Inyanga Holidays

Whenever we could during the three years we lived and worked in what was then Rhodesia, we would holiday in the Inyanga (now Nyanga) National Park, an area of unspoilt beauty spanning the mountains along the country's eastern border. The area was dominated by Mount Inyangani which rises to 2,500m, and was characterised by open, grassy slopes with occasional stands of trees.

I still have the map we took with us on those holidays. Our favourite place to stay was at the southeastern of the two Pungwe Falls cottages - circled - which....

....was tucked into a hillside on the far side of a ford across the river.

The Pungwe itself provided what we sought, excellent trout fishing. The park had originally been an estate owned by the founder of the country, Cecil Rhodes, and it was he who arranged for rainbow trout to be released into its rivers. The trout thrived and we....

....enjoyed both catching them and eating them, lightly fried in butter.

The Pungwe was a beautiful river but I preferred one of its tributaries, the Matenderere - arrowed on the map. It drained country which was so remote that we never saw another soul in all the times we fished the river. The word was said to mean 'the wanderer' so it seemed a natural choice as a name for the house we built in very similar surroundings at the western end of the Ardnamurchan peninsula in Argyllshire.

Those days seem very far off, and much has changed in the country now called Zimbabwe but I was very pleased to discover that fishing is still available in what is now Nyanga National Park.