Driving in Zimbabwe: Roads, Roadblocks, Tolls and Fuel
Driving in Zimbabwe: Roads, Roadblocks, Tolls and Fuel
We left Kapula Camp in Hwange just before 7am. We rolled into a car park in Bulawayo at a quarter to five that afternoon. In between we covered 417 kilometres, made two quick stops and ate a sandwich in the shade of a tree, and I climbed out of that Troop Carrier more mentally cooked than after any day of driving I have done in Australia.
Four hundred and seventeen kilometres. Nine hours and forty-five minutes. On a sealed national road.
That is the part nobody really prepares you for. It is not the wildlife, the gravel or the remoteness that catches you out in Zimbabwe. It is that a main sealed road on the map can mean anything from a beautiful surface you could sit on at 110 all day, to two and a half hours of threading your way between craters while overloaded buses come at you down the wrong side of the road.
That day was one leg of a nineteen day trip in September 2025. Victoria Falls to Kazuma Pan, through Hwange, down to Bulawayo, across to Lions Den, into Mana Pools and finally Harare, in a hired Land Cruiser Troop Carrier.
Some context on where this comes from, because it matters for how you read the rest. I grew up in Zimbabwe, and we have travelled most of these routes on trips over the years, the last of them seven years earlier. So this is not a first-timer being shocked by a rough road. It is a return, and what stood out was how much ground had been lost in those seven years. Roads I remembered as ordinary driving now need genuine concentration, and one of them needed more concentration than any road I have driven anywhere, here or at home.
That is worth saying because plenty of what follows sounds alarming written down and is entirely manageable in practice, provided you know it is coming. Knowing a country well does not make its roads easier. It just means you are less surprised.
What follows is the driving side of that trip. Road conditions leg by leg, what actually happens at a roadblock, tolls, fuel, and the handful of rules that will catch an Australian out.
Our companion post on hiring a 4WD in Africa covers the vehicle, the contract and the questions to ask before you book. This one starts the moment you turn the key.
Quick guide: driving in Zimbabwe
Short on time? This is the whole post in about ninety seconds.
Your licence and paperwork
- Our Australian driver’s licences were all we needed. We were never once asked to produce one.
- Australian Government advice is to carry an International Driving Permit as well. We did not have one and it never came up, but that is the official advice and an IDP is cheap and easy to get before you fly.
- Zimbabwe drives on the left, the same as home, so there is no adjustment to make there.
The roads
- Main sealed roads swing between excellent and genuinely dangerous, sometimes within the same hour.
- The Bulawayo to Victoria Falls road was the worst we drove by a long way, and it is currently being rebuilt.
- The Bulawayo to Harare road was as good as anything at home.
- Gravel and national park roads are heavily corrugated. Plan on averaging 25 to 40km/h, not 80.
Roadblocks
- We went through fifteen to twenty across the whole trip.
- We were never asked to produce a single document.
- Be friendly and be patient. Showing frustration will cost you time, not save it.
Tolls
- On every main road in the country.
- Roughly USD 2 to 4 each, depending on the road.
- Carry small US dollar notes.
Fuel
- Service stations everywhere. No queues, no rationing, no hunting around.
- We averaged 15.0 litres per 100km and paid an average of USD 1.52 per litre.
- Cash, always attended service, and a dollar or two as a tip.
Speed
- 120km/h on the main roads. Widely ignored, and we saw no sign of any enforcement.
The one rule
- Do not drive at night. Not on the main roads, and you are not permitted to inside the national parks anyway.
What the distances actually mean
Here is every leg we drove, with the real times. This is the single most useful thing I can give you, because if you plan a Zimbabwean trip off distances alone you will get it badly wrong.
- Victoria Falls to Kazuma Pan: 218km, 9am to 4pm. That includes a wrong turn that cost us an hour and forty-five minutes, but even without it this was a long day.
- Kazuma Pan to Robins Camp in Hwange: 114km for the day with a game drive. The 78km between the two took a bit over three hours, an average of 26km/h.
- Robins Camp to Kapula: 74km for the day, though most of that day was spent parked watching lion.
