Home to some of the most majestic granite scenery in the world, the Matobo National Park is one of the unsung highlights of Zimbabwe. This Unesco World Heritage Site is a stunning and otherworldly landscape of balancing rocks, kopjes giant boulders unfeasibly teetering on top of one another. When you see it, it’s easy to understand why Matobo is considered the spiritual home of Zimbabwe. The national park is separated into two sections – the recreational park and the game park.

The recreational park includes World’s View (a scenic viewpoint and burial site of Cecil Rhodes) and ancient San rock art caves. The game park may not have the most prolific wildlife in Zimbabwe – it’s been hard hit by poaching but it remains one of the best places to see both black and white rhinos (although the black rhinos are difficult to spot). It also has the highest density of leopards in Zimbabwe, but you’ll be extremely lucky to spot one. Matobo is home to one-third of the world’s species of eagle, so you may see black eagles, African hawk eagles or rare Cape eagle owls.

Wide tree-lined avenues, parks and charming colonial architecture make Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city, an attractive one. It has a lovely historic feel to it, and it’s worth spending a night or two, especially given it’s a gateway to Matobo National Park, and an ideal staging point for Hwange National Park and Vic Falls.

The city dates back to pre-colonial days, when it was founded in the 1840s by the Ndebele king, Lobengula Khumalo. Nearly half a century later it was invaded by the British South Africa Company during the Matabele War, and colonised by Cecil Rhodes in 1894. The grand colonial architecture that stands today soon followed, and Bulawayo’s claim to fame is that it had electric lighting (switched on in 1897) before London did! The population today remains majority Ndebele.