Now we’re into the culture bit. La Rochelle (18 54.3 S 32 44.5 E), 15 km outside Mutare, is the former home of Sir Stephen Courtauld. It is now an hotel and botanical gardens with a small caravan park attached, which we have to ourselves. We have full use of the hotel facilities and grounds. That costs us the enormous sum of R12.50 per night with electricity, R9.00 without. The hotel itself runs at R100 per night bed and breakfast per person sharing. The food is first class a la carte and very, very reasonable. This sort of price structure can be found in a number of hotels in the Eastern Highlands, and we just cannot understand why there are not more South Africans around. Some of the larger hotel groups work on a two or three tier system, but these should be avoided. Anyway, more on pricing later.
La Rochelle hotel
La Rochelle campsite
As we told you in our last letter, we left Ijapo for a while to spend time in Ngezi Recreational Park. It was pleasant enough, but a bit of an anti-climax after Mana Pools. Unfortunately, the old USD 20 per head applied, but otherwise our camp site cost ZD 60 (R10) a night and with an ablute that someone took a lot of pride in, the floor shone so much that you could see your face – or whatever – in it. The camp site was not at all what we expected. It was actually a number of buildings about 10 ft x 10 ft with a high thatched roof and netting upper walls – chicken wire for the monkeys and a finer wire for the mozzies. All this set amongst the trees by the Dam and each in its own clearing with an outside table and braai. Very nice. Nobody there but us. We more or less had the whole park to ourselves. There was not much game around, Kudu and Bushbuck here and there, a solitary Hippo, but crocs aplenty, and the size of submarines – big submarines.
Ngezi chalet
We mainly watched the birds of which there were lots, and Sean caught some Tiger Fish. Hopefully, those of you who read these epistles carefully, will have registered the term “some Tiger Fish”, not “a Tiger Fish” the obvious, and correct, conclusion that you will have reached is that Sean caught more than one – a lot more – probably double that amount. We won’t dwell upon the size of the fish.
We returned to Ijapo to find that the labour had killed a 9 ft Black Mamba whilst we were away. Can’t say that we were sorry to have missed it. We did our shopping and laundry (life can get so drearily mundane), and then left on our way to the Nyanga area of the Eastern Highlands. (Meat here by the way is quite reasonable, we can buy whole fillet steaks for R35.00 – R24 per kilo)
Our base in Nyanga is in fact halfway between the town of Rusape and the village of Nyanga. Rain Valley Orchards ( 18 22.9 S 32 26.5 E altitude 1745 m), is owned by Bert and Christine Manley. They have a 100 acre small holding and farm fruit, flowers and their own requirements. We park in their garden and have the use of their guest cottage’s bathroom. Electricity, charcoal, milk, are all provided at ZD 100 (R17) per day. (Their cottage which is very comfortable and, provided with everything, including tape player and a library of books, goes at ZD 200 per day!!)
Looking down at Rain Valley from an OP that we discovered
Site of the OP. Obviously used to keep track of the Manleys during the war- quite disturbing.
The Manleys are a delightful couple. Bert, who is an incredibly active 78, was a civil servant with the Ministry of Civil Aviation in East Africa. They have been at Rain Valley for 28 years. Bert has supplied us with a mass of Ordnance Survey maps, and each day we head off in one direction or the other exploring dirt roads that either take us further up into the mountains or down into the Honde Valley that runs alongside the Mozambique border.
Honde Valley
The temperature ranges from about 15 c at night to 30 c in the day. Very pleasant although it gets a bit nippy in winter. Jean is in her element, fresh fruit is abundant, and, again at prices that really suit the pocket. Normally when we travel, we only eat out as a treat, here we just about do it every day. We find a small hotel tucked away somewhere and get a very substantial bar lunch – with suitable liquid sustenance – for about R30 for the two of us. Really, even for those of you not enamoured with the camping life, this is a very worthwhile holiday destination. Wildlife is sparse, but the scenery is beautiful.
We left Bert for a few days to come down here to explore Mutare, the Vumba, and Chimanimani. Although we usually give border towns a wide berth, we find Mutare to be quite pleasant, and the people both courteous and friendly.
The Vumba is a mountain area similar to Nyanga, and so is Chimanimani. The main products here are fruit, tea, coffee and timber, with bananas down in the valleys.
Tomorrow we go back to Chez Bert for a few days. He is having both his knees replaced (No, he doesn’t come from Northern Ireland!), and we will act as caretakers and dog sitters whilst Christine gets him settled in hospital in Harare.
Looking west from World’s View (some twit tried hang-gliding from there a while back. Sadly, but understandably, he is no longer with us.)
We will then explore more of Zimbabwe and the head into Botswana to see our pal Dup at the beginning of December. Hope to be home in Durban about 20th December.