- Kapula to Bulawayo: 417km, just before 7am to 4.45pm.
- Bulawayo to Lions Den: 448km, 8.45am to 3.45pm.
- Lions Den to Mana Pools: 253km, 6.30am to midday, including breakfast at Makuti and a permit stop.
- Game driving inside Mana Pools over five days: 344km.
- Mana Pools to Harare: 391km, 6.45am to 1.30pm.
- Total for the trip: 2,297km.
Look at those two 400km days. Kapula to Bulawayo took nearly ten hours. Bulawayo to Lions Den, thirty kilometres further, took seven. Same country, same sort of vehicle, same driver. The difference was entirely the state of the road.
Our rule by the end of the trip was simple. On a good road work on 80km/h average including stops. On a bad one, work on 45km/h and be pleasantly surprised. On gravel or in a park, 30km/h. Then add an hour for whatever goes wrong, because something usually does.
The three kinds of road you will drive
Zimbabwean roads sort themselves into three categories and knowing which one you are on tells you how to plan the day.
Good bitumen
The Bulawayo to Harare road, the A5, was a genuine pleasure. Wide, hardly a pothole in it, traffic sparse for long stretches, and honestly as good as most highways at home. It is the main link between the two largest cities and it is maintained accordingly, which is not something you can say about every road in the country.
The speed limit on the main roads is 120km/h. Almost nobody obeys it and plenty of people sit well above it. Our Troopy struggled to reach 120 at all, so we mostly sat between 100 and 110 and let the world go past. We saw no speed traps, no cameras and no evidence that anyone was monitoring speed anywhere.
Traffic thickened noticeably around the towns. It was fine as far as Kadoma, fairly heavy between Kadoma and Chegutu, and hectic again on the run into Harare at the end of the trip. Plan your town approaches for the middle of the day rather than knock-off time if you can, but traffic around Harare is bad most of the time.
Other main roads out of Harare are also good, just really depends on the direction you are taking, so do your research.
Broken bitumen
This is the category that will hurt you. A road can be signed and sealed and still be barely driveable.
The stretch north of Lions Den towards Makuti was a good example. Heavy truck traffic, potholes, large sections where the bitumen had simply gone, erosion on the side of the bitumen causing large drop offs, plenty of curves and blind rises. It was not as bad as the Hwange Bulawayo run, but the combination of poor surface and heavy traffic made for a tense couple of hours first thing in the morning.
The worst was the Hwange to Bulawayo road, and it gets its own section below because it deserves one. It falls in the category of bitumen off-roading.
- Looking for a decent section of road
- Driving on one side of the road is optional
- Bus off roading in Zimbabwe
Gravel and park tracks
Our first real day of driving was the Matetsi Safari Area on the way to Kazuma Pan, and it set the tone for the fortnight. That road carries a lot of heavy truck traffic and the corrugations were on another level entirely. We sat somewhere between 20 and 50km/h, mostly 30 to 40, and took four hours to cover just over 120 kilometres.
Some park roads were much better. The stretch along the Zimbabwe and Botswana border into Kazuma Pan was fine because no large trucks use it. The tracks around Big Toms and Little Toms in Hwange were in good order, most likely because the private camps maintain them. The road out from Sinamatella (in Hwange National Park) had been freshly graded and was excellent.
Others were shocking. The run between Kazuma Pan and Robins Camp was extremely rough for two solid hours. The road towards Kapula had deep washouts from the wet season and, wherever it flattened out, corrugations that had to be felt to be believed.
The lesson is that gravel condition in Zimbabwe has almost nothing to do with the map and everything to do with who uses the road and when it was last graded. You cannot predict it. You can only leave early and drive to what is in front of you.
- Bumpy gravel road between Hwange and Kazuma Pan
- Decent gravel road inside Hwange National Park
- Gravel road between Hwange and Kazuma Pan
- Far better road between Pandamatenga border post and Kazuma Pan
The Hwange to Bulawayo Road
This is the road everybody warns you about, and for once the warning was justified. This is more like bitumen off-roading to be perfectly honest.
