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September 19 2018
Acclaimed journalist and travel writer, Graham Boynton, gives us his insights into the spectacular tucked away safari lodges of Zimbabwe.
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Published: September 19 2018
That this is a beautiful country inhabited by charming people there is no doubt. Just ask anyone who has been to Zimbabwe. However, for all sorts of economic and political reasons the country has for the past 20 years been the Cinderella of African safari destinations. Far better known and more visited by British and European travellers are its neighbours Kenya, Botswana, Zambia and South Africa.
However now there is a post-Robert Mugabe Zimbabwe so more and more people are talking about visiting. And so they should. This country has splendid wildlife populations in its national parks and its guides are among the most knowledgeable on the continent.
The enormous Hwange National Park, at 14,000 square kilometres the size of Wales, is home to one of the world’s largest elephant populations (anything between 30,000 and 40,000) while Mana Pools National Park runs along the mighty Zambezi river and is spectacularly remote and more like the Garden of Eden than anywhere else I have been in Africa. More remote, and for the more adventurous, is the 5,000 square kilometre Gonarezhou National Park in the south eastern corner of the country, worth visiting for its sheer unspoiled splendour of baobab trees and sandstone cliffs.
But if the wilderness and the wildlife are spectacular so too are the indigenous people - smart, sophisticated urban Zimbabweans are in demand across the continent and you can see why. You will meet them in the major cities such as Harare, the country’s capital, and Bulawayo, the principal Matabele city where Cecil Rhodes founded his colonial empire. And if you visit Bulawayo you would remiss not to visit the spectacular Matobo National Park, just 30 kilometres outside the city, where Rhodes is buried.
Two lodges that I would particularly recommend, both owned by the Stead family, are Khulu Bush Camp, a lovely, rusting 12-bed camp on the border of Hwange, and Amalinda, a spectacular camp built into the rocks in Matobo.
There is, of course, one major caveat. Recent elections have thrown up many unpleasant questions about President Mnangagwa and his party. If Zimbabwe reverts to the draconian rule of Mugabe’s times the country will yet again become a no-go area for tourists. Let us hope that is not the case.
Twitter: @boyntontravels
Facebook: Graham Boynton
Graham Boynton has worked as a newspaper and magazine journalist in Britain, the USA and Africa for more than 30 years, writing for newspapers The Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, Financial Times, Washington Post and international magazines Vanity Fair, Esquire, The Spectator and The New Statesman. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book on the final days of white rule in Africa, Last Days in Cloud Cuckooland, which was one of the Washington Post’s Best Non-Fiction Books of 1998.
Boynton was appointed Travel Editor of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph in January 1998, having spent the previous ten years in New York as a senior editor and feature writer with Conde Nast Publications. He was one of a group of journalists Harold Evans assembled to launch Conde Nast Traveler, which became America’s most successful travel publication. At the same time he worked as a contracted writer for Vanity Fair magazine, for which he wrote an award-winning expose of Winnie Mandela.
In 2011 at the British Travel Press Awards, Boynton was honoured for his contribution to travel journalism and in January 2012 launched Graham Boynton Associates. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
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