South Africa
Southern Africa
UK
Campsites (Africa)
This is a lovely park about 50km to the SW of Bulawayo. We camped at the Malale dam campsite (S20 32.694 E28 30.200) and were made very welcome by Keith who showed us around the campsite facilities and organised getting firewood for us.
The Park is very rugged with sedimentary rocks which have weathered into jumbles of boulders over a granite base. We saw lots of 'balancing' boulders when driving around. The Park also has several caves with cave paintings. We visited 3 of them. The clearest paintings were in the Nswatugi cave. At Pomongwe Cave there was a museum and a guide, Tembe, who was very informative about the paintings - and he turned out to be the husband of Veronica who was 'looking after us' at the campsite. Within the Park is a MOTH Shrine. MOTH (Memorable Order of Tin Hats) was set up after the First World War to support the soldiers who had fought in the war and also their families. The Park is also the site of the grave of Cecil Rhodes after whom Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia) was named. His gravesite is at the aptly named 'World's View' and there is a memorial nearby. One evening we discovered a flat front tyre and also there seemed to be a leak in the radiator. The next morning It took ages to change the wheel as, once the wheel nuts were off, Kev just couldn't get the wheel off - it seemed to be stuck fast. Eventually after a liberal soaking with oil he did manage to get it off. On further investigation Kev thought that water leak was from the air conditioning unit which we don't need on this trip. We did need to get the tyre repaired and there was nowhere in the Park to repair a tubeless tyre so we drove into Bulawayo. We were fortunate to find this tyre place where they repaired the tyre in an hour or so - and only charged us $5. The yard was a hive of activity with anything from bicycle to tractor wheels being repaired. Driving in Bulawayo was interesting as the majority of traffic lights were not working......... One day was spent driving around the Park and discovered that the map that we'd been given at the entrance wasn't very accurate. We found our way to Toghwana Dam but the track north from there turned out to be in very poor condition and very marshy so we turned back. We also discovered a couple of tracks that were on our GPS but not on their map and they turned out to be an interesting drive with some steep rough sections and a couple of river crossings. This was one of the river crossings. We think that this is where we lost out front number plate. People were often passed who were cutting and collecting grass for thatching. On one occasion we saw this donkey pulling a loaded cart. We stopped in Bulawayo to take this photo which is The Cape to Cairo Restaurant and Pub and states: Cairo 3500 miles. 1, Kokomori Bush Camp, South Africa 9. Senyati Safari Camp. Botswana Diary (Word '97 document)
Zimbabwe 2010 - Matopos National Park
Cape Town 1150 miles.