We refuelled at Hwange town and were rolling by 9.45am. The first hour was manageable. Overtaking buses and trucks was hair-raising because you never quite knew what they would do, and potholes started appearing at random, so I was constantly alert and never certain where the next one was.
Then the first genuinely bad section arrived and ran for about fifteen minutes. Massive potholes right across the road, whole sections where the bitumen was simply missing. I had no way of knowing whether a hole was shallow or half a metre deep, so I slowed to a crawl every time. Other vehicles had carved new tracks in the dirt on both sides of the road, because the verge was often better than the road itself. Except the dirt then developed its own craters from all the traffic, so you end up moving from bitumen to dirt and back again, sometimes on the left and sometimes on the right.
There is an old Zimbabwean joke that fits perfectly. How do you know if someone is driving drunk in Zimbabwe? They are driving in a straight line.
The road improved, then got bad again for half an hour, then turned genuinely good. At about 1pm, with 150 kilometres left for Bulawayo, I made the mistake of saying out loud that if this kept up we would be arriving early.
Five minutes later the real bad road started.
The next two and a half hours were some of the hardest driving I have ever done from a concentration point of view. The potholes and washouts that had been spaced out before were now continuous, right in front of us with no break. Buses were coming past on the dirt at speeds that had them almost rolling. We had a few short reprieves on detours, and the detours were badly corrugated, and a couple of the detours had their own roadworks signs. The detour had roadworks? Yes, that is correct!
We reached Bulawayo just before 4.30pm, straight into rush hour and through the middle of the city, which was the last thing either of us wanted after that. Nine hours and forty-five minutes on the road, and I was absolutely wrecked by the end of it.
- Trying to miss pot holes on the drive to Bulawayo
- Just a few pot holes on the main road
- Dirt on the verge usually more comfortable
- Large chunks of bitumen missing on the road to Bulawayo
Do not count on that road being fixed
You will read that the Bulawayo to Victoria Falls Road is being rebuilt. It is, after a fashion. I would not build a trip around it being finished.
This road has been promised for well over a decade. It has been through several rounds of announcements, ribbon cuttings and revised deadlines, and it is still the road we drove. The current 440-kilometre programme started in July 2025, a couple of months before our trip, with eight contractors on it.
The numbers are the part worth paying attention to. A year in, 68.4 kilometres had been opened to traffic, which leaves 372 to go. Funding stalled partway through and contractors were only being brought back to site in August 2026. The completion date has already shifted from February 2026 to mid-2026 to December 2026.
So, plan for the road we drove, not the road that is promised, then add the roadworks on top. The sections under construction bring their own contraflows and gravel detours, and as we found, a detour can be rougher than the road it is bypassing.
If you are reading this well after we published it, ask somebody who has driven it recently rather than going off a progress announcement. That is the same lesson as the mapping one earlier in this post, and it applies just as well to a government press release as it does to a mate’s directions.
For reference, some locals we spoke to who travel to Hwange or Victoria Falls, to not drive this road, come through Botswana or Zambia depending on where they are coming from. This would not be an option if you hired the vehicle we had as it could not leave the country.
How you actually drive a broken road
Nobody teaches you this at home, so here is what worked for us.
Slow down far earlier than feels necessary. The reason is not the pothole you can see, it is the one behind it. You need enough room to pick a line, not just to avoid one hole.
If you cannot judge the depth of a hole, crawl. A pothole that is fine at 20km/h will destroy a rim, a tyre or a shock absorber at 60. On a hire vehicle, tyres and glass are usually excluded from the insurance, so that damage is coming straight out of your pocket.
Use the dirt beside the road when it is better, but keep checking it, because it degrades quickly wherever a lot of traffic has been using it. You will spend the day moving between bitumen and dirt on both sides of the road, and that is normal driving there rather than a sign you are doing something wrong.
Watch what the locals do, especially the buses and trucks. They drive that road every week and they know which side is currently better. Just do not match their speed.
Do not lock onto an arrival time. The moment you start chasing a schedule on a road like that you start taking holes faster than you should. We built in a buffer every single day and used it more often than not.
