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

September 13: We took a morning game run, then stayed around the lodge until our midafternoon
flight to Lake Kariba. Kariba is a man-made lake, more than 100 miles long, 30 miles wide, and (in
places) 1500 feet deep. When it was created some 30 years ago, it literally put a dent in the
earth...but unlike most projects of this type, it didn't foul up the ecosystem. It not only provides
power for most of Zimbabwe and Zambia, it is also the biggest damned reservoir you ever saw, as
well as a huge vacation area bringing in all kinds of hard currency. They also stocked the lake with
fish, left them alone for a few years while they grew fruitful and multiplied, and now pull some eight
tons of fish per day out of it. We knew all this before we got there -- but until you fly over the lake,
until you look out both windows of your plane and see that water extending almost to infinity, you
can't begin to appreciate the magnitude of the project. If the Victoria Falls are an awe-inspiring work
of God (or Whoever), Lake Kariba is an equally awe-inpiring work of Man. We arrived at the
Caribbea Bay Hotel, probably the least impressive member of the Sun chain, in late afternoon, and
while Carol was unpacking, I scouted around to find us a restaurant -- and came up with Pedro's in
the basement of the hotel, an authentic Mexican restaurant in the heart of Africa.

September 14: In the morning we took a ferry to the Sanyati Lodge, on the far side of the lake. The
landscape, far from being the flat land that usually leads up to a lakeshore, was formerly the tops of
some mountains (remember: this is a man-made lake), and we climbed about 150 steps up to our
cabin, which had a gorgeous view of the Sanyati Gorge, a channel between two mountain tops that
rose up out of the water. Our hosts were Hans, a former farmer who Carol declares is the best
birder she's even met, and his new bride, Diana. We asked Diana to radio ahead and find out what
time we had to catch a charter plane to our next destination, Chikwenya Camp in the Mana Pools
Reserve; she did so, and reported that because of some foul- up we had been scheduled to arrive at
Mana Pools on August 16, not September 16, and that Chikwenya was sold out. We told her to tell
them we had paid vouchers and planned to show up anyway, and it was their job to find someplace
to put us. They reluctantly agreed, and Diana mentioned in passing that Sanyati had been unable to
reconfirm our arrival but since they had been paid in advance had simply set aside our cabin and
assumed we were coming. (I just love making travel arrangements in the Third World.) Since Sanyati
is a mountaintop surrounded on all sides by water, game drives and walks were out of the question,
and we selected from among a number of boats that Hans had. The seascape was positively
unearthly: tops of thousands of trees poked up out of the water, and because it was in the mid-90s,
the evaporation caused a haze that obscured the horizon; certainly no alien world could appear more
exotic than this, and I will find a way to appropriate it for one of my books. We went along the coast
of the Matusadona National Park and saw thousands of animals drinking and walking along the
shoreline, then went back and climbed all those damned stairs again. I had just gotten to sleep when
Wellington, the camp cat, decided he would enjoy mousing my toes, a processs that continued all
night; since my own cats, Nick and Nora, find endless fascination in keeping me awake, I felt right at
home.

September 15: We took two rides in a pontoon: a morning ride into the Sanyati Gorge itself, an
afternoon ride to Matusadona, where we got within ten yards of five bull elephants who spent almost
an hour bathing and frolicking in the water. Wellington felt deserted and bit harder than usual during
the night.

September 16: We flew up to Mana Pools in the Zambezi Valley, where we were driven to
Chikwenya Camp and found out that two couples who were arriving by canoe had run up against a
hard current and would be two days late, which meant that we got our accomodation after all. This
was a bush camp to end all bush camps: elephants felt free to wander through it at all times of the day
and night, and while we have frequently had small lizards in our tents (actually a beneficial