Bulawayo

Bulawayo's centre is a grid of early twentieth-century buildings, verandas and broad streets, said to have been laid out wide enough for a wagon and its team of oxen to turn. City Hall and its gardens and the shade of Centenary Park make an easy walk between the museums.

The Natural History Museum, at the edge of Centenary Park, holds large collections of the region's animals, birds, minerals and history, with a great mounted elephant and halls of the country's wildlife, a good introduction before a safari.

The city's branch of the National Gallery shows contemporary Zimbabwean painting and sculpture in an old building in the centre, and the railway museum keeps old steam locomotives and carriages from the decades when Bulawayo was the hub of the country's railways.

About half an hour west of the city, the Khami ruins spread over low hills above a river: stone-walled terraces and platforms decorated with chequered and herringbone patterns, the capital of a state that followed Great Zimbabwe in the south-west, and a World Heritage site. A small museum explains the site, and a visit fills a morning.

Half an hour south, the granite domes and balancing rocks of the Matobo Hills hold caves of ancient rock paintings and a national park where rhinos are tracked on foot, an easy day trip or a stay of a few nights.