By far, my most exciting transport experience has been flying with acrobatic pilots, which I have been privileged to enjoy twice: Over the Arizona desert with Gil Monte, a flight instructor for Lufthansa and once off the coast of New York, with Air National Guard show performer John Klatt. But I don’t think I was ever in as much danger as I was on Thursday when I arrived in Zimbabwe and decided to ride in an open-air, game-viewing vehicle through the streets of Harare.
When seated two feet above the roof of the cab, tree branches or anything else you might otherwise blithely drive under, is now just one missed “duck” away from smacking you in the face. And let me tell you the thorn trees are pretty impressive.
Luckily, I was accompanied on the spacious – but in all other ways insubstantially safety-equipped – seat by Jonathan Marks a New Yorker who had just driven a fire truck across twenty-two hundred kilometers of African highway as part of a charitable donation of two pumpers by African travel specialist, Diane Ebzery Lobel and her Zimbabwe-born husband Peter. (About which, more later.)
Jon had to continually remind me to get down before the low-hanging branches hit me full on because I was too busy getting an eyeful of my first view of sub Saharan Africa.
But I’m getting ahead of the story. When I arrived in Harare, Peter and Jon met me at the airport in a proper sedan. We went straight away to the farm of Peter’s friends Craig and Roxy Danckwerts where Roxy has made a home for orphaned wildlife.
Seated on the spacious veranda we could watch Bobby the baboon beg for carrot cake, while the giraffes munched on cabbage heads and several lions and cheetahs did what they do so naturally, act intimidating and blase by turns.
In a suspension of good judgment, I allowed Roxy’s partner Peeps Reid to talk me into going into the cheetah area and give the big cats a little pat.
Roxy and Peeps have plans for the animal sanctuary which they have already turned into a by-appointment wildlife encounter for the public called Wild is Life. Visitors can buy a ticket for afternoon tea on the patio or an evening of champagne and pizza while viewing the lions.
Well, we couldn’t stay there all day besides, I didn’t need a lot of convincing to excuse myself from the cheetahs’ presence. We hadn’t driven more than a few hundred yards down the road when two giant potholes – Boom! Boom! – flattened both tires on the driver’s side of Peter’s car. When Peeps came to the rescue with the Land Rover with the upstairs seats it took my inner child about two seconds to call “shotty”.
That is where I sat all the way into Harare, wind battering my face and blowing back my hair as I held on for dear life and in all other ways made a spectacle of myself over which the residents of Zimbabwe’s capital city could take minor amusement. Thanks, folks. Glad to help out in any way I can.
So yeah, my first few hours in Zimbabwe were marked by a notable lack of caution and decorum. It was the kind of transport experience I find extremely moving.
Author of The New York Times bestseller, The Crash Detectives, I am also a journalist, public speaker and broadcaster specializing in aviation and travel.
you captured the scene Christine.. want to hear more. Jonathan