Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is one of southern Africa’s most rewarding destinations for wildlife and landscape, and one of the most underrated. The infrastructure is thinner than Botswana or South Africa – electricity supply is inconsistent outside main cities, good lodges and camps run generators or solar – but the guiding quality is exceptional. Zimbabwe’s professional guiding tradition is longer and deeper than most of the continent, and the difference between an average guide and a Zimbabwe-trained guide is palpable in the field.

The US dollar is the practical currency for tourism. Bring cash; credit card acceptance is inconsistent and ATMs are unreliable outside Harare and Victoria Falls town.

Victoria Falls

Victoria Falls is the centrepiece. At peak flow in March and April, 500 million litres of water per minute drop 108 metres into the Batoka Gorge below. The spray rises high enough to be visible 40km away. The viewing path along the Zimbabwe cliff edge runs for 90 minutes and requires a waterproof because the “rain forest” on the opposite cliff stays permanently wet from the spray.

Entry to the Zimbabwe side costs around $30 USD. The Zambia side requires crossing the border (feasible as a day trip) and gives a different, more frontal perspective on the main falls.

Activities from Victoria Falls town: white-water rafting on the Zambezi (Grade 5 rapids, around $150 for a full day), bungee jumping from the 111-metre bridge ($160), helicopter flights over the falls (around $170 for 15 minutes). Sunset cruises on the upper Zambezi above the falls – where the river is calm and populated with hippos – run around $40-55 and are a genuinely pleasant way to end a day.

Hwange National Park

Zimbabwe’s largest national park is 100km from Victoria Falls town. The park holds one of Africa’s largest elephant populations. Wild dog sightings are more reliable here than almost anywhere else on the continent – Hwange’s pack territories are well-established and regularly encountered by guides.

The park’s main Zimbabwe Parks camps (Main Camp, Sinamatella) are budget options. Private lodges in the concessions around the park boundaries offer higher-end safari experiences with much better guiding.

Great Zimbabwe

The ruins near Masvingo in the south are the largest stone structures in sub-Saharan Africa, built between the 11th and 15th centuries by the Shona kingdom that controlled the gold trade to the Indian Ocean coast. The complex covers 722 hectares. The Great Enclosure, a roughly circular dry-stone wall 250 metres in circumference and up to 11 metres tall, was built without mortar – the stones fit together through careful selection and placement. Entry costs around $15 USD. A guide at the site significantly improves the visit.

Matobo National Park

The park near Bulawayo holds extraordinary granite kopje landscape – rounded domes and weathered boulders balanced in formations that look engineered. Cecil Rhodes is buried here at World’s View, a prominence he chose himself. The park has black and white rhinoceros, accessible on guided walks with rangers ($30-50 per person). San rock paintings, some thousands of years old, are found throughout the park.