My father and I had Gonarezhou firmly within our adventurous sights since the birth of this magazine about two years ago. It had always been one of those “one day” trips, but we were highly cautious while planning this outing.
The first major issue was finding information about Gonarezhou and the surrounding area, so I had to pull out the big guns. I dusted off one of my granddad’s old travel books to read up about the “place of the elephant” and spent hours learning about his trip to the park about two decades ago. The feedback from both my grandfather and the travel books made me extremely sceptical about Gonarezhou, both sources describing it as a barren wasteland ravaged by poaching and corruption.
Is it even worth visiting, we were wondering…? However, there was no turning back as the trip was booked, the Jimny packed, and we were on our way in the midst of one of the coldest winters Gauteng has seen in recent years.
Getting started
We met up with the convoy at the Petroport on the N1 outside Pretoria. Our travel party consisted of my father and I in Opposite Lock’s kitted-out Suzuki Jimny, Coba and Darrel from Opposite Lock in their brand-new 4.2-litre Land Cruiser 79, Kenneth and Ti-Amore in their 4.5 V8 Land Cruiser named Gunnland (find them on social media: @gunnland79), Kenny from CGear in his Volkswagen 4Motion V6 Amarok and finally a familiar face, Jaco from Affipadaf in his new Amatrokkie (a customised Amarok 2.0 TDI 4x4). The group’s excitement was palpable, everyone rearing to embark on this adventure of a lifetime.
Our first destination would be the stunning Mapungubwe National Park, only 70km away from Musina and the Zimbabwe border. We arrived at the reception of Mapungubwe just after 17h00, just in time for the Boks to kick off against Wales for the deciding test in Cape Town. So, I promptly switched to RSG inside the Jimny to listen to the first half of the test match while heading to our accommodation, Tshugulu Lodge. Handré Pollard had just smashed through the Wales defence for the first try, and as we celebrated in the car, I saw
