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(LetQ You don't see road signs like this In Iowa or Baja. (Right) Each tour includes two days aboard a large houseboat similar to the Shenandoah that we spent time on. (Below) Sunset from the Buml Hills lodge overtooklng Lake Kariba. "Funny enough, at the same time, my brother, Colin, did the same thing up in Zimbabwe. So it was like he came together and mentioned the idea to me. I mentioned it to him, and it was like, 'Wow, what an awesome thing, sounds like a fantastic idea.'" So, the Albertyn brothers went to work and opened up a business hosting off-road riding tours in Africa called, Albee's African Bike Safari. And it's not all about riding; the Albertyns also want to share their appreciation of the African wildlife, nature and culture. To best illustrate these things, Greg and Colin chose to run their new venture in Zimbabwe, a place they feel best exemplifies what Africa is all about. "In South Africa, there are very few places that aren't national parks, where there are wild animals running around," Albertyn said. "You think about how many places in the entire (Below) There aren't many roadside cates or restaurants in the bush, so chase trucks meet the bikes and riders at predetermined spots tor picnic lunches or late breakfasts. world where you can actually ride a dirt bike in areas where there are elephants and lions. There's practically nowhere." Except in Zimbabwe, so, it wasn't a hard decision to base their tours there instead of South Africa. To help get the word out, Albertyn invited journalists to participate in one of his tours, and I was one of the lucky ones who got to attend. Getting to Zimbabwe takes a while. From Los Angeles (via Atlanta and Johannesburg), it took over 23 hours of traveling to reach our starting point at the Masuwe Lodge in Victoria Falls. The lodging that the Albertyns utilize on their tours are definitely first-class all the way; they might not be in the same league as the Waldorf Astoria, but they are nice and comfortable and are designed to convey the feeling that you're close to nature in the African bush. As we discovered that night and each one thereafter, Africa's wildlife really comes alive after dusk, and nature provides shows that dwarf anything man offers. Victoria Falls is really a simple stop-over, though the tour of the waterfall by that name - which is larger in every way than Niagara Falls and the sunset "booze cruise" boat ride upriver from the falls are enjoyable ways to eliminate jet lag. The meat of Albee's Safari is yet to come. Much of the tour involves Lake Kariba, which was once a huge valley with the Zambezi River flowing through it. To feed the power needs cue I e of a growing region (Zimbabwe and neighboring Zambia), however, a multi-national team constructed a dam, the largest in the world at time of completion in 1960. (This meant relocating approximately 50,000 tribal people who were very reluctant to move.) In Operation Noah, officials even captured and relocated about 7000 animals, reptiles and birds trapped on small islands that formed (and were ulti· mately swallowed up by the rising water). Some of those animals rescued off the islands included 44 rhinos; unfortunately, not all of the animals accepted man's attempt to help them off the island and eventually perished. Lake Kariba soon reached a size of nearly 175 miles long, 20 miles wide and 370-feet deep, which made it the world's largest man-made lake at that time; currently, it's the fifth-largest reservoir in the world. Today, Kariba serves almost as an anchor for Albee's Safari. A short chartered plane ride from Victory Falls put us at the dirt airstrip on the grounds of Katete Lodge, where we spent the next two njghts. Our rooms at Katete provided spectacular lakeside views, and the "game drives" at dawn, dusk and night had us traveling through Perhaps this chameleon can tum Suzuki-yellow. n e _ s • JULv17,2002 41