Corrugations, and what you can and cannot do about them
Corrugations are the constant on Zimbabwean gravel, and this is where a hire vehicle really shows its limits.
In your own vehicle you would simply let some air out and get on with it. A softer tyre rides over the ridges instead of hammering into each one, and the difference to both the vehicle and the driver is enormous.
We could not. Our hire vehicle ran tubed commercial truck tyres and we were told to leave the pressures alone, which meant driving every surface of the trip on the same setting. The reasoning is sound enough given what was fitted, and the hire post explains why tubes change the maths. The practical result is that you lose the single most effective tool you have for dealing with corrugations.
Put that together with a vehicle whose suspension was not carrying its load well, and long gravel days are genuinely wearing. Not dangerous, just relentless. The noise of gear shaking about behind you goes on for hours and it grinds you down more than the driving does.
Two things follow from that. If you are hiring, settle the tyre and pressure question before you book. And whatever you are driving, pack the vehicle tight. We spent a solid half hour repacking in Bulawayo purely to stop things moving around, and it was the best half hour of the trip.
Overtaking, and everyone else on the road
You will spend a lot of your day behind trucks. Coal trucks in the Hwange area are everywhere, and they crawl up every hill, which is exactly where you cannot see to overtake. So, you sit and you wait for an opening.
Credit where it is due, the truck drivers were generally very good about it. Going slowly up a hill, they would indicate when it was clear for you to come past, and that was a real courtesy. The trick is to know that an indicator from a truck in front of you might be an invitation rather than a turn, and to make sure of it before you commit.
Engine power matters here far more than it does at home, and this is worth thinking about before you pick a vehicle. Ours made around 96kW with no turbo, which is fine everywhere except the one place it counts. Pulling out to pass a loaded truck part way up a hill, you need a great deal more road than you would expect, and you have to commit to that decision early. If you have any choice in the matter, take the extra power.
The single scariest moment of our trip was overtaking an abnormal wide load north of Lions Den. The truck was so wide and the road so poor that a convoy had built up behind it. When my turn came, I had to go past with the left wheels on the bitumen and the right ones on the dirt, with a decent drop between the two and an eroded verge. Traffic was approaching so it had to be done with some speed, and halfway past there was a large hole in the dirt that tipped us over further than I was comfortable with. I accelerated and hoped momentum would carry us out level rather than over. It did. That was my highest heart rate of the entire trip.
Think of this all in reverse if you are being overtaken by someone else. Pay attention in the event that you are being overtaken, so do not try and swerve to miss a pot hole when someone is overtaking you.
Hoot before you pass
Because everyone is dodging potholes, drivers wander all over the road without warning. Give a hoot as you come alongside so the vehicle you are passing knows you are there, because if they swing out to miss a hole and you are in that space, there is nowhere to go. We had a few close calls with trucks doing exactly that and had to get onto the edge of the road to avoid being hit.
A short hoot is not rude there. It is information, and it is expected.
Everything else sharing the road
Coming from Australia, the sheer amount of life on a Zimbabwean road takes some adjustment. It is completely normal, and I barely noticed it because I grew up with it, but you should know what to expect.
There are people walking along the verge everywhere, all day. Kids in school uniform* in the morning and again in the afternoon. Animals pulling carts. Taxis, usually vans or ordinary cars, driven with no regard for road rules whatsoever. And a great many vehicles that would never pass a roadworthy at home, including plenty with no working lights.
Every one of those is a reason to slow down through populated areas and a reason not to drive after dark.
* One point about the kids in school uniform. This is something that has not changed since I was a kid. The kids in Zimbabwe are amazing, they have so much respect and pride for their school uniforms, you will see kids as young as six years old, dressed immaculately in their uniforms, wearing ties, and so happy with life, always smiling. Some of these kids walk for hours each day to get to and from school without a worry in the world. Whenever we see them, they just make us smile. We always wave and get the happiest respones back in return. Do the same, it will make your day.
Roadblocks: what actually happens
This is the question everybody asks about Zimbabwe, and the honest answer is that it was a non-event for us.
