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zimbabwe and first rides in south africa
Written by Jerem   
Friday, 04 May 2012

I spent a couple of days in Livingstone / Victoria falls, enough to change my mind many times about my route for the rest of the trip, the remaining highlights of it being Lesotho and Namibia. It quickly came out that it wont be a good idea to visit Namibia first and then Lesotho in may (winter time), most of the country (and roads) standing at more than 2500m high. It still let me the choice on the route to go south to Lesotho. The rainy season being still active in Mozambique, I decided to go through Zimbabwe.

Except for Victoria falls and some game reserves, the north of Zimbabwe is not really touristic, landscapes are mostly flat and monotonous. After 2 days, we arrived along the lake Mutirikwi near Masvingo. But no luck, the weather here was really raining and humid and didn t let us enjoy the nature around.

lake mutirikwi 1 lake mutirikwi 1

lake mutirikwi 2 lake mutirikwi 2

Zimbabwe is slowy recovering from an extremely bad economic situation, and inhabitants are now happy to see vehicules on the roads and biers in the bars.

zim village zim village

Going south, some rocky hills appear and make the landscape less monotonous.

zim landscape 1 zim landscape 1

Closer to the South African border, the lanscape turns to a dry and barren plateau.

zim landscape 2 zim landscape 2

i am in africa i am in africa

Some hundreds kilometres more south, in South Africa, the landscape is green again and the area is known to grow fruits, including delicious mangos.

fruit valley 1 fruit valley 1

fruit valley 2 fruit valley 2

eastern drakesberk 1 eastern drakesberk 1

eastern drakesberk 2 eastern drakesberk 2

Then, we arrived in a mountaneous area, which include one of the deepest canyon of the world, the Blyde river canyon,along with a nice plateau and escarpements.

eastern drakesberk 3 eastern drakesberk 3

blyde river canyon 1 blyde river canyon 1

blyde river canyon 2 blyde river canyon 2

blyde river canyon 3 blyde river canyon 3

blyde river canyon 4 blyde river canyon 4

blyde river canyon 5 blyde river canyon 5

The area is also know to host one of the largest man-made forest. Following this road, I climbed up the mountains making the border between South Africa and Swaziland.

on the way to swaziland 1 on the way to swaziland 1

on the way to swaziland 2 on the way to swaziland 2

on the way to swaziland 3 on the way to swaziland 3