Zimbabwe Trip Diary Part 2: Bulawayo, Matopos and Mana Pools
Zimbabwe Trip Diary Part 2: Bulawayo, Matopos and Mana Pools
This is part 2 of our Zimbabwe trip diary. If you have not read part 1, please read it here first.
If you have not read our post on hiring a 4WD in Africa, then read it here. And for more information on driving the roads in Zimbabwe, read it here.
Trip at a glance
- When: September 2025, nineteen days of driving
- Who: the two of us, joined by friends for the Mana Pools leg
- Vehicle: hired 78 Series Toyota Land Cruiser Troop Carrier, 1HZ naturally aspirated straight six, Zimbabwe registered
- Distance: 2,297km, odometer 156,769 to 159,066
- Route: Victoria Falls, Kazuma Pan NP, Hwange NP, Bulawayo, Matopos, Lions Den, Mana Pools NP, Harare
- Nights: four Victoria Falls, two Kazuma Pan, one Robins Camp, two Kapula, two Bulawayo, one near Lions Den, six Mana Pools
- The good: a pride of more than a dozen lion on a buffalo kill, wild dogs on three separate days, roan at Kazuma, eleven giraffe at a waterhole, and two lions at twenty metres on foot
- The bad: 417km in nine hours and forty-five minutes (Hwange to Bulawayo)
Day 10: The road everybody warns you about 417km, nine hours and forty-five minutes
Up at half five, packed quietly, watched the sunrise, and we were driving just before seven. Four hundred and seventeen kilometres to Bulawayo. Everybody I had mentioned it to had said the same thing about that road, with the same look on their face.
A quick stop at the dam to watch a giraffe drinking, which we knew would be the last giraffe of the trip. There are none at Mana Pools.
Out through the coal mine
I kept the speed up despite the corrugations because we had a long day and needed to move. The track through to Sinamatella was better than what we had driven a couple of days earlier and I sat on forty for most of it, backing off for the rough bits.
An hour out we reached Sinamatella and another parks office, where the staff were standing about in immaculate ironed green uniforms and bush hats. We sat in the vehicle feeling faintly awkward while they looked at us, until someone wandered over to check our receipts.
The road out from there had been recently graded and was genuinely good. Another boom gate at the park boundary, another signature, and we left the bush behind for coal country. The road turns black and so does everything either side of it. The direct road into Hwange town is now a mine, so you go around and then through the mining area, sharing gravel with coal trucks moving at a serious clip, each one throwing up a dust storm of its own.
We hit the main tar, turned away from Bulawayo and went into Hwange town to refuel. I had only switched to the sub tank half an hour earlier, so we had done well. Just under 83 litres over roughly 520 kilometres, and that included every metre of corrugated dirt and all the game drives. A useful number for the rest of the trip.
Out of Hwange at quarter to ten.
The two and a half hours
The road started fine. Overtaking buses and trucks was hair raising because you never quite know what they will do, and there were random potholes appearing that also needed overtaking.
That is the bit that catches you out here. The danger is not the pothole. It is the overtake. You do not know whether the truck you are passing is about to swerve for a hole you cannot see, or whether there is one waiting on the side you have already committed to. Our 1HZ made every one of those decisions slower, because a naturally aspirated straight six needs a very long run up, especially uphill with a full load.
The first genuinely bad section ran about fifteen minutes. Craters across the whole road, whole stretches where the bitumen had simply gone. You slow right down and pick your way through, because you cannot tell whether a hole is fifty millimetres deep or three hundred. Other vehicles had carved fresh tracks along both verges, so you end up going bitumen, dirt, bitumen, dirt, sometimes left, sometimes right, constantly.
Then a toll booth. Then a stretch where I could get some speed up. Then a long queue behind coal trucks crawling up hills with nowhere near enough visibility to pass.
We pulled up under the biggest shade tree we could find for a toilet break and lunch, which took under ten minutes, because I had no idea whether the road ahead was better or worse and I very much did not want to be on it after dark.
Then the road went good, and I said so out loud. “It’s fine now, we might be in Bulawayo a couple of hours early.”
Ten minutes later the real bad road started.
