Harare to Chimanimani

I woke up at 4am with a jolt, thinking there was an intruder in the room, buy then realised it was my room mate, Brian, getting up for the toilet. I then couldn't get back to sleep and got up early to get a nice warm shower and cereal for breakfast. The truck, Chui (Swahili for leopard) had returned, with Often, looking shiny and clean, from a day in the workshop. We packed our things back onto the truck, said our sad goodbyes to Denise, a fellow traveller who was stopping here after two weeks on our trip and set off for our next destination.
Once again we drove through huge ancient volcanic outcrops from the tree filled, sun baked, surrounding land. For mile after mile we passed these grey-brown round topped rock protrusions in the landscape. The intensely hot Zimbabwean sun sat in a clear blue sky and burned within seconds of leaving the shade of the truck for a toilet stop. The air temperature quickly rose so that even the wind coming through the open side of the truck blew hot on my cheeks as I kneeled on the seat looking out of the window at the spectacular scenery passing by. We stopped at a roadside stall to buy some large, red and juicy looking tomatoes from two friendly young women who said hello and waved to us smiling.
Then we drove through some high hills that were completely covered with small, lime green, trees with rounded canopies and occasionally covered with red flowers.
We ascended and then descended a high hill with wonderful views over heavily populated valley surrounded by more mountains and found ourselves in the town of Musare where we stopped to by some lunch. It was a busy little town. Spending money in Zimbabwean bond is an interesting experience as you have to pay for small item in a big wedge of notes in small denominations.
After lunch we headed on through very dry looking forested areas as Zimbabwe has had very little rain as the rainy season has only just started and is late by over a month. The weather was incredibly hot - even the wind seemed to burn my cheeks as we sped along on the truck.Then we began to travel through some spectacular mountain scenery with large rock faces rising up like and looking similar to the sheer grey rock faces in Yosemite National Park in the USA. We continued to climb through valleys that were badly damaged by the recent catastrophic cyclone. The river valleys were strewn with enormous boulders and many bridges had had to be rebuilt or were in the process of rebuilding. There were large orange flashes in all the hillsides where there had been massive landslides sometimes sweeping away houses and people. It must have been a terrifying time for the local people. We passed a UN camp which was set up to care for local people who lost their houses during the disaster. The weather started to cool nicely as we rose and the trees turned to conifers to complete the mountain look. We turned off the main road and down to our campsite rightly called, 'Heaven Lodge', near Chimanimani. I pitched my tent with stunning views over distant mountains. We looked over the edge of the campground into the ravine caused by a large landslide that took away half the campsite building with it during the cyclone. This is clearly an area still in recovery from a disaster. The staff were friendly men who had the rastafarian look with long dreadlocks and beards. They informed us about the following day's trek in the mountains and we ordered pizzas for dinner. The sky darkened after the sunset had reddened the mountains, with a bright gibbous moon high in the sky and stars beginning to twinkle.Okumaya devam et