We went through somewhere between fifteen and twenty police roadblocks across the whole trip. We were not asked to produce a single document at any of them. Not a licence, not the hire agreement, not the vehicle papers. Nothing.
Our vehicle carried the hire company logo on the side, and I am certain that helped. Police have been instructed not to harass tourists, because tourism matters and the reputation of Zimbabwean roadblocks used to be genuinely awful. Once they saw the logo we were almost always waved straight through. Foreign plates would very likely have the same effect.
Most stops were friendly. We had a few nice chats with police along the way and plenty of officers did not talk at all, they just waved us on.
The one interesting exchange
We were pulled over on the Hwange to Bulawayo road and I greeted the officer as shumwari, which is Shona for friend. Two problems with that. We were in Matabeleland, where the language is Ndebele, not Shona. And using it makes you sound like a local rather than a visitor.
He was not impressed and told me firmly that he was Sergeant so-and-so. I said I had not heard him, sorry. He repeated it. My wife then said, very pleasantly, nice to meet you Sergeant so-and-so. He realised we were foreigners, noticed the hire logo, and waved us on.
Nothing came of it. But it is a good reminder that a friendly greeting in the wrong language is not always the icebreaker you think it is.
How to handle a roadblock
My advice is really about attitude, and it applies well beyond roadblocks.
Things move slowly in Africa. If you show annoyance or frustration, you will almost certainly make the situation worse and slower. Zimbabweans are, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, some of the most genuinely friendly people you will ever meet. Go in with that in mind and things tend to go well.
If you have done something wrong and you do not agree with it, do not argue. Pay the fine, smile and move on. It makes the whole process much easier, and it costs you far less than the alternative.
We saw this play out perfectly in Bulawayo, riding in a local friend’s car rather than our own. An officer was making things difficult for her, she joked around with him and had a laugh about it, and he eventually saw the hunour in it all and let her go. That is the attitude to have as difficult as it can be at times.
Safety equipment and the ZRP
ZRP is the Zimbabwe Republic Police, and one thing they can ask to see at a roadblock is your vehicle’s statutory safety equipment. Things like reflective warning triangles for a breakdown. If you do not have it, you can be fined.
Our hire company showed us where all of it was stored during the handover, specifically so we could produce it if asked. We were never asked once, and no officer inspected the vehicle at any point.
If you are hiring, ask where the safety equipment is kept and check it is actually there. It costs you two minutes at handover, and it is the sort of thing you do not want to be hunting for on the side of the road with an officer waiting.
One caveat on this whole section. What we experienced was September 2025. Roadblocks in Zimbabwe used to be a nightmare, with fines handed out constantly, and the current tourist-friendly approach is a policy position rather than a law of nature. It can change. Check recent traveller reports before you go.
Motorcades: the one rule Australians will not expect
This is the one that catches visitors out, and it is worth knowing about before it happens to you.
By law, every vehicle must pull over and stop when an official motorcade passes. Not slow down. Stop, and get off the road. You are required to do it even if you are on the opposite side of a dual carriageway.
It happened to us not far out of Kadoma. Judging by the number of vehicles it was not the President, but the drill is the same either way, and you get very little notice. Police cars come at you down the middle of the road with lights flashing, then trucks with army personnel on the back carrying machine guns, then the vehicles being escorted, then more army and police bringing up the rear.
You need to be off the road immediately. We watched another driver who was slow about it get a serious earful from the police for his trouble.
Then the motorcade comes through at genuinely insane speed. Our Troop Carrier, loaded to the roof, rocked from side to side as they went past.
It is over in a couple of minutes. Just know it is coming, get off the road without arguing about it, and wait until the tail of the convoy has gone before you move. Then use the moment to quickly overtake all the buses or trucks in front of you as they slowly build up speed again.
Tolls
Toll booths are on every main road in the country, and you will go through plenty of them. On our biggest day between Bulawayo and Lions Den we paid four to five tolls, and there were a few on the Hwange to Bulawayo run.
Prices varied by road and area, somewhere in the range of USD 2 to 4 a time from memory. It is not a large cost across a trip, but it is a constant one, and it is not something you can skip.
