Bulawayo is the only city in the country with a World Heritage landscape on its doorstep. Most people who live there have been out at least once. Most visitors don't know it's there until somebody tells them.
You can see a real amount of it between breakfast and supper.
The two shapes
Everything runs with a guide, and the park fees are in the price rather than waiting for you at the gate.
- Half day
- US$90 an adult, US$65 a child. One or two activities depending on the clock. Rhino tracking on foot, a rock art cave, Rhodes' Grave and World's View, or a village visit. Guide, park fees and refreshments included. Minimum two people.
- Full day
- US$165 an adult, US$120 a child. Two or more activities with lunch at the lodge. The usual pairings are rhino tracking with the caves, or World's View with a village visit. Guide, lunch, park fees and refreshments included. Minimum two people.
- Private
- Available on either, with your own vehicle and guide and the day built around you. Quoted on request.
What a full day tends to look like
- 07:30
- Collected in Bulawayo. Hotel, the CBD or the airport.
- 08:30
- Through the park gate and a short orientation with your guide.
- 09:00
- Rhino tracking on foot. Two to three hours, slow, with a lot of standing still.
- 12:30
- Lunch at the lodge, looking down the Maleme valley.
- 14:00
- A cave, or World's View, or a village. Whichever pair you chose.
- 16:00
- Back on the road, into Bulawayo for about five.
That's the common shape, not a timetable. The rhino decide the morning and your guide will rearrange the rest around them.
What you can actually get into a day
Rhino tracking on foot
The reason most people come. There are no lion, elephant or buffalo in these hills, which is why a guide can walk you up to a two-tonne animal without anyone being reckless. It carries a separate conservation fee of US$24 a person, which goes to Parks.
A rock art cave
Nswatugi is five minutes from the car and holds the best-preserved panel in the park. Pomongwe is bigger, older and layered. The oldest dated paint in the hills is around thirteen thousand years old, and the tradition ran until roughly two thousand years ago.
Rhodes' Grave and World's View
Malindidzimu, the place of benevolent spirits, sacred long before anybody was buried on it. A short steep climb up bare granite, and the view that gave the place its name. Note that it carries its own entry fee of US$10 an adult and US$5 a child.
A village visit
Half an hour to an hour in a working Ndebele homestead ten minutes from the lodge. The hills are a cultural landscape, not an emptied wilderness, and this is the part of the day that makes that concrete.
The honest bit
A day trip shows you World's View and a cave and, with luck, a rhino. It does not show you the hills.
What a day cannot give you is the early part of the morning, when the light is worth the alarm and the rhino are still moving. It cannot give you the long middle of the afternoon when nothing is scheduled. And it can't give you the granite going gold and then blue while you sit on it with a drink, because by then you're on the road.
If a day is what you've got, take it and enjoy it. If you've the option of one night, take the night.
Practical
- Getting there
- 50 km south of Bulawayo, about fifty-five minutes. Tar most of the way and the last stretch on graded gravel.
- Collection
- Tell us where you're staying in Bulawayo and we'll quote the road transfer with the tour.
- When
- May to October for the tracking and the sight lines. November to April for green hills, better light and almost nobody about.
- Bring
- Closed shoes, a hat, sunblock, and a jersey for the first hour between May and August. Binoculars if you've got a pair.
- Children
- Six and up on the rhino walk, which is a Parks requirement. Younger children track from the vehicle.
- Booking
- A few days' notice is comfortable. The rangers and the vehicles are finite and the good mornings fill first.
