Day 28, Zimbabwe, Africa

Good morning from Zimbabwe.
We leave the magnificent Vic Falls and head for the capital, Harare, to pick up some supplies.

Next stop:The ruins of Great Zimbabwe.

Great Zimbabwe is the name given to hundreds of great stone ruins spread out over a 200 square mile area within the modern day country of Zimbabwe, which itself is named after the ruins

During the thirteenth century, a great city of stone arose in the African interior. For more than three hundred years Great Zimbabwe thrived and grew as the capital of a vast gold and ivory trading empire Great Zimbabwe ruins.

Developing from a small settlement in the 8th century, Great Zimbabwe evolved into a powerful and wealthy city state which flourished between AD 1250 and 1450 and at its zenith contained more than twenty thousand people. Its wealth was founded on cattle and subsequently trading gold, copper and ivory to Arab Merchants on the Indian Ocean coast in return for ceramics and
cloth.

By the 15th century the city had fallen into irreversible decline and for the next 300 years was known only to the outside world by hearsay, inspiring wild and romantic speculations linking it with the Queen of Sheba and KingSolomons Mines.

Wars were raged, art and architecture flourished, dynasties reigned and were overthrown. Then the civilization disappeared and left no record of a written language behind, which makes Great Zimbabwe one of the truly lost civilizations of the world

The Great Enclosure is the most impressive and extraordinary of the stone remains and is a large stone enclosure with a maximum diameter of 89 meters.

The wall is 244 meters long and, at its greatest, 5 meters thick and 10 meters high, capped by turrets and monoliths, where carved birds once perched.

Great Zimbabwe ruins is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Look, no mortar!! The entire structure was constructed from millions of granite blocks fitted together without mortar and remains the largest ancient stone structure in sub Saharan Africa

The purpose of the large tower?? That remains a mystery.

Long after the buildings and cathedrals of Europe have fallen, the Great Tower will still stand as a testimony to a long dead civilization........

Hopefully one day Zimbabwe will become a great nation again.......

I wonder how the guys are doing on that trek up Kili.......I cannot contact them......

We say goodbye to Zimbabwe as we head down to Botswana.....where our next adventure awaits...