The Matopos Part 1. A unique landscape


The Matopos were one of the places I most wanted to see when we came to Zimbabwe. I was absolutely not disappointed. They are amazing.






But we find that while it is easy enough to take photos which will remind us of them, it is quite hard to photograph them so that other people can see how extraordinary they are. There are huge rocks and slabs of granite, but they are in hills that have been weathered for millenia, so not in peaks; it's hard see how big they really are from a photograph.


Or how extraordinary the balancing rocks are. But we've tried.

(In a way it reminded me of trying to take pictures of Scotland's very weathered mountains, like the Cairngorm. Huge but not in the dramatic peaks of younger mountains.)
The area is also beautiful for its grassland. A lot of this has been lost recently when burning out was discouraged. Which means that it is slowly turning to forest - and changing an ecology which has been established for at least 3,000,000 years and probably much, much longer.









So now they are beginning to burn it out again and the grassland is re-appearing. The burned trees are strangely beautiful.

And all this just half an hours drive,  or less, from Bulawayo! Peter used to come here on family picnics.

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