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Wed. July 8, 1998 - Today we started cycling at 6:15 am without a proper breakfast. We then had a breakfast of white bread and butter at 8am followed by a lunch of brown rice and beans (cold can) at 10:30 am. The cycling was tough but very pretty going through a lot of hills and little mountains. We were all very strong on our bikes that day. The nice scenery made it real easy to pedal through the tough terrain. We also saw a lot of sculpture on the side of the road for sale. We got to our destination, Dete (Hwange National Park Entrance) at 12:15 PM. We then had an incredible 3 1/2 hour game drive where we saw: elephants, giraffe, kudu, cape buffalo, birds, and lions. We watched the elephants feeding for over an hour. There are 4 or 5 cute little baby elephants with 2 no more than 2 to 4 weeks old. We saw a male unattached to this elephant troupe try to make his way into the troupe. Typically a troupe will have just 2 males one dominant and an assistant, and the other males will all be very young. This lone single guy tried to mount a few females. They said no way. He went away with a sad rejected look on his face. He even soiled on himself a bit. I swore I could see him crying. Boy, It's tough being a single guy , no matter what species you are. I empathized with him. The drive ended at the watering hole where we saw all the animals gathered. There were literally a few hundred of them. It looked like the Serengheti with the sun setting too. The giraffes have to really bend their front legs in order to be able to get their neck down into that water. It must be tough on them. It reminded me of doing a downward facing dog in Yoga. We watched the animals drink for half an hour. Then we picked up a dinner to go and ate it at the backpackers hotel we were staying at. It was quite good. I loved the backpacker hotels we stayed in. They were always full of such interesting travelers. At Vumba Mountain we also stayed in a backpacker hotel. The trip is almost over. I enjoyed it a lot but am looking forward to a return to my normal food and my own space.
