"Mike Resnick - Between the Sunlight and Thunder (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

Veronica and her kitchen staff crazy. Jeff and his associate, David, never went anywhere without
their rifles, which, they explained, were never used against game but were reserved for poachers.
(Mana Pools is the park where most of the Rhino Wars have occurred: so far they've killed over 150
Zambian pochers in two years. Unfortunately, they're breaking about even: one poacher per lost
rhino. Since they've only got about 2,000 black rhinos left in the whole country, and there are
ten
million hungry Zambians across the Zambezi River, the mathematics of the situation don't look
promising.)

September 17: We took a boat down the Zambezi to the one sight Carol has always wanted to see:
a colony of nesting carmine bee-eaters. Even I, a non-birder, couldn't help but be impressed by


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10,000 colorful birds flocking and nesting in thousands of holes along the high banks of the
river.
Then, when it was time to return for breakfast, Jeff decided to take a little walk. Around an
island. A
5-mile-in-circumference island. We ran into buffalo and kudu and elephant, and got home just
before
noon. I thought Veronica was going to kill him, although he does this every three or four days and
she
really ought to be used to it by now. (In the States, he'd be the kind of guy who walked down the
driveway to fetch the paper, disappeared for three weeks, and couldn't understand why everyone
was so upset when he finally showed up.) One of the guests was an elderly lady from Texas, who
had come to Zimbabwe to judge a cattle show, and decided to see a little of the country before
leaving. If she was interested in anything beside cattle and barbeque sauce, she kept it a secret.
She
continually walked away from camp on her own (and this camp was surrounded by more wild
animals than any within memory), she wore sweaters and panty-hose in 98-degree weather, and she
complained non-stop. Finally her long-suffering companion simply locked her in her cabin for the
afternoon, and a golden silence descended upon the rest of Chikwenya.

September 18: We were a little late arriving at the landing strip -- elephants blocked our way for
half
an hour -- but the plane waited for us, dropped us off at Lake Kariba, and from there we caught a
flight back to Harare, where this time Meikles Hotel honored our voucher. It had been excactly
three
weeks since we were there, and the change was electrifying: all the jacarandas were in bloom, and
the whole city was a riot of spring color. (Yes, spring: this is south of the Equator.) I
celebrated
getting away from our snake and our outdoor plumbing by taking two showers, donning a coat and
tie, and having Lobster Thermidor at the Bagatelle.

September 19: This morning we picked up a car and driver for the remainder of our stay in
Zimbabwe. The car was a semi-new Mitsubishi; the driver was Lazarus, a somber type who could
find something depressing about winning the Irish Sweepstakes. We drove from Harare to the
Inyanga Mountains in the east of the country, and as we began ascending them the fog closed in