Wednesday-Saturday, 11-14 June 1986: Hiking to the Roof of Zimbabwe

June 26, 3:00 PM, Home of Pete & Verity Mundy, Lake McIlwaine, Zimbabwe

The afternoon of my arrival in Harare on Wednesday, 11 June, I visited the National Parks booking office to make arrangements to stay in a chalet in Nyanga National Park while George, who had driven me from Bulawayo attended a conference nearby.  The park had a chalet available for Thursday night but nothing for Friday and Saturday.  Perhaps they would get a cancellation.  If not, there were several hotels in the area or I could camp out, a prospect that did not overly excite me since I had brought a light bivvy sack but no cold weather sleeping gear with me to Africa.  It was now late autumn and the temperatures at Nyanga could dip to the freezing point at night.  So I booked the chalet for Thursday and hoped for luck. 

We arrived at the parks registration office Thursday around dusk.  I paid Z$15 (about US$8.50) and was given a key to a room in the Rhodes Nyanga Chalets.  No, there was nothing available for Friday, but I could try around 10 the next morning, which was check-out time.  

George dropped me off at the chalet and we agreed to get in touch with each other the following day.  My rustic, simply furnished but comfortable unit had its own fully-equipped kitchen, a large living room with fireplace, a private bath, and bedroom.  The door to a second bedroom was locked.  The only heat in the unit came from the fireplace.  The kindling and firewood had been arranged on the fireplace grate by the cleaning person, so I lit a match and made dinner.  I moved one of the mattresses out of the bedroom, put it on the floor in front of the fire, and threw some bedding on top.  After a spaghetti dinner, I snuggled up under blankets and fell asleep, pleasantly serenaded by the roaring fire.  

I was half-awake at 7:30 in the morning when I heard someone stick a key in the front door and unlock it.  There was no knock first, nor a pause at the door to ask if anyone was here.  And there was no chain on the door that could have been secured to keep out unwelcome cleaning people at 7:30 AM.  I was royally pissed off.  The cleaning guy entered through the kitchen and didn’t even seem to hear me at first as I yelled, “Hey, what the hell’s going on.”  Finally, he got the message when I yelled at him to “get the hell out.”  A little later that morning I found a note under my door which read:

Dear Sir:

I am terribly sorry about the rude manner in which you were disturbed this morning.  I know it’s no excuse, but I thought you were gone since there was no car outside your lodge.    

          I feel terribly ashamed.  Please forgive me and have a pleasant day.

                                                                        Sincerely,

Barbara Wright

The note was obviously written by the African cleaning man’s supervisor.  I doubt his name was either Barbara or Wright. 

When I later told this story to my English friend, Pete (Chief Ornithologist for the Zimbabwe National Park Service), he said the poor bloke was probably completely surprised to still find anyone in a lodge at 7:30AM, since most guests would have been out fishing at the crack of dawn.  And he was probably blown away by my angry response.  Both white and middle-class black Zimbabweans are so used to having servants come and go, they probably would have thought nothing of such an intrusion.  It points out two things an American traveler must cope with in southern Africa:  loss of privacy in one’s habitation and a tendency to assume that all white people do things the same way at the same time. 

About a week earlier in Botswana, I was awakened in my hotel room at 7:00 by a knock on my door.  It was a waiter binging me my morning coffee.  I hadn’t asked to be wakened with morning coffee, tea, or anything else.  I had gotten in late on a train the night before and had my own battery-operated alarm clock, thank you.  Besides, I don’t even drink coffee.  I didn’t explain all this to the guy, but I had to tell him TWICE that didn’t want any coffee.  When I opened my door about an hour later, I discovered that the guy had left the tray of coffee, sugar, milk, cup and saucer next to the door – just in case I wasn’t really as crazy as I apparently appeared to be.  It’s tough trying to be an individual in Africa! 

The cleaning man at the Nyanga chalet and I got along fine after that.  But now, additional problems developed.  I went up to the registration office just before 10:00 to see about a room for another night.  No, they would have to wait until 4:00 PM to see if there were any no-shows.  That meant I would have had to pack up all my stuff in the chalet and stash it somewhere until 4:00, still not knowing if I had a room.  Besides I didn’t trust the guy at the office, because the info. sheet I had been given in Harare said that rooms would be held until 6:00 PM, not 4:00.