The next two and a half hours were some of the hardest driving I have done anywhere, purely on concentration. The potholes and washouts that had been spread out were now continuous, no clean line through any of it, no end in sight. Buses came past on the dirt verge fast enough that a couple of them very nearly went over. It simply did not stop. We got a short reprieve where we thought it was over. It was not.
Several police roadblocks along the way, all of them straightforward. The police have been told to leave tourists alone and compared with previous trips that is a very noticeable improvement.
Eventually the shocking section ended, though random potholes kept turning up the whole rest of the way, so there was no switching off. Two more roadblocks, another toll booth, and finally Bulawayo on the horizon.
We arrived at rush hour and had to drive through the middle of town, which was heaving. Quarter to five. Nine hours and forty-five minutes on the road, with two toilet stops and a sandwich under a tree.
I got out of that vehicle more mentally cooked than after any day of driving I have done at home, and very pleased to have arrived with the vehicle in one piece.
- Waiting to overtake a truck on the Hwange Bulawayo Road
- Just a few pot holes on the main road
- Large chunks of bitumen missing on the road to Bulawayo
- Bus off roading in Zimbabwe
Day 11: Balancing rocks and bushman paintings 0km self driven
A cooked breakfast, which made a change, and a day out at Matopos. I had not been since I was a kid. Also glad that all our dirty clothes were getting a good wash as I was getting short on clean underpants.
Somebody else drove, which meant I sat in the back and did not think about the road for the first time in a week. I cannot overstate how good that was.
We paid international parks fees plus the vehicle fee at the gate. On the current gazetted schedule Matobo is USD 18 per person as a day visitor, with a lower accommodated rate if you are staying in the park, plus the vehicle charge.
World's View
We drove round and found our way to World’s View for the walk up to Cecil John Rhodes’ grave. There is a separate fee to do that walk on top of your park entry, USD 10 each when we were there.
Matopos is exactly as I remembered it. Balancing rocks stacked improbably on top of one another as far as you can see in every direction, which is a very strange landscape to stand in. Whenever I am around the Stanthorpe region in country Queensland, it reminds me of this place, as it has some similarities to the balancing rocks of Matopos. The walk up the rock is easy and the view from the top is worth the second fee. Rhodes’, Jameson’s and Coghlan’s graves are scattered around the summit. There was a good breeze up there, which was welcome.
The rock art (bushman paintings)
From there we went on to the caves to see the bushman paintings, and they were extraordinary. I did not think I would ever see them again.
What gets you is how directly readable they are. You look at one and you know immediately what animal it is, what it is doing, what is happening in the scene. There is no working it out. Standing in front of something painted that long ago and understanding it instantly is a strange feeling and it stayed with me.
Lunch at one of the dams afterwards, where Shayne nearly coughed up a lung after inhaling what we think was a mopani fly.
Late in the afternoon we restocked for Mana Pools, and it was a far simpler exercise than Victoria Falls. One stop, everything on the list, USD 190, which is reasonable given how much of it was alcohol (no crazy Government taxes here). Then I repacked the Troopy, which took a while. It had to go in tight, because the roads ahead were not going to be kind to anything with room to move.
Day 12: A good road, at last 448km
By every account the road ahead was much better than anything we had driven. Not all Zimbabwe road intelligence had proven reliable to that point, so I was not counting on it.
For once it was spot on. Wide, hardly a pothole, traffic sparse. Honestly as good as any highway back home, and after the day before it felt like a holiday.
Lunch at Kwekwe. We had been told there was a good coffee shop with directions consisting of “down a street on the right hand side, near a service station.” A bit of recon on the map turned up a place called The Latte Lounge, which sounded far too fancy for Kwekwe, so it had to be the one. It was. Good lunch and a very good iced coffee. We were nearly through another tank so we refuelled on the way out.
Traffic thickened coming into Kadoma and stayed heavy through to Chegutu. Not far out of Kadoma we had to get off the road quickly for a motorcade, which came through at a serious clip. The Troopy rocked side to side as each vehicle went past. That is a thing here and you move over promptly.
The towns along that stretch are run down and there is a lot of rubbish about, which is what we expected.