Two practical points. Carry small US dollar notes, because handing over a fifty at a toll booth is nobody’s idea of a good time. And do not bother asking what you are paying for. I tried at the first booth on the Hwange road and the gentleman just smiled and shrugged at me.
Toll prices change and new toll points appear regularly, so treat those figures as a guide rather than a budget line.
Fuel
This is one area where Zimbabwe has genuinely improved, and it is worth saying clearly because the old reputation lingers.
There are service stations everywhere. We never queued, never found a station without diesel and never once had to plan around fuel availability. The days of rationing and hunting for stock are gone, and that happened when fuel moved to US dollar pricing.
Here is the consumption picture, because it is the number you actually need for planning. Over the full 2,297 kilometres we burned 343.66 litres, which is 15.0 litres per 100km. That figure covers everything, long highway runs and slow gravel and hours of game driving at walking pace.
The thirstiest stretch was the opening week out of Victoria Falls through Kazuma Pan and into Hwange, all dirt and game tracks. We ran roughly 520 kilometres on the first tanks and took 82.6 litres at Hwange town, so about 16 litres per 100km. Budget for your worst leg, not your average, and remember that a day of game driving burns fuel while covering almost no ground.
Price averaged USD 1.52 a litre across five fills. Converted, that is meaningfully dearer than diesel at home, so do not go in expecting cheap fuel to offset anything else.
Our Troopy held 180 litres in two tanks. At our consumption that is theoretically around 1,200 kilometres, but theoretical range is a good way to end up walking. We planned on 1,000 and refuelled well before that whenever a station appeared ahead of a long leg. No jerry cans, and we never wanted them.
How paying for fuel works
Cash, every time. Card payment is possible in some places but we did not trust it and did not use it. Carrying US dollar cash gives you far more options in Zimbabwe generally, because people want cash, especially nice clean and crisp USD notes.
Every station was attended service. You do not touch the pump. Someone fills the vehicle for you, and they will clean your windscreen while they are at it. The people doing it were always friendly and it is normal to tip a dollar or two depending on how you feel about the service.
One thing to sort out before you fly: the condition of your notes matters over there, and tired or older bills can be knocked back. Ask your bank for clean, recent US dollars in a good spread of small denominations and you will save yourself a lot of standing around.
Navigation and staying in touch
Offline mapping is not optional out there, and the hire post covers what we used and why. What I want to add here is how it affects your day rather than your packing list.
On our first morning we abandoned a correctly mapped route to Kazuma Pan on the strength of a shortcut somebody recommended. An hour in we were sitting at the top of a steep, washed out, sandy descent that plainly had not seen a vehicle in years, and I was not about to attempt it in a hire vehicle. We walked it, turned around, and the detour cost us the better part of two hours. The route we had thrown away turned out to be the correct one.
The takeaway for route planning is a specific one. Advice about a road is only worth what the person’s most recent trip on it is worth, so ask when they last drove it themselves. Roads out there change, close and get rebuilt without anybody updating anything, and a recommendation from three years ago is a guess.
The flip side is that a mapped route is not gospel either. Nobody had told us about a newer road into Kazuma Pan that comes in far closer to the parks office, and we only found out about it at the office that afternoon, after the damage was done. Ask the parks staff about access roads when you book or when you arrive, because they know what opened last season and your map does not.
- I think we took a wrong turn!
Phone coverage
Coverage on the main roads was better than I expected. We had signal for most of the run between Hwange and Bulawayo, bad as that road is, and were able to let people at the other end know how we were tracking through the day. Around the main centres it was fine.
It is not seamless. There are drop-outs and you cannot predict where they will be, so do not count on making a call at any particular moment. But on the main roads you will generally have something.
Where you have nothing is the bush. In the parks and out at the camps there was no mobile signal at all, and that is the part worth planning around, because it is also where you are most likely to need help and least likely to see another vehicle.
A local SIM sorts out the towns and costs almost nothing. We used Net One on local advice because its coverage outside Harare is the better of the options. Australian carriers are no help here, so do not assume roaming will save you.
