Here are his thoughts on Day Two, from Great Zimbabwe, the ruined 11th Century city near the Chimanimani Mountains and the border with Mozambique.
I have a confession: I love Great Zimbabwe. My well-travelled friends often sneer that it’s not as awe-inspiring as Angkor Wat or Machu Picchu. I see their point. The national parks’ obsession with comparing it to the pyramids in Egypt doesn’t help, because, let’s be honest, the pyramids it’s not.
What it is, however, is enormous, and mysterious, and graceful. I love that there are no right angles, that the walls swoop and curve around each other. I love that the king had secret passages to leave his court or to sneak out and visit his 200 wives. I love that they had plenty of gold but not so much iron, so the blast furnace was kept next door to the throne. I love that the kings were buried in a 24-kilometre-long secret cave that’s been covered up since 1937, when a team of archaeologists went inside to explore and never came back out.
In a country as conservative as Zimbabwe is today, I also love that the residents of Great Zimbabwe were clearly really into sex. The blast furnace was styled like a woman’s body, with breasts above the flames. That was next to a tree where men still shave off the roots as an aphrodisiac. The Great Enclosure had a “marital preparation” area where girls were coached in the arts of love. A pile of treasure in that area included beads and porcelain and jewelry imported from India and China and Persia. Found mixed in with the valuables was a collection of stone dildos, now displayed in the site museum in the same room as the iconic Zimbabwe birds.
The first time I went to Great Zimbabwe was in 2001, right after tourism collapsed. For a while in the 1990s, Zimbabwe was the most visited country in Africa after Egypt. After the failed elections and the land reforms and the hyperinflation began in 2000, tourists disappeared. On that first visit, I felt like I had discovered the ruins myself. There was simply no one else around. Now a modest gathering of cars and a lone tour bus sit in the parking lot. Guides said they had already done two tours by midday, and that school groups regularly go through. My guide had a university degree in history and could speak engagingly about anything and everything there.
I hope this means that tourism is starting to come back, but there are many hurdles, not the least of which is cost. The guide charged $3. The charming but not very special hotel next door charged $190 a night. At least the Wifi was free. Wifi didn’t even exist here my last time around. – http://zimbabweelection.com/2013/05/01/zimbabwe-election-road-trip-2/
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