Visit to Vumba

After our mid term review on Thursday we headed into a 5 day weekend, which gave us a great opportunity to get out and about. 

 Friday and Saturday were spent in Mutare, and one of our ICVS kindly took some of us fabric shopping and to her relative who is a tailor. We found lots of amazing material in great patterns and we have ordered lots of skirts, dresses and shirts made, so we may be coming home with a whole new wardrobe! Here is a photoof my first Zimbabwean outfit!

18 of us headed off to Vumba in the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe, on Sunday which is about 30km from Mutasa. We spent Sunday relaxing at Leopard rock Hotel, a 4* hotel which has a small game park, horse riding, walks, and lovely grounds. We headed straight off for game viewing and were lucky enough to see zebras, Kudu, antelope, ostriches and monkeys. Unfortunately we didn’t see the giraffes, but the park was absolutely beautiful and we really enjoyed our tour around.

Once we had enjoyed the facilities and seen our fill of the animals we headed to our accommodation for the evening. We were staying in a lodge nestled in the hills, which was beautiful, remote and completely cut off from the outside world – no wifi or mobile signal. I was lucky enough to be up in a cabin on the hill above the main building and had a beautiful view.

We had an amazing dinner, where we had more veggies than we had seen in the previous month, and we all ate until we thought we might burst! Given the remote location we had an amazing view of the stars and the milky way and we spent the evening around the fire outside singing songs and just enjoying the great outdoors.

Monday morning was a lazy affair, allowing us to lie in and relax in the gardens. We decided to do one of the walks offered by the lodge to a waterfall having been told it was only about 30 minutes away. What they forgot to tell us was that it was 4km down hill to reach the waterfall, and the only way back was to climb 4km back up the hill. The waterfall was lovely, but the walk back up the hill was painful and by the time we arrived back at the lodge I was happy just to lie in the sun and read my book for the rest of the afternoon!

We stopped at a lovely view point on the outskirts of Mutare called Prince of Wales view point, where you can see across the border into Mozambique, and where local craftspeople sell stone carvings. A lot of us managed to get our souvenir shopping started!!