Out in the parks we relied on our Starklink Mini satellite internet from camp, which is the only reason we could be reached at Kazuma Pan or Mana Pools at all. If you have that capability, take it. If you are counting on it, confirm it is legal to use at your destination before you fly, because licensing across the region is inconsistent.
One thing Australians ask about often enough to be worth a line: your handheld UHF will not talk to anybody local, because the band we use at home is an Australian and New Zealand allocation. The hire post explains the detail. In Zimbabwe, UHF devices require a licence, and there are possible legal issues with carrying a two-way device that is not licenced.
Gates, booms and park admin
Something that will slow your day down more than you expect is the sheer number of times you stop and sign something. Poaching is a massive issue in Africa, so you will stop a few times, but know it is for a good reason.
Every park entry has a boom gate and a book. Hwange had one on the way in and another at the park boundary on the way out. Mana Pools had two booms with paperwork at each, plus a permit stop at Marongora on the way down the escarpment and a tsetse fly check at the bottom on the way out. Sinamatella had staff check our receipts before we could leave.
At Kazuma Pan there is an entry through a gate beside the Zimbabwe and Botswana border post, which the border official has to unlock and let you through. There is no signage telling you this, and I only found out by going and asking the gentleman manning the post. On the way out a few days later we simply tooted the horn and the same man walked down to open it. A dollar tip each time was appreciated.
The other one to plan for at Kazuma Pan is that the parks office is at the opposite end of the park from where we came in, 24 kilometres away, so reporting in cost us a 50 kilometre round trip at the end of an already long day. There is a newer road that comes in much closer to the parks office. We did not drive it, so I cannot tell you what condition it is in, but it exists and it is a significantly quicker way in.
None of these stops takes long on its own. Four of them across a day adds up, especially on African time.
- Pandamatenga border post between Zimbabwe & Botswana
- Approaching boom gate at Hwange National Park
- Checking in at the Kazuma Pan Parks office
- Final boom gate when entering Mana Pools
Practical tips for driving in Zimbabwe
- Leave early, every day. First light gets you the best light, the best game viewing and, most importantly, a buffer at the other end so you are not driving in the dark.
- Never drive at night. The hire company asked us not to, we never did, and after seeing the state of the roads and the number of unlit vehicles and pedestrians, I would not consider it. You cannot drive at night in the national parks anyway.
- Carry US dollar cash in small, clean notes. Tolls, fuel, tips and park fees all want it.
- Hoot before you overtake, every time.
- Do not chase an arrival time on a bad road.
- Pack the vehicle tight. Anything loose will be destroyed or will drive you mad, and probably both.
- Download offline maps before you leave home and check your route with someone who has driven it recently.
- Ask your hire company where the statutory safety equipment lives, and check it is there.
- Be friendly at every roadblock, no matter how your day is going.
- Get off the road immediately for a motorcade.
- Take satellite internet if you have it. The highways have coverage, the parks and the bush have none at all.
- Build a rest day into a long itinerary. Two 400 kilometre days back to back on Zimbabwean roads will flatten you.
- Traffic lights sometimes work, so pay attention when in towns with traffic lights.
So would we drive it again?
Without hesitation, yes.
The roads were the hardest part of this trip by a distance, and I am not going to pretend the Hwange to Bulawayo day was fun, because it was not. It was nearly ten hours of concentration with almost nothing to enjoy about it.
But that was one day out of nineteen, and it bought us the other eighteen. Sitting at a waterhole from sunrise to sunset because we could. Turning down a track nobody else was on. Being somewhere at the exact moment something happened, which is mostly a matter of being out there long enough for the odds to come good.
None of that is available to you from the back seat of a transfer vehicle on somebody else’s schedule. The roads are what you pay for the freedom, and it is a fair price. Just work out what you are paying before you go, rather than discovering it four hours into a very long day.
Have you driven in Zimbabwe or anywhere else in Southern Africa? What caught you out that nobody warned you about? Drop it in the comments, because this stuff changes and the next person planning a trip will thank you for it.
If you haven’t read our post on hiring a 4WD in Africa, you can read it here.
For more information on the gear we took with us, read it here.
Thanks for reading.
The thoughts of Peter.
