During past weeks, NewsDay Travel has taken you, vicariously, to such glamorous destinations as Portugal, St Petersburg, Russia; the former North Vietnam and to London 2012 for the Queen’s Jubilee and upcoming Olympics, often courtesy of Emirates, the Dubai-based airline which services those and many other routes from Harare, via The Gulf.
Today, we’re in Bulawayo, care of City Link the inter-city “luxury” coach service which speeds passengers from Rainbow Towers Hotel and Conference Centre, Harare to Bulawayo Rainbow Hotel for just US$30 single! (It also connects Bulawayo to Victoria Falls…but that’s something I must look forward to).
Car-less, as my little old clunker was totalled in Harare a month earlier, I took the 7am (reporting time: not departure time) coach from the HICC car-park after over-nighting at the hotel and the trip was nowhere near as bad as I’d feared; in fact it was quite enjoyable, with a certain amount of humour thrown in.
Read about it in yesterday’s Zimbabwe Independent.
Main reason spurring my trip to Skies was an invite to help judge a fund-raising potjie competition at Old Miltonians Sports Club. For the benefit of non-southern Africa readers, a potjie was the trekboers’ equivalent of a stock pot. In it you cook such meats and vegetables as became available during the day’s journey by ox wagon, adding them to whatever was previously left-over.
Obviously such a presentation is a stew, but this stew is traditionally never stirred: ingredients being cooked strictly in layers.
Potjie competitions are hugely popular where ever South Africans have settled across the globe. I hear they have a big following in Iraq and Afghanistan where young Boks are engaged in security work. An annual Texas event attracts more than 1 000 entries.
OM’s tournament had a manageable 12 teams of two per side in the fun-filled competition; meat and veg were provided. There was a drawer for which team used game, beef, chicken etc. Communal sadza and rice was cooked, but teams provided their own condiments, spices, pickles and secret recipes.
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Planned to become an annual event, this could well prove a tourist draw. It attracted around 300 spectators on a day in which polocrosse and go-karting were live attractions in the Second City and Zimbabwe’s spectacularly successful T20 cricket games against Bangladesh and RSA were on telly. Various components of this article will form self-contained travel and food pieces in AMH publications, but to outline events:
Thursday and Friday nights were spent at wonderfully retro Bulawayo Club, which has now been semi-privatised, is much more egalitarian than when its elegant and polished facilities could only be used by dyed-in-the-wool members or old fogey reciprocal members like me!
They now even allow women in the panelled members’ bar of the attractive whitewashed Cape colonial style club building, within 10 minutes’ walk of anywhere in the CBD. Bedrooms are gracefully proportioned, comfortable and quiet. (I once had a very noisy room there, but I think double glazing has helped kill the growl of all-night traffic.)
General manager is ex-journalist Rob Waters, whom I previously met at the former Inn at Great Zimbabwe (now Norma-Jean’s) and at Ilala Lodge, Vic Falls. His 2/I/C is the very confident Charity Muza, a charming graduate of Bulawayo’s hotel school.
A former Miss Zimbabwe finalist, I had dinner with her on Friday and she joined our table when I returned to the Club on Monday for supper with a Harare colleague. Executive chef of the group running the Bulawayo Club is talented Ian Hein.
“The group” is Amalinda Collection, headed by Philip and Sharon Stead, a young couple with film-star good looks who’ve spent virtually all their lives in African hospitality. They also have Ivory Lodge in Hwange, too far for me to see on this trip, and Camp Amalinda, a gloriously restful rustic retreat set on 300 rolling granite acres abutting Unesco’s World Heritage Site at Matopos National Park.
Activities include abseiling, hiking, game drives, bird-spotting, rock art discovery, fishing, rhino tracking and cultural tourism to neighbouring kraals.
Personally, I could have chilled out by the infinity swimming pool, with a drink within hailing distance, a good book or two and exquisite cooking for a few days before boredom hit.
In charge are Billy and Priscilla Daly, whom I knew at Leonardo’s in Harare and Wild Geese Lodge, Teviotdale. Paul Hubbard is group guide. His degrees are in archeology and he’s currently doing a PhD on The Ndebele until 1897. He’s also an authority on the trees, mammals and birds (more than 420 confirmed species) of the park, 40km south of Bulawayo.
Saturday and Sunday nights were at the equally retro, almost Gothic, Nesbitt Castle: a so-called folly built by a former mayor of Bulawayo, reflecting his passion for the history and architecture of the Anglo-Scottish borders. (He was at Durham University studying for the Church before going into engineering.)
After years of neglect and illegal occupation by squatters and Satanists, the Castle was lovingly re-built to international hotel standards by Chiredzi business man Digby Nesbitt. I had the Crown Suite which—you only notice when in bed — is perfectly circular.
General manager is young Dustin Kennedy, son of well-known hospitality practitioner Ross Kennedy, of African Albida Tourism (Vic Falls Safari Lodge, etc.)
Dustin’s obviously a chip off the old block as he was in Harare at a marketing event over the days I was in Bulawayo. I was spoiled by assistant, Amanda Molyneaux-Sandwith, and Shangaan chef, Shadreck, to whom I gave lessons in baking Yorkshire pud!
I had a message that if I could hang on in Bulawayo until Tuesday, I could have a lift to Bamba Zonke in a pal’s S-series Merc. He was returning a son to the Quest outward bound-type scene at Falcon College, Esigodini.
As much as I looked forward to a second City Link journey, I tore up a $30 return ticket, moving into what is now (following an on-going re-furb) very much an Executive Room on the fourth floor of Bulawayo’s Holiday Inn at Ascot.