At Chegutu we turned away from Harare toward Chinhoyi and the traffic simply evaporated. Bulawayo at quarter to nine, Lions Den at quarter to four.
The Lions Den butchery is a must stop on that road. We got dry wors and biltong and should have bought more.
A night on a farm
We spent the night on a farm not far out of Lions Den, with friends of friends, and it was one of the best evenings of the whole trip.
It was an original farmhouse, and walking through the door was like stepping into a time machine. I grew up on a farm in this country, and this was that life exactly, still going, thirty odd years on. I was not expecting to be hit by that and I was.
Our host took us round part of the place in an old Land Rover that somehow still runs, showed us his treasured evening spot along the river and the crop he had in, and had cold beers waiting, plus glasses for the ladies’ gin and tonics with ice, lemon and a slice of cucumber. More civilised than anything you are getting at home. Rump roast for dinner and a few more drinks. What a fantastic evening.
If you need somewhere to break that drive, whether you are heading for Mana Pools or across to Kariba, there are a few cheap private camps scattered around that area. They will not turn up in a search, but they do show up as points of interest on the Tracks4Africa map. Worth knowing.
Day 13: Wild dogs, and two lions on foot 253km
Up at half five, away by half six, now in convoy with friends. They were in a brand new Isuzu carrying almost nothing. We were in a loaded Troopy with no turbo. We were not keeping up with anybody.
The overtake I still think about
The road after Lions Den was hectic. Not Hwange to Bulawayo hectic, but bad. Heavy trucks, potholes, big sections of missing tar, large errosion on the verges, and a lot of curves and blind rises. The deterioration since our last trip out here in 2018 was significant. Driving the Troopy on this road was a big change from our last adventure out here in my mate’s 100 Series Land Cruiser (what I would do to have that 1HD-FTE motor – still on the list to own one some day).
I made a few sketchy overtakes that morning and one genuinely bad one.
There was an abnormal wide load with a long queue banked up behind it. When my turn finally came, the truck was so wide and the road so poor that I had to go past with the left wheels on the bitumen and the right ones down on the dirt. The verge was badly eroded, so there was a real drop off the bitumen, and the vehicle was already leaning with all that weight on the roof. Traffic was coming the other way, which meant doing it with some speed. Halfway past the truck the right wheels dropped into a hole and tipped us further over.
I put my foot down and hoped momentum would carry us out rather than over.
It did. That is the highest my heart rate got on the entire trip (when you hear what happened later that day at Mana Pools you can understand how sketchy this was), and it is the one thing I would warn anybody about on Zimbabwean roads. The potholes will not hurt you if you drive to the conditions. The overtaking might.
Makuti at half nine for our last fuel until we came back through nearly a week later, and a toasted sandwich at the Makuti Lodge. Back on the road by ten, permit stop at Marongora, then down the escarpment to the Mana Pools entrance.
Baobabs, booms and paperwork
At the bottom is the first boom gate into Mana Pools and the associated paperwork, which as far as I can tell goes straight into the bottom of a drawer.
Between the two boom gates we stopped and walked over to an enormous baobab just off the road. I paced around the base in big strides and counted twenty seven of them. It is a hell of a thing to stand next to.
Second boom, more paperwork. The park roads from there were corrugated but perfectly drivable at sixty to seventy, which felt like flying after Hwange.
Mana Pools is USD 24 per person per night on the current international schedule, one of the few locaations where the accommodated rate matches the day rate, plus the vehicle fee. Nyamepi campsites are charged per site rather than per head, riverfront dearer than standard, and the exclusive camps such as Mucheni, Gwaya, Nkupe and BBC dearer again. Bookings go through ZimParks by email.
Book earlier than you think you need to
Which brings me to the one thing I would tell anybody planning Mana Pools.
We have camped at Nyamepi plenty of times over the years, and at BBC as well, which is a cracking spot. What I have never managed is to get one of the camps away from Nyamepi at short notice, and this trip was no different.
Here is the frustrating part. All week we drove past those camps and there was nobody in them. Mucheni sat empty. Gwaya sat empty. We had breakfast at one and sundowners at another and never saw another soul.
