Matobo Hills National Park (Matopos)
Located 40 km south of Bulawayo, Matobo Hills national park is a small, accessible game park with fascinating natural features, rich history and interesting wildlife. It is an excellent stopover for tourists in transit to Hwange and Victoria Falls.
The park is situated in the magnificent Matobo Hills, a range of domes, spires and balancing rock formations which have been hewn out of the solid granite plateau through millions of years of erosion and weathering. Massive granite boulders are piled up one on each other in a precarious balance, shaping giant open air sculptures. These grandiose rocks create a unique , mystical atmosphere – no wonder the hills were considered sacred by the Ndebele people. The majestic and rugged terrain of the park is a hikers paradise and the diversity of the vegetation supports a wide range of wildlife.
Great Zimbabwe Ruins
One of greatest African civilizations after the Pharaons, the Kingdom of Great Zimbabwe dominated the area from present Zimbabwe, East of Botswana and South East of Mozambique in the late Iron Age (between 11,000 and 14,500 AD).
An impressive granite stone complex was built by the ancient Kingdom of Munumatapa: It used a genuine building style with cylindrical constructions and an impressive enclosing wall with no mortar, and only primlitive tools. The complex, seat of the political power of the shona monarch, may have housed up to 25,000 persons organized in an elaborate social and economical society – to the extent that some do not believe this civilization was of African origin. A museum, to be visitined before exploring the ruins, gives insight into this amazing period.
The ruins that survive are built entirely of stone. The ruins span 1,800 acres (7 km2) and cover a radius of 100 to 200 miles (160 to 320 km).The ruins can be broken down into three distinct architectural groups. They are known as the Hill Complex, the Valley Complex and the Great Enclosure. The Hill Complex was used as a temple, the Valley complex was for the citizens, and the Great Enclosure was used by the king. Over 300 structures have been found so far in the Great Enclosure. The type of stone structures found on the site gives an indication of the status of the citizenry. Structures that were more elaborate were probably built for the kings and situated further away from the center of the city. It is thought that this was done in order to escape sleeping sickness. What little evidence exists suggests that Great Zimbabwe also became a center for trading, with artifacts suggesting that the city formed part of a trade network extending as far as China. Chinese pottery shards, coins from Arabia, glass beads and other non-local items have been excavated at Zimbabwe. The site was not abandoned but rather the court of the king moved further north as his empire declined in order to gain more direct access to trade revenues.
The Great Zimbabwe ruins are located in the vicinity of Masvingo, the 3rd Zimbabwean city. The ChiKaranga-speaking Shona people are found around Great Zimbabwe in the modern-day province of Masvingo and have been known to have inhabited the region since the building of this ancient city. A second theory is that Zimbabwe is a contracted form of “dzimba woye” which means “venerated houses” in the Zezuru dialect of the Shona language. This term is usually reserved for chiefs’ houses or graves.
Matusadona & Lake Kariba
WIth 2,000 km of shoreline, Lake Kariba is the 4th largest man-made lakes in the world and the 2nd largest in Africa: it was built to generate hydropower from the powerful Zambezi river and Nyaminyami – the River God. There were many stories and even legends attached to the dam construction. Matusadona was proclaimed a non-hunting area on the 7th November 1958 before the dam was built. By the opening of its operations in 1959, as water levels rose dramatically, a huge rescue operation called “Operation Noah” had to be organized: it saved some 5,000 animals of 35 different species from drowning, only on the Zimbabwean side.
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