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written by Kris Griffiths
updated 8.09.2021
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written by Kris Griffiths
updated 8.09.2021
It’s been a tragedy for the people of Zimbabwe that the country has garnered so much unfavourable publicity over the last ten years, with headlines ranging from its controversial land redistribution programme to the ensuing collapsed economy.
In the last few years, however, it has made a steady recovery following a new currency, a fairer power-sharing government, international airlines returning to its capital and the EU having long lifted its travel warnings. This upturn has helped sow the seeds of a tourist renaissance, with travellers now returning in increasing numbers to this reborn destination, rejuvenating Zimbabwe’s tourism industry. Here are five reasons why you should join them.
Wildlife in Hwange © Shutterstock
Hwange, Zimbabwe's largest game reserve (roughly 15,000 square kilometres), is home to more than 400 bird species and a hundred species of mammal, including thousands of elephants who trudge a migratory route from here to neighbouring Botswana every year. Meanwhile, the second-largest reserve Gonarezhou (meaning “elephant's tusk” in the local Shona language) forms part of the even bigger Greater Limpopo ecosystem incorporating Kruger in South Africa and Mozambique's Limpopo, between which animals can move freely.
Between the two reserves you are virtually guaranteed intimate game-drive encounters with zebra, giraffe, buffalo, baboons and elephants by the hundred. Only the sneakier big cats may elude your camera lens if you’re unlucky.
This UNESCO World Heritage Site, after which the nation was named, was the royal capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries and has been inhabited for over a thousand years. Covering an area of nearly 2000 acres it offers photography opportunities that could fill a whole memory card, particularly its lofty monolithic acropolis which can be seen for miles, and the elliptical Great Enclosure with its unique conical tower monument.
You can spend a whole day wandering amid its ruins, climbing the acropolis and hanging out with the resident baboons. And again, with few tourists on the scene (compared to Zimbabwe’s 90s boom years) you can pretty much have the run of the place on quieter days.
Matobo Hills © Pixabay
The sea of hills themselves are a profusion of distinctive granite landforms long exerting a powerful influence over the region. Their huge boulders and caves provide abundant natural shelters, occupied by humans since the Stone Age, and artistically inspiring a large number of them to draw upon the rocks.
The rear wall of Nswatugi, one of its most famous caves, is emblazoned with a gallery of animals dexterously painted around 2000 years ago, and upon a nearby hill lies the grave of Cecil Rhodes, the founder of Rhodesia before it became Zimbabwe, who chose to be buried here so he could eternally overlook the national park he cherished. You really have to visit the arresting landscape yourself to understand why.
Its wide tree-lined avenues are skirted by numerous examples of early Victorian buildings which the city council maintains as heritage sites. Their faded colonial facades lend Bulawayo the feel of a frontier town, while the interior of the largely unchanged Exchange Bar – Zimbabwe's oldest licensed pub – completes the effect. It’s where Rhodes conducted his business deals, inside its panelled walls still lined with taxidermied animal heads and sepia photographs – perfect for an evocative beer stop.
The nation’s best museum is also here – the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe - offering a compelling visual digest of the country’s natural and political history. Bulawayo is in fact the nearest big city to Hwange National Park, the Matobo Hills and Victoria Falls, making it one of the best places to stay as a base or central itinerary stop.
Rainbow at Victoria Falls
If you want to get properly involved, its waters and steep gorge are a perennial playground for thrill-seekers, with activities encompassing abseiling, white-water rafting, bungeejumping or soaring over it all in a chopper or microlight.
This World Heritage Site captivates visitors as much today as it did explorer David Livingstone in the nineteenth century, and its surrounding area has been declared a National Park to protect against excessive commercialisation.
Over the last ten years many visitors have limited their Zimbabwe experience to Victoria Falls alone, but hopefully now, as the tourism industry expands, they will continue to branch out to witness Zimbabwe’s full array of natural and historical wonders, and breathe life into its healing economy. It’s nothing less than its people deserve.
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written by Kris Griffiths
updated 8.09.2021
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