As I understand it, they get booked out by locals a long way in advance and the payment does not have to follow straight away, so sites end up held and then not used. Whatever the mechanism, the practical effect for you is the same. If you want one of the smaller camps away from the main site, book as far ahead as you can, and a year out is not too early.
Nyamepi is not a consolation prize, to be clear. Camp 20 was right on the river with good shade, which matters enormously in the middle of the day. But if you want the river to yourself, plan early.
Wild dogs, half an hour in
We came into Nyamepi around midday, and just before camp we found a large pack of wild dogs asleep in the shade of a tree.
I have done a lot of trips to this part of Zimbabwe and never seen wild dogs. Not once, in years of looking. We had been in the park about half an hour.
Lunch, an hour and a half lost to a tent that did not want to go up, and then out on our first game drive.
How the on foot thing happened
Plenty of the usual Mana Pools game. Elephant, waterbuck, impala, kudu, zebra, and the dogs still flat out under their tree.
We had come through the Chine Pools area and were heading for Mana Mouth when Shayne spotted two male lions. We came round to the far side of a small waterhole for a better view, switched off, and sat there with a drink. The other vehicles left and we had it to ourselves.
Then Stretch Ferreira pulled up in his safari Land Rover with a couple of clients.
Stretch is one of the best known guides in Mana Pools and in Zimbabwe generally. Close to four decades of guiding, he runs Goliath Camp in the park, and the ZimParks team call him Father Mana because he has been there so long. He is specifically known for getting guests close to big game on foot, off the back of a very long understanding of how to do it safely.
We were travelling with somebody who knows him well, and that is the only reason any of what follows happened. Stretch came over and asked whether we fancied getting close to the lions. We all said yes. It turned out his own clients were nervous, and having a few other people say yes gave them the confidence to come too.
I want to be straight about this, because it would be easy to write it up as though it is on a menu somewhere. It is not. This is not something a self drive visitor turns up and does. The ordinary way to have this experience is to book and stay at his camp, and people pay very good money to do exactly that. We tagged along on a personal connection and we knew how lucky we were.
- Watching two young male lions in the distance
- Opportunity of a lifetime getting this close to these wild animals
- Heart rates high after what we just experienced
Ten metres
Stretch coached us across the riverbed as we went, staying behind us, talking very quietly.
Knees first. Creep forward. Eye contact at all times and never, under any circumstances, show them your back. Once we were closer we went onto our backsides, sitting down, and he edged us in further and further until we were somewhere between ten and twenty metres out.
The lions lifted their heads every so often, looked straight at us, and put them back down without the faintest concern.
There was a second guide behind us with a loaded rifle, which helped. Stretch made a few dark jokes about who among us could run fastest, which did not help at all.
It is hard to explain what that does to you. I was nervous the entire time and enjoying every second of it, and it is still the highlight of the trip by a distance. We have decided we will pay the money and stay at Goliath Camp properly one day.
Back at camp, tent up, fire going. I made fire bread for everyone and cooked steaks over the coals once they were right. Not a bad first afternoon and these steaks were damn good.
Days 14 and 15: Baboons, a stolen kill and a dust storm
A friend who went out at first light came back with the traditional greeting of “you won’t believe what I saw.”
He had found the wild dogs at the same waterhole where we had sat with the lions, followed them, arrived just after they pulled down an impala, and then watched a hyena walk in and take the whole kill off them. The dogs gave it up and left. All of it on camera. That is the price of a sleep in till 6am.
Our morning was quieter. Birds around Chine Pool, then a long run out to Long Pool, which sits above it, and the drive got emptier the further we went from the Zambezi River.
Green Pool was the disappointment. I remembered it from a previous trip as a little oasis, plenty of wildlife around it and even a few hippo. It has dried out completely.
Long Pool was the opposite, full of water with birds working the edges and hippo in it. We found the two male lions from the day before lying under trees near the main road into parks headquarters, doing absolutely nothing, got some photos, and then came back to Long Pool where I set up the Starlink and called home. Sitting on the edge of Mana Pools on a video call to Australia is a strange thing, and a very welcome one. We sat there a while longer watching the birds and hippo before heading out again.
The baboons win
We got back to camp around midday to find it had been raided.
