Sparring partners

The zebra’s name comes from the Portuguese who first described this “wild ass” in Zaire 500 years ago. No two zebra stripes are alike. The colouring is not actually meant to be a camouflage, although it does serve to confuse predators, who find it difficult to single out one animal from the mass of stripes. In the heat of the day a zebra will stand, like a springbok, rump to the sun to reduce exposure. 

Zebras’ habit of remaining close to wildebeests benefits both animals, as the zebras’ sense of smell, sight and hearing is an early warning system against predators, while the carnivores’ preference for wildebeests is an inverted safety valve for the zebra.

Although zebra stallions, patrolling the perimeter of family herds and thus exposing themselves to the greatest danger, are very protective when predators are near, they are capable of spectacular infighting when it comes to dominance, ego and the opposite sex.

Stallions can clash in spectacular displays of flailing hooves as they rear, wrestle, kick and lunge at each other with barred teeth and slashing hind and forelegs. They will even drop to the sand on their forelegs and spar ferociously, raking each other’s neck with slavering jaws.

  

As for the cheetah, bathed in the warm colours of late afternoon, a San Bushman legend tells of a much more dignified characteristic. There was a race the story goes, to discover which was the fastest animal on earth, the cheetah or the tsessebe of the grasslands. As they ran, the speedy antelope was just inching ahead when it tripped and fell. The cheetah stopped to help and as a reward for this kindly gesture, God granted the cheetah the right to be the fastest creature in the desert. 

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Rock of ages with Superb Africa Safaris

By the rivers of ZHOU, the word of the Shona people for elephant, the ramparts of Chilojo have for centuries gazed down at the great Gonarezhou wilderness in the southeastern corner of Zimbabwe. The meeting place of the Runde and Save rivers, it has ever since slaving days, been the free-fire zone of elephant poachers. It has also witnessed the decimation of lofty ironwood trees I an attempt to hold the tsetse fly at bay, the culling of buffalo to protect man’s cattle, gun running, slavery and ivory wars. Every adventurer of the lowveld – Shangaan, Swahili, Portuguese, English and Rhodesian – has had a crack at Gonarezhou.

If you follow the Limpopo River west from Gonarezhou to a point where the Shashi River joins it, then head north, you will soon come to the Matobo hills. Visionary imperialist Cecil John Rhodes chose this sublime eyrie as his burial place. Surrounded by massive natural cannonballs, it overlooks a land that seems to have been pulverized by giant blows into a thousand tumbled hills. Great spaces washed by the rain and wind and sun.

In the summer rains, if Mwari God is bountiful, water courses down these massive granite whalebacks in a hundred glistening streams like the white stripes of kudu as it pauses among dripping msasa trees. 

Seventy per cent of Zimbabwe’s 13 million people still live and work as small farmers and herdsmen, and for nearly a thousand years they have also mastered the art of shaving off or fire cracking the surfaces of dwalas to produce building blocks. This was how the Great Zimbabwe’s huge stone structures were made and the same process has allowed modern day artists in the country to carve exquisite mythological sculptures, recognized as among the most sophisticated in the world.

Accommodation in Zimbabwe

Parks in Zimbabwe

Mosi oa Tunya, the smoke that thunders

No one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed in England. It had never been seen before by European eyes; but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.