We climbed into the safari vehicles for our first game drive. It was nice and cool with just enough breeze as we went down the dirt track at 10 mph. Within 2 minutes, our guide, Victor, stopped and pointed out leopard tracks in the road dust. These guys are amazing to spot this stuff while driving.
Zimbabwe is an economic disaster. The Chinese loaned them money to develop the exploitation of their coal. When they couldn’t repay, no problem, we’ll just take over the coal industry. We passed numerous trucks hauling coal, much of which gets shipped to China to increase their carbon load. We passed a brand new power plant that was belching a huge column of brown smoke into the air. After we turned off the main road to the park access road, there was the open strip mine. Black coal dust everywhere. A multi-acre dump littered with the carcasses of hundreds of defunct vehicles and heavy equipment, abandoned there because it didn’t cost the Chinese anything to dump it there. Worst of all, this was former National Park land that corrupt government officials had leased to the Chinese coal interests.
We climbed into the safari vehicles for our first game drive. It was nice and cool with just enough breeze as we went down the dirt track at 10 mph. Within 2 minutes, our guide, Victor, stopped and pointed out leopard tracks in the road dust. These guys are amazing to spot this stuff while driving.
Zimbabwe is an economic disaster. The Chinese loaned them money to develop the exploitation of their coal. When they couldn’t repay, no problem, we’ll just take over the coal industry. We passed numerous trucks hauling coal, much of which gets shipped to China to increase their carbon load. We passed a brand new power plant that was belching a huge column of brown smoke into the air. After we turned off the main road to the park access road, there was the open strip mine. Black coal dust everywhere. A multi-acre dump littered with the carcasses of hundreds of defunct vehicles and heavy equipment, abandoned there because it didn’t cost the Chinese anything to dump it there. Worst of all, this was former National Park land that corrupt government officials had leased to the Chinese coal interests.