Our friends’ camp, to be precise. Ours was untouched, because our food and camp lives in the vehicle and the vehicle goes wherever we go. Shayne had told them to secure everything (from our past experience) and been told it would be fine. It was not fine. A few good campers nearby had saved most of it and strapped things down.
Take this seriously. Baboons and monkeys will open boxes, get into bins and take anything left out. At Nyamepi, food goes in the vehicle. No exceptions.
They also ate the firelighters, which they clearly enjoyed, so we lit the fire the old fashioned way that night and every night after.
The dust storm
The following morning we were up at half five and I packed the tent away by head torch, half asleep, trying not to fall off the roof. Coffees for everyone and we left camp about half six. The wind was already up more than it had been all week.
We worked the Mana Mouth and Chine Pools side first, since that was where the dogs and the lions had been, and it delivered. Elephant, kudu, eland, waterbuck, impala and baboon, plus a few ground hornbills, which are enormous birds and always good value.
Then across to the other side of the park where Mucheni, BBC and the private camps sit along the Zambezi heading up the river in the director towards Kariba.
Past the Mucheni camps we came on two more lions, older males with much bigger, darker manes than the two we had been sitting with. We watched them a while and they wandered off. Only then did we notice a large female under a tree a little further on, panting hard and looking absolutely wrecked, keeping her distance from the males. There had been talk in camp about a mating pair. That will have been her judging by the state of her.
- The best acacia pods are nice and high
- Ground Hornbills
- Marabou Stork at Chine Pool
- Baboon eating the acacia pods left by the elephants
- Terrifying eyes
- Beautiful female lion
The Mucheni camps were empty, so we pulled in for a cooked breakfast. Lovely sites right on the river with a long drop and no water.
It was blowing hard by then, so we set up behind the vehicle to get out of the wind and fried eggs, bacon and sausages while I brewed coffee and toasted rolls. A fried breakfast on a toasted roll beside the Zambezi is very hard to beat.
We got back to camp at midday to find the wind there was far worse than where we had been all morning. There is no grass at that time of year, so what we got was a proper dust storm. We tried to find cover and there was none. The camp was unusable.
Rather than sit in it we spent the whole afternoon in the vehicle, driving almost every track in the park, looking for game and staying out of the dust.
Worth knowing about September in Mana Pools. It is a superb time to be there for game, and the wind and dust can take an afternoon off you without warning. We finished up at Gwaya, which is much better sheltered, with a good pod of hippo out the front and the wind finally dropping off.
Days 16 and 17: Wild dogs in a riverbed
Up just after five, driving by six. Out to Mana Mouth then through Chine Pools. Elephant, waterbuck, warthog and a lot of birds, and we ended up at BBC camp for coffee.
On the way back we got chatting to a professional guide camped up the road from us, who told us he had seen the wild dogs and exactly where.
His directions took us across the main dry riverbed that runs out of the parks area and into the conservation area, somewhere we had never been because it had always had a no entry sign on it historically. Cross the first riverbed, he said. The dogs are in the third.
They were precisely where he said they would be.
Half an hour above the pack
To get a good view we stood up on the side of the river bank with a perfect spot above them. We sat and watched for a good half hour.
What got me is how much they behave like a pet dog. They dug holes in the sand to find somewhere cooler to lie, then carried on digging sideways in a half hearted way while already lying down. Exactly what our own dog Sadza does in the garden at home.
Two days of trying and then a stranger at a campsite hands it to you in one sentence. Talk to people.
An elephant that had had enough
Lunch and a sit in the shade at Gwaya, then a walk up the Zambezi along the camping area.
One of the group wanted to sit and wait for a herd of elephant coming down to the river. Two of us were not sold on the idea, so we turned round and walked back to where our vehicle was parked, and promptly got too close to a different elephant that was drinking and decided we were trying to corner it. Ears out, mock charge, brakes on hard, an enormous cloud of dust.
We backed away slowly, gave it time to settle, then took a much wider line around. More excitement than was on the schedule.
- Mother and baby elephant looking for food
- One of the old large male bulls that is collared (maybe Boswell ~ 70 years old)
- I see you!
