Adventures of Dean and Sophie

The drive out from Chimanimani was a long one but in comparison with Mozambique the roads were amazing and the scenery was nice too, with baobabs a plenty, kopjies, and little groups of the classic Zim thatched mud huts. The huge arch of the Birchenough bridge came as a bit of a surprise after the kilometers of mud huts. As we approached Masvingo the GPS sent us on a scenic shortcut around Lake Kyle. 30kms of dirt road through what I sure would have been very nice scenery, had it been light enough to see anything. We finally arrived at Great Zim in the dark and set up our camp.

In the morning we explored the ruins and the museums, getting some interesting talks from the guides. The main attraction is the great enclosure. A complex surrounded by enourmous walls, a couple meters thick and probably 12m high, made from granite blocks and entirely without mortar. The ruins are said to have been left by the old Shona civilisation a few hundred years ago.

After having our fill of ruins, we continued on yet another long drive, this time to Bulawayo, the second largest city in Zimbabwe.

Great Zimbabwe Ruins

Another one of my favourite places in Zimbabwe, the Chimanimani National Park is an area in the south of the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe. It is an area of rolling grassy hills, bounded on the east and west by tall mountains of rugged weather carved stone. Throughout the park are numerous little streams running with crystal clear water, and many of the huge rocks strewn across the landscape have been carved out by weather to form caves, many big enough to off shelter. It is an amazing place to walk.

With Annie not being a happy camper like Soph and I, we planned for only 3 nights in the mountains. Even this amount of time she was a bit concerned about, but we assured her that it wouldn’t kill her. After the first day of hiking we reached Terry’s Cave, where we spent the next two nights. The cave is carved out of the underside of a huge boulder, amoungst many other huge boulders. Nearby is a beautiful stream of clear gold tinted water with pools big enough to bath in. All about the rocks are intricately carved by the weather. I could spend days just exploring all of the caves, crevices and huge deep chasms between the rocks. Our first night the rain comes down all night and the wind blows unrelentingly, but we are all very snug in our sleepingbags tucked in the back of the cave, thankful for the huge rock around us.

The next day we spend exploring the area. In the afternoon the clouds came down again and we could see the rocky peaks poking out the the mist dramatically.

After two nights we set off northwards. This is a fairly flat walk through plains on which the strange gnarled rocks sit like sentinels, all the while the higher peaks loom above us threateningly. We pass a stunningly beautiful creek where the golden water runs over clean white rock, falling down into quite a deep cocacola coloured pool. We are compelled to stop for a quick swim here. At lunch time we reached our destination, Peterhouse Cave. There is a smaller cave here, right on the main river that flows through the area, the Bundi. Slightly downstream the river tumbles down into a large deep pool, this is Peterhouse Falls. The pool offers one of the best natural cliff jumps I have ever come across. It  is wide and very deep, the depth making the tinted water appear pitch black. On the one side a jagged wall of rock rises maybe 25m above the pool. Its from here that one can jump, with the waterfall thundering below. Although its quite safe (don’t try this at home kids), the dark, choppy, cold water, thundering waterfall, the ledge below that obscures your view of the landing spot, and the sheer height make it a very very scary jump. Its almost a spiritual thing for me now, I am compelled do it each time I go to the Chimanimanis.

On our last day we hiked up out of the valley, past the beautiful Digby’s Pool. Here as in many of the other streams, the rock is washed clean by the flowing water, revealing seams of shiny metallic rock. Into the pool the water flows down the rock in a beautiful widening cascade. Up Up we went, past the National Parks Hut and onto the Moon plateau. Our path winds amongst more amazing carved rocks. Many of them have strange craters carved out of them, making them look very moon like. Other rocks stand in ranks of rocks all pointing up to a certain point in the sky. It could easily be a scene out of the Lord of the Rings. Its here that navigation usually  gets a bit tricky. There are a lot more paths than are indicated by our very simple map. In the end we ended up going down the wrong pass and spending a lot longer getting back then we needed to. Nonetheless it was a beautiful trip with even Annie admitting that she really enjoyed it. We all had a well deserved shower before stopping at Chimanimani Hotel for a cooked meal.

Now all we had to do was drive the 3 hours to our next stop, The Great Zimbabwe Ruins.

Chimanimani Hike
Part of Zimbabwe’s eastern highands, on the border with Mozambique

We were now in the Chirinda area. An area of absolutely beautiful forest. I found it to be similar to the Bvumba forest, but the canopy is higher, the trees bigger and older. Coming from the border quite late in the day we were keen to find a place to stay. We’d seen on one of our maps the obscure marking, “Big Tree” and had seen a couple of signs saying the same. What was this Big Tree? We stopped to ask a couple of locals walking along the road. “Ah Yes, Its a BIG Tree”, “Aaahh, I suspected as such. Have you seen it?”, “Ah Yes, Its very enourmous!”. Sounds good, we follow the track indicated and soon come to a car park. Its flat and there is even a braai area, albiet somewhat overgrown, so we decide to camp there for the night. In the dying night we take a quick walk to find the fabled tree. It turns out to be a big tree, the legends are true. Its a huge tree reaching up above the canopy, with ancient roots spreading out into the underbush.

