Every time I speak to Michiel Roos , a dentist friend of mine from Musina, he tells me tales of a place across the border in Zimbabwe where he and a couple of friends go to fish on an idillic private gamefarm and I always listen in awe of the big fish they have caught and the even bigger ones that they often see and on numerous occations I have been invited to join them. But owning a dental laboratory has its own tiedowns and its mostly not practical to down tools and drive up for the weekend from Pretoria to go fish just for the saturday and return on the sunday as they have the luxury to do.
We have been talking about this for more than three or four years, and to honest I have more saltwater blood running in my veins than freshwater ,so if I had a chance to go fish on a long weekend I'd run down to the coast somewhere to wet the boat and stretch the lines...but that has changed after this weekend!
Myself , Bok(Willebok on Sealine) and Tjaart Kruger left the lab friday afternoon in a mad rush after a blurred week has passed in getting everything ready, from sorting and buying tackle, charging deepcycle batteries and getting all the food and drink stuff together cause the type of camping we were going to do required total self sufficiency because there is no accommodation ,electricity or running fresh water close to the dam.
We met up with Michiel at his home on fridaynight and he told us that the borderpost is chaotic so we shouldnt go to early. They often go through the bridge on a saturday to go fish and experience has taught them that its better to miss the early morning rush . We arrived at Beitbridge at 09h00 and was shocked to see the absolute chaos that enfolded in front of us. Thousands and thousands of people standing in a mass that doesnt even start to resemble a queue were pushing and shoving to get to the immigration tent. I asked some people who were more or less halfway down the crowd how long have they been standing there and to my horror they said they have been in the "queue" for more than 5 hours already.
This I'm telling you because for the next hour we couldnt see our way through this mess and at some point we almost decided to give up and turn around to go home(and then Zim would never have seen me again!) But a blessing indeed was that one of Michiels patients saw him and sorted us out in no time , but we still took 4 hours to get through! We talked to another couple whom had just made it through and they said they were in the queue from 03h30 that morning...it was now 13h00!
At last we took the almost 250kms to the farm near Bulawayo . We immediatly got onto the water to catch the last rays of light and got a couple of bass up to 2kgs. We set up the generator and while pitching our tents we watched the last 15min of the Springbok's game.
Onto us dawned a picture that could hardly be descibed in words...the beautifull sunrise on the koppies with baboons barking at us as we silently slipped the boats into the water
We have been talking about this for more than three or four years, and to honest I have more saltwater blood running in my veins than freshwater ,so if I had a chance to go fish on a long weekend I'd run down to the coast somewhere to wet the boat and stretch the lines...but that has changed after this weekend!
Myself , Bok(Willebok on Sealine) and Tjaart Kruger left the lab friday afternoon in a mad rush after a blurred week has passed in getting everything ready, from sorting and buying tackle, charging deepcycle batteries and getting all the food and drink stuff together cause the type of camping we were going to do required total self sufficiency because there is no accommodation ,electricity or running fresh water close to the dam.
We met up with Michiel at his home on fridaynight and he told us that the borderpost is chaotic so we shouldnt go to early. They often go through the bridge on a saturday to go fish and experience has taught them that its better to miss the early morning rush . We arrived at Beitbridge at 09h00 and was shocked to see the absolute chaos that enfolded in front of us. Thousands and thousands of people standing in a mass that doesnt even start to resemble a queue were pushing and shoving to get to the immigration tent. I asked some people who were more or less halfway down the crowd how long have they been standing there and to my horror they said they have been in the "queue" for more than 5 hours already.
This I'm telling you because for the next hour we couldnt see our way through this mess and at some point we almost decided to give up and turn around to go home(and then Zim would never have seen me again!) But a blessing indeed was that one of Michiels patients saw him and sorted us out in no time , but we still took 4 hours to get through! We talked to another couple whom had just made it through and they said they were in the queue from 03h30 that morning...it was now 13h00!
At last we took the almost 250kms to the farm near Bulawayo . We immediatly got onto the water to catch the last rays of light and got a couple of bass up to 2kgs. We set up the generator and while pitching our tents we watched the last 15min of the Springbok's game.
Onto us dawned a picture that could hardly be descibed in words...the beautifull sunrise on the koppies with baboons barking at us as we silently slipped the boats into the water
. I knew as well we had to leave early monday morning to get to the border early to avoid another chaotic day but we decided to take it as it comes cause no matter what the border post had in stall for us we couldnt be phased as this was already a trip dreams are made off...chirps like "border post ...what border post ?" were heard so we decided to fish from 06h00 to 07h00 and then start to break up camp so we can be at Beitbridge no later than 10.