- Nice place to cool off and have a drink in the heat of the day
That afternoon we ran up toward Mucheni and along the road to Zebra Vlei (Flay), where we saw nothing but zebra, which presumably explains the name. We finished at Long Pool for sundowners and found a superb spot with a big pod of hippo directly in front of us, and got the shot everybody goes there for. Hippos with their mouths wide open and the sun going down behind them.
Fire bread again and steaks over the coals, with a running commentary from the others about how I was doing all of it wrong. They ate the lot didn’t they.
The smallest elephant we have seen
The next morning I went out early in a mates vehicle, while Shayne slept in, and we found fairly fresh lion spoor with four cubs in it right before the big riverbed crossing into the conservation area. We followed the tracks a while and lost them.
No dogs in the riverbed that morning, but you could see exactly where they had been lying and the holes they had dug. On the way we watched an eagle lift off with a mongoose, which was excellent for us and less so for the mongoose.
- Lion spoor in the road
- Mongoose spying
- Eagle taking a mongoose
In the afternoon we went out on our own and found the smallest baby elephant either of us has ever seen. Days old at most, a little boy and absolutely full of himself, kicking his legs about and wandering much further from his mother than any calf we had seen. We sat and watched him for ages.
BBC camp for sundowners, watching elephant cross channels of the Zambezi and haul themselves up onto the small islands. Oh I love Mana Pools!
- The smallest baby elephant we saw at Mana Pools
- This baby elephant was very brave playing away from its mother
- Learning how to kick dust
- Elephants crossing the Zambezi River
- The bar is open!
- Sunset over the Zambezi River at BCC Camp Mana Pools
Day 18: The last day at Mana Pools
Awake just after quarter past five, tent packed, kettle on, out of camp just before half six.
Out to Mana Mouth and then Chine Pools, where we found a herd of buffalo that had to be three hundred strong and sat with them a while. Got some great photos in the morning light and dust. Then past Long Pool and Zebra Flay.
We drove into Mucheni camps, saw nothing, turned around, and just past Mucheni came across four lionesses and a younger cub under a tree.
Different lions again to everything else we had seen. That made lion on four separate days at Mana Pools. Amazing!
We finished the morning at Gwaya a bit after half nine with cereal and guavas and a decent number of buffalo standing about in camp, we watched each other very closely.
Running out of water
Back at camp we had to boil water, because the tank was empty.
Between everyone making coffee all week and one member of the party using it for drinking water after saying he would bring his own, sixty odd litres does not go as far as you would think. If you are the vehicle with the tank, factor that in. And after a previous trip to Mana Pools where our water tank leaked and another got opened and drained by a baboon, we knew we had to boil the water there properly. Last time a member of our party was exceptionally lazy and when it was his turn to boil water, decided to do half a job. We all suffered for a few months after that trip. So we did it properly this time, and didn’t need to do much as we were heading back in the morning.
Then two packets of chips were stolen by monkeys, because of course they were. Glad we bought far too many, and at least it wasn’t my cherished NikNaks.
The last sundowner
Last game drive in the afternoon, essentially the morning in reverse. Elephant everywhere, big ones and babies. The lionesses had shifted round to the other side of the tree, four large females and a cub, a bit more active this time, getting up and down with some enormous yawns. Many great photos of large teeth were taken.
We finished our game drive at Long Pool and sat right down on the edge of the water for the last sunset, which is mildly nerve wracking with crocodile and hippo that close, and got the best light of the trip. And some of the best photos of hippos which you can judge for yourself. Unfortunately the light was fading and that meant we had to head back to camp before it got dark.
Rump steak over the coals and gem squash. A good last dinner but we wished it didn’t have to end, although we had been lucky this trip and seen so much amazing game and had some wonderful experiences, we definitely could not complain.
Day 19: The long drive to Harare 391km, quarter to seven until half past one
Up at five, we had to make sure we returned the vehicle before 4pm and who knows what lies ahead, although it should be an ok drive. One of my Crocs had been eaten by a hyena overnight, which is a very Mana Pools way to start a day. I did find it later on, and still have them as my garden pair. Everything packed by six, coffee and cereal, out of camp about quarter to seven.
