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- The Big Cave Camp in the Matopos near Bulawayo
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- Big Cave Camp lounge is built into the stone.
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- Matopos in the evening
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- Just rocks
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- A dark chanting goshawk
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- Crowned plover
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- A mother giraffe and calf
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- A hammerkop forages
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- A young black-backed jackal
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- A black-backed jackal catches the early morning warmth
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- A kudu doe. All the game was looking this good.
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- A tusker at dusk
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- The male drags the buffalo carcass away from the limelight
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- So full that all he could do was lie and pant!
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- Have I left room for seconds?
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- More buffalo please!
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- A cub’s eyes catch the dawn light
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- A young yellow billed hornbill. Real characters!
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- Hmm tourists.
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- Yawn (the painted dog Colgate smile)
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- The injured dog – a year old female who has been named Faith
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- A well-painted dog. Colours and markings are unique identifiers.
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- Ascot has a new favorite
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- Loadsa stripes!
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- A bush road
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- A Faydherbia albida captures the essence of the African bush
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- The rains had been good and the bush showed it.
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- Park officials were friendly and helpful
It’s been a while since I’ve visited the Matopos hills south east of Bulawayo. 10 years to be precise. In 2007 the Zimbabwe dollar was in free fall but not yet terminally ill and my brother and his family took delight in parting with large bundles of nearly useless money. This time around we are using US dollars, cost of living is much higher and we now also have bond notes that are a sort of hybrid between the old Zim dollars and US dollars but are in short supply and useless outside the country. The absurdity continues but the countryside and the wildlife is still stunning.
We stayed in the Big Cave Camp on the edge of the Matopos National Park and thoroughly enjoyed the good company and atmosphere. The structures are wonderfully blended into the rocks and the view is great.
Hwange National Park some 4 hrs to the north-west was showing the results of a great rainy season – the bush was lush and all the animals were in great condition. We were exceptionally lucky and saw a lot of game, the highlight being a pack of painted dog (endangered) that had returned from a foraging expedition and must have found an old carcass and stank! One had been injured so we reported it to the research station on the way out and were pleased to note that it has already been treated (see the Painted Dog Conservation page on FB).
Lions had made a kill almost on a side road and stayed for some 36 hours allowing for fantastic viewing VERY close to the vehicle.
The Main Camp lodge we stayed in was clean and functional in true National Parks style. Roads were OK given the amount of rain that had fallen but there were few tourists around as could be seen by the nearly empty roads – this is not the Kruger National Park in South Africa which features bumper to bumper traffic.
The only sour note was the bully-boy behavior of the police at a road block on the way home. They fabricated problems with my old Land Cruiser, got stupidly creative with fines and then gave up after half an hour when they realised we were not going to be intimidated.
Zimbabwe Absurdity 
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