Bulawayo Rainbow Hotel

Time to leave Vic Falls. Up around 6.30 - no hot water so skipped the shower part and got straight into packing up. Oh the joys. I HATE packing up the locker. That and cook group although Suze, Sarah and I do have a good laugh. The cooking parts fine, it's the shopping I dislike, especially when the choice is minimal. Can't wait to be able to buy what I want and eat when I want. Simple pleasures. So after sad goodbyes and puppy cuddles from Misty.... she ...

Our next stop was Bulawayo, Zim's second city. We arrived at a camp called Burke's Paradise full of expectation and it didn't disappoint. It had a lounge room with sofas, a tv and a bunch of movies on video. Also, someone appeared with a pizza menu and I'm sure i saw tears in some eyes! That night we gorged on pizza and wine and fell asleep in front of the telly - bliss. The following day some people went on a rhino safari but we decided to take a look ...

... with a back-up generator and very friendly staff. Ian met us there and gave us a breifing of the adventure we would have in the morning. We were told that we would go see ancient Bushman paintings in Matupo National Park, and then we would go and "play". He said we would be walking in to see Rhinos, perhaps getting as close as a few metres of the white rhinos, but that with the black rhinos we would have to stay back a bit ...

I have just had the most fantastic & unforgetable couple of days. We're at Antelope Park, which was set up in 1979 & its main purpose is lion breeding. It's a beautiful campsite set out in the middle of the bush. They have 61 lions, 4 breeding males & 10 breeding females who they use to breed cubs. The hand rear & train them to hunt & survive before releasing them back into the wild. Our first morning we did a lion ...

Danayi and her family had planned a trip to Lake Kariba in northern Zimbabwe, and it was time for me to get to Victoria Falls. Since I was a small child, there were three images that consistently danced through my head when I though of Africa. One was of deep, dark jungles where trees bent towards dark rivers covered in mossy vines, and eyes peered out from the darkness while strange noises rent the night air. Another was of plains of grass, broken by ...

We had to leave the adorable little lions behind and headed to Bulawayo. There we went on a fabulous trip into Matobo National Park where we saw some cave paintings, learned about the medicinal properties of the plants and climbed to the top of a crazy rock formation made of solidified magma ...

... fuel costs more to buy then they earn. We coiuld see the inflation ourselves...we were there for 2 weeks, and when we first arrived our black market rate was 6500 zim dolalrs to the US$. When we left, some people were getting $10,000. Unbelieveable. Yet this so far has been my favourite country...I would definately recommend it as a holiday destination as long as you know how to work the balck market and to never use your credit card!

... geology, and eons of erosion have created some very strange formations. Huge granite boulders arranged in improbable heaps pepper the landscape. Many look like giant hands must have stacked them in the whimsical towers. I've never seen anything like this place, absolutely stunning! Some of the caves in the area also contain ancient paintings thought to be over a hundred thousand years old. In the middle of all this there is a wild game preserve with many of the ...

... with a pink ribbon in her hair... what a whack-job! (she was a British Ex-Patriot). I would've stayed an extra day to rest before the nest bus ride but couldn't take any more PINK! I gotta say... the public transport in Mozambique is the hardest I have ever experienced. Not only is it packed (all African public transport is) but it is agononoizingly slow. Also, the buses all leave at 3 or 4 in the morning so it is a challenge to get to the bus without getting met by ...

... incredible! They had lions also, but we were not able to go near the adult lions for obvious reasons. We were, however, allowed to play with one of the lion cubs, which, once again, was amazing! Our accommodation here was mud huts with thatched roofs, which housed not only us but also a variety of spiders. We had mozzie nets, which was cool, even though Sarah found it a bit claustrophobic. The lads cooked up another storming dinner and we played cards and drank until about midnight!