Chilling in Kariba

The house where we spent the weekend

Kariba is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Zimbabwe and for a good reason - Lake Kariba is huge, surrounded by many hills,with incredible views of the lake, townships, and fishing boats far into the lake... In addition, the abundance of wild animals in the area is an added bonus to this already story-like setting.

Percia and I went there last weekend. My friend Maje had connected us with a travel agent - Gideon - who was just great. He met us at the bus drop off, and spent a lot of time with us the whole weekend, driving us around and ensuring we had a good time.

The house where Gideon put us up was very nice. It was meant for larger groups, but since it's a bit of a slow season currently he let us have the entire house to ourselves! It was very spacious and had an awesome view of the sunset :)

Saturday evening, we had a delicious dinner by the coast of lake Kariba and then went to a popular bar on top of one of the hills to enjoy a few drinks and nice music. The place was overlooking the lake, but unfortunately we couldn't see much more than the flickering lights of late night fishing boats, as it was dark by the time we got there.

The Kariba dam

In the morning we went to the popular Kariba dam. This massive dam was built back in the 1950's. It blocks the Zambezi River as it comes from Victoria Falls and reduces its strength as it proceeds towards Mozambique. The dam connects Zimbabwe and Zambia and it's used by both countries to generate a great amount of electricity. It's actually what creates lake Kariba - the largest man-made lake in Africa.

After checking out the dam, we went on a boat tour of the lake. It was a very cool sail boat owned by a local man. This turned out to be a bit of a game-drive/safari as well -- we saw a bunch of animals - hippos, elephants, zebras. The only animals popular in that area that we didn't see were crocodiles...

When we were ready to head back to Harare, we went to the main road to wait for the combi (bus). The traffic was very slow, we waited for a couple of hours and no busses came :) in fact we saw more elephants crossing the street than cars driving away from Kariba :) So, we gave up and went to have dinner. Then later on in the evening we took the overnight coach bus to Harare. Transportation seems to be a bit of a problem, so when going to Kariba I would recommend driving if possible. By the way if anyone reading this is planning a trip to Kariba, you should call Gideon (+263 774-109-936). That guy knows everyone and everything in Kariba, and I highly recommend him.

Check out all of my pictures from Kariba here.