That night, trying to finish off some of the cans we’d inherited from the Morrungulo food, we dine on tinned asparagus and butter beans with tomato, served on water crackers. It goes down well. After dinner we sat in the dark and watched while hundreds of blinking fireflies layed trails of dashes in the forest around us.

In the morning after another walk in the forest we head to the closest town, Chipinge, where we stop for a new tyre and some supplies, then we drive on to the next stage of our adventure, a hike in the Chimanimani mountains.

Chirinda Forest
Forests on the border of Zimbabwe, near the towns of Mt Selinda in Zimbabwe and Espungabera in Mozambique.

The next day we set out with the intention of returning to Zim via one of the more remote border posts, near Espungabera / Mt Selinda. I was a bit unsure of this route to say the least. Apart from the fact that I wasn’t sure if the border post was actually operational, it lies about 200km off the main tarred road that we had driven down on. Having seen the state of that road, which is the main artery down the length of the country, with its section of 60km of bumpy dirt, I was  not filled with confidence in the state of the less important roads. We decided to play it by ear and see what it looked like at the turn off.

So, a couple of hours later we arrived at a dirt road that we hoped would get us to the border. We stopped there for a while for some ummming and aahhing, trying to work out how adventurous we were feeling. It wasn’t long before a truck came down the road so we waved it down and managed to prod some broken words out of the driver to the effect that yes it would take us to the border, so we decided to give it a go.

The road turned out to be fine for most of the way and took us through some really beautiful bush. I was very happy to be on the adventurous route rather than the boring tar road. It was dotted with more tiny villages and towns. At one point I was very excited to see marula fruits scattered on the road, so I stopped to collect a few. They have a really nice sour, tangy taste.

With the GPS seeming to know where it was taking us and the road not too bad we were going along happily. Just then we came round a bend to see a big river with what looked at first glace to be half a bridge on it. My heart fell. On second glance though I realised that it was some kind of ferry contraption, with a barge and cables with a winch. There were african kids jumping off it and swimming, women washing their clothes and people in dugout canoes rowing past, but noone seemed to be in charge of the contraption. So we edged closer and after a brief look we drove up onto it and I got out to try and work out how to activate the thing. It was all very exciting to come to such an interesting means to continue our journey. Soon a bunch of guys appeared, apparently amused by my close investigation of the winch handle. Chatting in Portuguese they climbed onto the barge and with one hand each they took hold of the handle and started winding it. The barge slowly moved across the river. One of them gave me a ticket and asked for 10mets (30c). We eventually reached the other side and continued on our way.

Later on the terrain became more hilly and road began to get a bit more rocky and a bit more windy. With only a few km to go I started hearing a noise from the car. We got out to see that one of our tires was absolutely shredded. With the smell of cooked rubber in our noses Soph and I got to work changing the tire while Annie made us some tea. It wasn’t long before we were off again, praying that we wouldn’t get another flat. We didn’t fortunately, despite sliding off the road and into a rather deep gulley at one stage.

At about 5pm we were standing nervously at the customs desk. “Where is yoa freeeege?” the chubby officer asks. Oh No. In Morrungulo we had swapped vehicles and documents with my dad. He had brought down a bar fridge to keep our drinks cold. We hadn’t thought it worthwhile to cart 100kg of fridge all over the country to keep our drinks cold so it had gone back with my dad, but now we had a customs form boldly declaring a bar fridge. He shrugs his shoulders, slouching even further back into his chair, “You must go back and fetch it…”. “Thats impossible, is there anything else we can do?”. Silence. He points to the declared value. So begins the tedious process of negotiating how big a “fine” we have to pay. “No sorry, we don’t have $200 with us”. In the end we grudgingly cough up $50 and move through. In Mozambique its hard not to feel as if everyone is out to get you with the police and their ridiculous fines, officials wanting bribes and scammers on the streets all wanting a pieve of our hard earned cash. So, believe it or not, it is with relief that we step back into Zimbabwe. The officials are friendly and helpful and speak English. We even jokingly ask if they have any cold cokes and to our amazement they she brings out some cold Fantas to sell us! Happily we drive on the last few km to Mt Selinda as the late afternoon light lights up the picturesque hilly countryside.

the road out, mozambique

Vilanculos is the biggest Mozambican town we saw, with a fair bit of infrastructure in the town centre, just about all of it Portuguese. It even has a bit of a sprawl of suburbs, but again the houses are mostly simple huts in yards fenced with grass or palm fronds. Not knowing where we wanted to stay we drove around for a bit and eventually ended up on the beach. At this point the tide was out, with sandbanks stretching for miles out into the shallow, turqoise water. There we found a quaint little backpackers called Zombie Cucumber and, not too keen to have to set up camp again, decided to stay there. It turned out to be a pleasant stay with the exception of the unfriendly manager.

Soph and I spent the afternoon exploring the bustling market which seemed to stretch forever under a low roof made from countless bits of plastic, cloth and tin, all very dodgily held together with wire and rope. The african printed fabrics being sold were really nice and we bought a few. Later we set out to try and find a restaurant as the nasty Zombie lady had forbidden us to cook on the premises. After quite a search we did eventually find a pizza place, although it took us across most of Villanculos via dodgy sand roads through the suburbs.

vilanculos