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Adventures with Kingsley Holgate (17)

Adventures with Kingsley Holgate (17)

Date: 2016-07-22
We can taste victory, the Great African Rift Valley Expedition team can hardly believe that after a year of zig-zagging that great tear in the earth's crust, it's just a few days to go, a story best told from the scribbles in Kingsley's sweat-stained expedition journals

One Landy behind the other in the dust we follow the rutted dirt track that runs between Mount Gorongosa and the park. We were last here three years ago. Now logging, charcoal production and slash and burn agriculture are taking their toll. There's simply too much population pressure along this section of the unfenced Gorongosa park boundary and to make it worse, everything is burnt black by end of winter bush fires. It's getting dark, we can't find a quiet place to camp. Eventually settle on an old disused quarry site. The mozzies are thick. You can tell it's getting to the end of a long journey. We've forgotten to buy bread or maize meal. No rice or pasta in the 'grub box.' So Mike and Big Deon cook up a sauce to go over the last nyama - it's inedible! We all get the giggles. 24 Hours to go. We must empty the calabash into Lake Urema by sunset tomorrow. I lie on top of my bedroll. I can feel the heat coming up from the ground, there's the familiar smell of mozzie spray and the sounds of the night. 'Shovashova Mike' leaves by bicycle at dawn - we'll meet him at the main entrance gate to Gorongosa. After a yearlong Rift Valley journey, this is it!

Soon we're crossing the Urema plains. We park the Landies. Mike pushes his bicycle forward, we follow on foot with the much travelled calabash. Crocodiles slide into Lake Urema, waterbuck in their hundreds move across the setting sun, a big male kudu looks up proudly, warthog scatter, tails erect. Whilst still at camp the environmental scientist had asked us to please boil the calabash water before emptying it. 'Have to be careful,' he said, 'don't want our Lake Urema infected with some Danakil gremlins from the Horn of Africa or strange bugs from somewhere!' so with the cameras clicking, we empty the symbolic decorated Zulu calabash of water taken from more than 30 Great African Rift Valley lakes and rivers. It glugs slowly into Gorongosa's Lake Urema. The adrenalin drains from our bodies, our world first Land Rover journey to follow Africa's Great Rift Valley from Djibouti on the Horn of Africa to Gorongosa in Mozambique is now complete.