There was another option.  I could phone the booking office in Harare to see if they had any cancellations.  Armed with a bunch of 20¢ coins, I went out to the phone booth to do battle with the Zimbabwean phone system.  Despite the fact that Zimbabwean operators speak English, they can’t understand my American accent and I sure as shit can’t understand them.  Still I managed to figure out that the operator wanted $1.40 and she actually got the number right.  And, lo and behold, neither the circuit nor the number were busy when she dialed – a minor miracle, I can assure you.  I was told to deposit $1.40.  In went seven 20¢ coins.  Apparently one of the coins didn’t register and now the operator was insisting on an additional 20¢.  Convincing her that I had already put in seven coins was futile and I found another 20¢ in my pocket.  Fortunately, the national parks booking woman was still on the line when we were connected.  We could barely hear each other, but I managed to convey to her that I wanted to stay there another two nights, or thought I did.  After an interminable period, she came back on the line and said that 9B (where I was currently staying) was free that night and here was a number to give to the confirmation desk.  What about tomorrow night?  “Oh you want it tomorrow night, too?  I’ll have to check.”  So while she was checking the operator came back on the line to get another $1.40 which I didn’t have (I had plenty of paper dollars but coins were hard to come by.)  Panic set in and I said nothing for a few seconds.   Just before I was cut off, the parks woman came back on and said Saturday night was fine.  

When I went back into the registration office, it took a while to convince the guy at the desk that it was okay to let me remain in 9B even though he had another name written in his book with a reservation.  Since I had a confirmation number, he finally relented.  Whew – saved again! 

They following day, I met a couple of Australian blokes on Mount Inyangani, who had walked into the registration office to get a chalet and were told they’d have to phone the Harare office.  They never got through so they gave up and camped out.  And a chalet probably stood empty as a result. 

Now that my lodging was all set, I did a load of laundry and got ready to take a hike.  The night before I had asked at the registration desk about trails information.  The night clerk had told me to come back in the morning and speak with the ranger who would be there.  Now I was told that no one at the registration office could help me.  I’d have to go over to the park office on the other side of Rhodes Dam.  It took me about 15 minutes to find the office and the time was now 12:20 PM.  The sign on the door gave the office hours:  7:00AM to noon and 2:00 to 5:00 PM.  Aw, screw these bastards!  I’ll figure it out myself.  The registration office had an excellent 1”=1 mile scale map available for two bucks, so I purchased a copy and set out on my own to explore a couple of long ridges with old stone ruins about two miles away.  I got some good photos of the surrounding countryside, but realized if I was going to hike up Inyangani the next day, I’d need transportation to the base some 13kms away. 

When I got back to the registration office, there was a message from George.  He’d try to come by tonight, or if not, by tomorrow afternoon.  That would be too late to climb the peak, and we were leaving to go back to Bulawayo the next morning.  I asked the registration clerk if the park service had any transportation available up to the base of Inyangani.  No.  I figured it would be next to impossible to find out from these guys if anyone else was climbing the peak tomorrow.  Thus, I went out to the phone booth to call George to see if was possible to borrow his car.  It was only a local call, but the phone was now totally dead.  Back to the registration office.  No, they could not let me use the phone.  It was against park rules.  “Look, it’s urgent that I get a hold of a man staying up at Troutbeck,” I pleaded.  The clerk relented and tried to dial the hotel for me.  He tried several times over a ten minute period but the line was always busy.  Shit!  I went back in an hour and begged and pleaded again.  This time they got through, but the hotel couldn’t find George.  I left a message.  

The next morning at 7:00AM, I walked out to the phone booth on the slight chance that it might be working now.  It was!  The phone at the hotel rang for at least two minutes before a clerk finally answered.  I got a hold of George, but he couldn’t pick me up to give me the car that morning (he was about 20km away) because he’d be late for his seminar.  He had an idea.  I could phone a friend of his at another hotel who would be driving by the park headquarters in about 45 minutes on his way to the seminar.  I actually got a hold of the guy – yes, he’d stop for me.  I walked 1.5km out to the main highway and there he and several other guys in a Peugeot station wagon pulled up at the appointed time.  Great, but now 4km up the road we hit a government road block.  The army was checking for guns, and if they asked the driver for his license, we were fucked because he had left it back at the hotel.  Luck smiled on us, as the soldier was satisfied, after some brief conversation, that we were not South African terrorists and told us we could proceed. 

I got the car from George, and everything seemed to be going fine except for one snag I haven’t mentioned.  I had asked at the registration desk that morning if it was necessary for me to register to climb Inyangani.  I was told that solo climbs were forbidden.  Well, up theirs!  I had hiked 14,000 foot Mt. Sherman in Colorado solo, so no 8500 foot peak with only a 1400 foot elevation gain in this mild climate was anything to worry about as far as I was concerned.  I had a good map with the trail clearly marked, a compass, a couple liters of water, plenty of food, a first aid kit, rain gear, good boots, and warm clothes for the ascent.  I hadn’t bothered to explain all this to the parks guy.  I decided to break their damn law.  I’d park the car away from the trail head and let them try to catch me.  After all I’d gone through to climb this peak, no banana republic park service was going to stop me.