A bit of game on the way out, impala, kudu, eland, buffalo and elephant, and a corrugated road, but we pushed on.
We reached the boom gate at the bottom of the escarpment just after quarter past eight, where there is a tsetse fly inspection. An officer comes along with a spray and a small net and goes through the vehicle catching them. Expect it and do not be thrown by it.
The climb up the escarpment was fine because there are three lanes on that section. On one detour we found a very long line of trucks simply stopped, so I decided to overtake the lot and push in somewhere if anything came the other way. Twenty odd trucks later, at the front, a broken down truck was blocking the lane. Once they let us through it was easy going to Makuti, where we stopped for fuel and water.
We made Lions Den by quarter past eleven for bori rolls and a really good coffee after a mates recommendation for one of the best coffees in Zimbabwe.
Just out of Lions Den I was nearly taken out by a truck mid overtake. He came across on me and I had to get down onto the dirt, which was more excitement than I wanted while driving one handed with a coffee in the other. I didn’t hoot on the overtake as I was an idiot holding my coffee in the one hand.
From there the drive was manageable until it got properly hectic just outside Harare, where I gave up on politeness and drove like a local. Sometimes it is required and we had a vehicle to return.
Handing it back
We got in to a friends place where we would stay for the next few days before we flew back home, unpacked, and I took the Troopy back that afternoon.
I went through everything that had broken with the company’s manager, who listened properly and took it all on board. The barn door table, a gas bottle leak, a burner that developed a hole and started shooting a flame out the side, the water tank leak, an issue with the key for the safe, the zips on one of the tents, and the suspension.
Not one mechanical problem in 2,297 kilometres, though, and that is the headline. The odometer read 156,769 when we collected it in Victoria Falls and 159,066 when I handed it over in Harare. The deposit was back in my account almost immediately.
And that was that. What an adventure, with far more ups than downs. Overall a fantastic trip that will stay with us forever.
The distances, day by day
| Day | Leg | Km |
|---|---|---|
| Days 1 to 4 | Victoria Falls Not self driven, we used a local driver | 0 |
| Day 5 | Victoria Falls to Kazuma Pan | 218 |
| Day 6 | Kazuma Pan, stayed put | 0 |
| Day 7 | Kazuma Pan to Robins Camp, plus game drive | 114 |
| Day 8 | Robins Camp to Kapula, plus game drive | 74 |
| Day 9 | Kapula game drives | 38 |
| Day 10 | Kapula to Bulawayo Nine hours and forty-five minutes on the road | 417 |
| Day 11 | Matopos Not self driven | 0 |
| Day 12 | Bulawayo to Lions Den | 448 |
| Day 13 | Lions Den to Mana Pools | 253 |
| Days 14 to 18 | Mana Pools game drives Five days of driving inside the park | 344 |
| Day 19 | Mana Pools to Harare | 391 |
| Total distance driven Odometer 156,769 on collection to 159,066 on return | 2,297 | |
Distances are as driven, including game drives, not point to point road distances. The Victoria Falls and Matopos days show zero because we were not behind the wheel.
Was it worth it?
Without question.
Zimbabwe is not an easy self drive. The roads take more out of you than you expect, the fees are steep at foreigner rates, and the day we lost getting into Kazuma Pan was thoroughly miserable while it was happening.
But we sat on a platform at Kazuma and watched eleven giraffe come down to drink. We crossed a dry riverbed at exactly the right moment and found a male lion sixty metres away in perfect light. We watched a pride of more than a dozen with cubs work over a buffalo kill for two hours. We finally saw wild dogs, three separate times, after years of looking. And we sat on our backsides in the sand twenty metres from two lions.
There is nothing like the African bush, and September is a superb time to be in it.
The practical side of this trip is written up separately: hiring a 4WD in Africa, driving in Zimbabwe, the location guides to Mana Pools and Kazuma Pan (still to come), a review of Kapula (still to come), and a post on the gear that earned its place. Have a look at those if you are planning something similar.
Now over to you. If you have self driven anywhere in Africa, what is the one thing you wish somebody had told you before you left? Put it in the comments, because the next person planning this trip will read it.
Thanks for reading.
The thoughts of Peter.
