Day 94 - Bulawayo 5/01/13

Yet another brilliant day, but not until after another massive storm during the night. We had seen the lightning in the distance for several hours before going to bed, but in the middle of the night the rain really hit us - we are told 40mm. Claire swears she felt the ground shaking with each thunder clap.

The day "dawned" with heavy drizzle and glowering grey clouds, so our expectations were not high but Ian, the chap who spoke to us yesterday evening, took us out in his truck - and what a day. We were basically in the Matapos national park, (yet another world heritage site, with geological formations that none of us had ever seen before). In the morning we visited a cave where there are paintings from some 30,000 years ago (or more) from the San people - now usually referred to as "bushmen" and basically restricted to the Kalahari desert. These were of the animals who lived here at that time, and are instantly recognisable even after the passing of so many millennia. Yes, we have all seen such things on tv, but to be there standing right in front of them was quite awesome. This was made even more so by Ian, who is not just passionate but extremely knowledgeable on a wide variety of subjects - we all said to each other that we could have listened to him for hours, and far longer - on any subject.

After lunch (including a cold potato salad to die for), it was off to "World View", which is where Cecil Rhodes is buried - and what a site. A stone hill, topped by a number of massive circular boulders of various sizes, has his plain grave and is surrounded in the semi distance by a 360 deg mountain range. Sorry, this is the best description I can give and in no way gets across the sheer spectacular setting. We were quite blown away by it - fortunately not literally.

To finish off the day, we did a "foot safari" - tracking, following and observing white rhino. I think this is the kind of thing that people pay a fortune to do in the Kruger national park in South Africa - none of us could really believe that we were actually doing it.

Although the rain did eventually die away, the clouds were omnipresent but, on the journey home, there was only one topic of conversation - what a truly great day it had been. As I have seemingly said a thousand times on this holiday "I can't believe I am actually doing / seeing this" and today was three such on one day. No complaints.