Africa 2001

A Journey Across Zimbabwe

All of these photos were taken from the bus, through the glass windows, and therefore many are of poor quality, but they do serve as some illustration of what we saw. As already described, we spent two days travelling by coach from Victoria Falls to Harare, and there was a further significant journey on Thursday to the eclipse viewing site.

On Tuesday, from Victoria Falls to Bulawayo, the country was almost entirely forest with fairly gently rolling hills. Occasionally there would be a clearing in the trees with a few thatched huts and a corale for cattle.

The road itself was well built, with very wide verges kept in check by regular burning back of vegetation - we passed quite a few areas where this burning back had got out of control.

The road was very quiet, particularly for the first two days, with virtually no other traffic at all. Every fifty kilometres or so there was a police roadblock, where the coaches were stopped, the drivers questioned, and sometimes the coaches inspected. There were frequent side-roads, often indicating that they led to a school some kilometres away. Where the schools were by the main road, they were usually the best buildings for miles around, and all the children wore bright uniforms. It was somewhat incongruous to see a hundred children in smart royal blue uniforms, when all around was such poverty, and all the other clothes in the rural areas were shabby and drab. Clearly a country and a people taking pride in education.

On Wednesday, on the drive from Bulawayo to Harare, the landscape was quite different. There were patches of forest, but for the most part the land had been cleared. Some was under active cultivation with irrigation etc., but most appeared to be abandoned scrub, though some of this was being used for cattle ranching.

On Thursday, driving north from Harare, it was clear that we were into prime agricultural land, with the valley floors being intensively cultivated.

An orange grove, also showing the old-fashioned individual telephone wires which accompanied every highway.

Younger orange trees

Abandoned land

Irrigating the crops

Cotton was a common sight on this drive

A dense herd of cattle

Bananas?

As we went through the hills, though, there remained some forest

More villages as we neared the eclipse observation site. Land here was being farmed on a much smaller scale than the large farms seen nearer to the capital.

As we travelled further off the beaten path, more and more people came out to welcome us.

...as the road gradually deteriorated