mzanzi addition 6 digital text2

Explore Africa
Houseboat on Lake Kariba
Lynn Y / Shutterstock
Cultural festival
Cecil Bo Dzwowa / Shutterstock
Modern Harare
Ulrichh Mueller / Shutterstock
undergoes a magical transformation as thousands of Jacaranda trees cover
the city in a blaze of purple as they start blossoming.
From Harare you can travel to its second city, Bulawayo, by road or air. The
city is even more laid-back than Harare, and with its colonial architecture
and wide, tree-lined avenues it exudes a charm all of its own.
From these two cities the roads and air routes spread to all corners of the
country, taking the traveller across a landscape that dramatically changes
character from region to region. It is an endless vista of Highveld, rolling
green hills, impressive mountains, lakes, rivers, nature reserves, game parks,
towns and villages.
Visit the splendour of the Victoria Falls, truly one of the most wonderful
sights in the world. Here you can sip a gin and tonic on the edge of the river
gorge as the misty spray of the falls engulf you. The river below the falls also
offers some exhilarating white water rafting opportunities, while there are
plenty of hiking trails and wildlife in the area. The rainforest area of Victoria
Falls is filled with many unique species of flora and fauna.
The David Livingstone statue can be found here next to the falls near the
spectacular Devil’s Cataract viewpoint. On 16 November 1855, Livingstone
(the first Western explorer to view the falls) wrote in his journal: “...scenes so
lovely must have been gazed on by angels in their flight.” A bridge straddles
the Zambezi River here between Zimbabwe and Zambia, providing excellent
vantage points from which to admire the scenery.
Or you can spend a leisurely cruise on a ferry on Lake Kariba, the world’s
largest man-made lake, and watch the sun go down from the cocktail deck,
with Nile crocodiles and hippopotami vying for your attention just meters
away.
In the south-eastern hills of the country you can travel back in time as you
wander among the narrow stone-walled corridors of Great Zimbabwe, also
known as the Zimbabwe Ruins. It lies just south of the town of Masvingo and
Mutirikwi National Park with its beautiful lake. The ruins, an architectural
marvel that puzzled historians and archaeologists for more than a century,
was once home to the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Zimbabwe that
flourished here. The most widely-accepted current theory is that the edifices
and stonewalls were erected by the ancestral Shona who created several
empires and states on the Zimbabwe plateau between the 12th and 16th
centuries.
50 |ISSUE 6|www.mzanzitravel.co.za | MZANZI TRAVEL