or run

😀🏃🏃‍♀️

[Oldgirlruns Graduate10]

Oh wow! That was quick! Well done @JoP61!

[JoP61 Graduate10 in reply to Oldgirlruns]

Thanks! I'm absolutely chuffed. What a great run this is - a real incentive to get out there every day xx

[sofaspud]

Zimbabwe is home for me - need to log in my last few runs!!

[Charlies1 Graduate10 in reply to sofaspud]

It would be great to hear a bit about it. To give all the runners here a sense of what it is like.

[lexi6 Graduate10]

Wow! JoP61 🌪💥👍

[JoP61 Graduate10 in reply to lexi6]

Thank you so much! We're nearly there 😀🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️ 👍

[JaySeeSkinny Graduate10]

Zambia went really quickly. I was hoping for longer as it’s one of the few places I’ve actually been to on our route. We’re getting close to the end! How many kms is it exactly? I won’t know what to do when it’s over😈

[Charlies1 Graduate10 in reply to JaySeeSkinny]

The full run is 25661km.

It would be great to hear about your experiences in Zambia. I intended to ask you while we were there, but we flashed through too quickly!

[JaySeeSkinny Graduate10 in reply to Charlies1]

A friend of ours is a hotel manager and is doing the rounds in Africa at the moment (next month he’s off to Nigeria!). While he was in Zambia we visited him and his family in Lusaka. It was very colonial, whites stick together, have servants, privileges and go to their own pubs/restaurants. There was no mixing with the natives. I found it a bit disturbing, apartheid lives on, the ex-pats live in their own little world (to be fair our friend refused the servants). On the roads though any white person driving a car is highly likely to be stopped by the police, pretty much for no reason. It is expected that you slip them a few dollars and then they’ll let you go. If you’re driving any distance it can be quite expensive.We drove to Livingstone and stayed in a lodge (special offer due to connections!). Sunset cruise on the Zambezi, watching the elephants swimming over to Zimbabwe for the night. Later at a restaurant on the river we were relieved to discover that our insect spray worked, the place was swarming with mosquitoes! I waved my arms up and down in the dark (the parking lot was unlit) and I could feel hundreds of them. There were children who lived there running around the whole time, I can’t imagine they slather themselves with insect spray every evening. Our friend said malaria is one of the main reasons staff are off sick. Little children frequently die and they’d even lost a waiter recently. There were also a couple of white farmers there who had fled from Zimbabwe. Zambia was a bit safer.

We saw the Victoria falls, drove through a few wildlife parks (saw giraffes, zebras etc, but no lions!), picknicked in the bush and drove back from Livingstone through the mountains. That was the most adventurous it got. At one point we had to cross a bridge consisting of two tree trunks - one wrong move and we’d have been well and truly stuck. There was no turning round either, it was a single dust track most of the time. And then suddenly there was a village, kids on their lunch break running beside us in their school uniforms, waving, smiling, laughing - we felt really exotic! The dust track turned into half a mile of asphalt, with a roundabout at the crossroads and just as suddenly it was a dust track again. A road in the middle of nowhere.

There was also a trip to Lake Kariba with its huge dam. Very interesting.

I enjoyed the holiday, we weren’t typical tourists as we got some insight into the lives of people who work there, albeit privileged people. It helped that English is the official language and I definitely noticed it was an ex British colony.

Oh, and apparently the national parks in Zambia are the best in Africa. We met a couple of Czech rangers at Lake Kariba. Hard drinkers, hard men, self-sufficient in their jeep. They had been in Africa for 10 years, working for 6 months in Kruger National Park and taking off for the rest of the year to tour the other parks in Africa. They loved Zambia.

So there you have it, my impressions of Zambia!

[Charlies1 Graduate10 in reply to JaySeeSkinny]

Brilliant- sounds like a wonderful experience- thanks for sharing

[Over62]

Brilliant- through another border control!

[Cowladyrunning Graduate10]

Wow! I had a look last night at my what 3 words point. On satellite you can see areas that are bring cultivated or farmed but there is no sign of living area that I could find easily!! I zoomed around a bit and after a while found shapes with shadows so maybe they were a couple of mud huts? Looks like a quiet run track for the time being!

[Charlies1 Graduate10 in reply to Cowladyrunning]

Hi @Cowladyrunning. Here is a 3d image of the start of your run (W3W would take you to the end):

google.com/maps/dir/-16.939...

It is pretty much a quiet track, but there were a couple of small farm buildings just off the track.

3D image of start of run