Why would anyone except a masochist want to put up with all this abuse to hike to the summit of a 8500 foot mountain?  Perhaps the silliest reason was that I wanted to be able to say I’d done it and have the personal satisfaction of bagging this little mountain.  Furthermore, it was a warm, sunny winter day with no snow visible even at the highest elevations.  It was a bit hazy but I expected to be rewarded with spectacular views from the trail and on the summit.  I wasn’t to be disappointed – the hike was well worth all the hassles.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to worry about defying the park gendarmes either, as I met two couples at the trailhead who were going to climb the peak and were more than happy to have me along.  Once again in Zimbabwe, warm, friendly people triumphed over a hopeless bureaucracy. 

Inyangani actually isn’t a peak but rather a high plateau about four miles long from north to south and averaging about a mile and a half wide.  There are several summits on the rugged, windswept, granite plateau which is covered by bushes and tall grass.  The trailhead is reached by a reasonably good dirt road and lies about eight miles east of the Nyanga National Park headquarters.  From the trailhead 2150 meters, a path ascends steeply for a mile through dry savannah vegetation to the top of the plateau at 2500 meters.  From there, it’s a leisurely walk for one mile to the south to the high point of the plateau, a granite hill capped by a survey marker.  The trail is well-marked by cairns, put people have become lost when mists or summer storms blanket the plateau.  A sign at the trailhead warns against leaving the path because of quicksand and precipitous cliffs which form the edges of large portions of the plateau.  Several hikers have been lost during poor visibility periods on Inyangani.  A few bodies have never been recovered.  The top of the plateau is covered by a lush carpet of grasses, flowers, and scattered bushes.  While there is adequate summer rainfall on the plateau, high winds limit the growth of trees.  Temperatures reach the 50s and 60s°F on sunny winter afternoons such as the day I did the climb.  On winter nights, the mercury can dip well below freezing.  There was a heavy frost outside my chalet 900 meters lower than the summit on the morning of my hike.  Snowfall is rare, however, during the dry winters.  It is probably limited to freak storms.   

   

Large cairns (bottom left) and arrows painted on rocks in a few places (bottom center) lead the way along the rocky plateau of Inyangani.

   

My hiking partners were Fin and Jane, European tobacco farmers from Centenary, a community about 80 miles north of Harare.  They had hiked to the summit of Inyangani the previous day and had brought along their friends Mathew and Rosie for this day’s ascent.  Mathew is an entomologist hailing from England while Rosie works in a Harare office.

 

My hiking companions at the summit of Inyangani.  Left to right:  Mathew, Rosie, Fin, and Jane.  

We left our cars about 10:45 AM, took several short rests along the way, and reached the summit at 12:15 PM.  From there we looked west over the forested hills, granite domes, igneous dikes, and scattered farmland of the Nyanga National Park area.  To the south were Pungwe Gorge and the tribal lands of the Honde Valley.   To the east:  low mountains stretching to the Mozambique border, about 15 miles distant.  The sun was warm but the wind quite chilly as we snapped photos, ate munchies, and enjoyed the view from the top of a nation.

View east from the summit of Inyangani.  Distant mountains are in Mozembique.

On the way down, we temporarily lost the route along the plateau straying several hundred feet too far to the east.  Jane and Fin had made the same mistake the previous day.  It was easy to do if you didn’t keep your eye on the cairns as a portion of the route crossed bare granite slabs.  We returned to the cars around 2:30 without further incident. 

My new friends suggested I follow them for a view of Pungwe Falls and Gorge.  They led me down dirt roads for about 14 miles to the viewpoint.  The only way I could capture the 500 meter deep, four mile long gorge was to use my 20mm super-wide-angle lens.  From the Pungwe view, it was a short drive to Mtarazi Falls, Africa’s second highest waterfall (about 2533 feet).  There was really nowhere to get a good view of the full extent of the plunging ribbon of water as it disappeared into dense rainforest at the west side of the Honde Valley far below.  We figured out where the top of the falls was located and were able to drive most of the way there on a rough road.  As the other three looked on nervously, Rosie and I ventured out near the edge of the cliff where the stream made a free-fall plunge into eternity, or so it seemed. 

  

Mtarezi Falls are the highest in Zimbabwe (772 meters or 2,533 feet)

I brought out my little tripod to take some shots following the ribbon of water into the dark abyss.  When collapsed, the tripod is only about 8 inches long and weighs less than a pound (great for hiking) but its legs each extend out to about four feet.  As I was pulling out the legs, Rosie (who had a rather innocent air about her) watched in awe:  “What a wonderful little tripod.  It’s so little but it gets so big.”  Us three guys looked at each other and started laughing.  Realizing why we were laughing, Rosie got visibly embarrassed which got us laughing even harder.  

By the time we got back to our cars, it was nearly dark.  After one more quick stop at the Honde view, we said good-bye and headed back to our respective chalets. Now, that was one helluva great day!