The first place we went to was called The Castle. It's in Vumba, pushed right up against the Mozambiquean border. The area is gorgeous. Sharp mountains, huge valleys and lushly green. Of course, at this point the lush green is a little sad, as it's a result of the storms that did so much damage to Mozambique and to that part of Zimbabwe. On the drive up there, the evidence was everywhere: fallen trees, cut to the side of the road; power lines stripped from the poles, lying along the ground; bridges washed away. And, from all the reports, not only was Mozambique hit much harder, but they also have much less money available to do things like cut back trees and build temporary bridges.

Megan and Vicki had been to the castle and couldn't stop talking about how much we were going to love this place. When we pulled in, Alex, half of the gay couple who own and run the place, greeted us, remembering Megan and Vicki mostly by the dogs that came with them on the last trip. When we got out of the car Abby, Desmond, and I all dropped our jaws. This place really is a castle. I'm a little stunned I didn't take a picture of it to show you, but here's one Abby took, with her nifty panoramic camera.

The Castle was built in the forties by Italian prisoners of war (yet another random reminder of Zimbabwe's history as Rhodesia). It's pressed up against the side of this insanely steep little mountain, known as Leopard Rock. Leopard Rock is regarded with enough superstitious regard that the ex-combatants who had taken over the commercial farms looking up on the rock abandoned their efforts after a few days for fear of retribution by the powers of the rock.

The Castle is four stories, made of stones about a foot by nine inches by nine inches. The entryway is an arched number big enough for a car or wagon to pass through, with a couple of rooms on the right that are now the office and (I assume) Alex and Vince's living space. The door on the left passes into a sitting room about 30 feet long (the width of the building), and 15 feet deep. Alex brought us in here, smiling, welcoming, telling stories, and at the first pause in the conversation said "OK. Let's have a sherry." A fitting beginning to a wildly luxurious couple of days. Behind the sitting room is one of the bedrooms. It's got it's own bath and looks out behind the castle to the trees where the monkeys hang out. Not bad.

Up the first flight of stairs is the dining room. The table could just hold the eight people who could fit in all the bedrooms. The whole room is gorgeous dark wood, with a dumb waiter built into a cabinet. The table cloth changed for every meal, each one nicer than the next. Off the dining room is another bedroom, this one with a half bath in the turret of the building (a little cramped, but quite endearing). The windows here look out across the valley, where the sun rises. Pretty good.

Behind the dining room, around a short corridor, is another bedroom-the Master Bedroom (in this case, the Mistress Bedroom, as Vicki laid claim to it as we walked in). This bedroom doesn't have a bathroom. Instead Vicki had to pad five steps down the hallway to the Throne room-a bathroom with part of Leopard Rock exposed and sort of wrapping around the john, to form a throne, which the Queen of England claimed as her own sometime in the sixties. Oh, and the bedroom has windows that face the valley, where the sun rises and windows that face out over the golf course to Mozambique. Sweet.

There's another staircase that leads up to a second sitting room, this one outfitted much less formally than the one on the ground floor. This is where they keep the mini-fridge that we stocked with a case of beer and a rack for our four bottles of wine and bottle of scotch. It's also where we had a few games of full-contact Trivial Pursuit. Toward the front of the house is a small deck, and behind it is a larger deck. From the back deck is another staircase that leads up to the Tower Room, the bedroom where Megan and Desmond stayed. This bedroom also does not have a bathroom-they had to use the bathroom on the back deck (the shower has windows looking out into the monkey trees and Mozambique). The bedroom itself has windows that look out on all four sides-Leopard rock through the door, the sunrise valley to the left, the golf course and Mozambique straight ahead, and the monkey trees to the right. Wow. When Alex showed us this room we all sort of winced in romantic longing-except Megan and Desmond. It really is just a plain little room, but it's maybe the most romantic room I've ever been in. I think they enjoyed it.

We spent two nights at the Castle. Abby and I took turns in the two lesser bedrooms, which felt anything but lesser, with the options being to wake up to an amazing sunset or monkeys playing in the trees. Course, I didn't actually wake up early enough to catch either, but it sounds like they were pretty nice.

During the first day Abby and I went to the golf course to toss the disc around, but before we started throwing I had some incredible golf shots (for me). The golf course is attached to a hotel right below the Castle. We didn't check out the hotel or the casino, but they looked sort of run-of-the-mill expensive and bland. The golf course is evidently one of the best in the country, but the players we saw there were clearly just learning the sport.

The second day we went to the botanical gardens just a few kilometers away, where we spent about six minutes walking around and then fell asleep in the grass. After our exertion we went to Tony's a cake shop with incredibly indulgent cakes-he won't let a customer order the chocolate cake and a hot chocolate (made by melting dark chocolate in a pan), because it's just too much chocolate. The five of us ordered one of each of the six kinds of cakes he had on offer. We made an earnest effort, but at the end there was still a decent bit of three pieces of cake-which we took back for desert the next day. After we all took naps Abby and I went back to the golf course and tossed the disc around again. At one point she decided it would be nicer to watch the sunset than the disc, and she earned herself a little blood and a little bruise on the bridge of her nose. People never believe me when I tell them frisbee is dangerous sport.

This time for me at the Castle was great, and a little weird. It was great hanging out with that crowd. We gossiped and laughed and relaxed and it was just nice-sort of like those moments with a lover where you realize that it's just nice to be together, and that it doesn't matter too much what you do. At the same time, we were travelling in luxury, and that's something that makes me a little uncomfortable. Because we were paying a local Zimbabwean rate it was only $75US a night for this amazing place and two fabulous meals a day, which is maybe a fifth what I'd expect to pay in the states. But still, we could have been staying at a backpacker a few kilometers down the road for about $8 a night.

Meals were funny for me. On the one hand I had to bite my tongue while everyone raved about the food. I always found one thing at each meal that was excellent, but overall I was not floored by the food-and the rest of the people certainly seemed to be. I think this is one of the curses of living in NYC, the land of plenty. [Excuse the inside joke, but I did manage not to say "Beach Smeach".] But on the other hand, things were so dark and formal that I felt like I was back at my ex Laural's house in Presidio Heights having dinner with her family-everyone else was perfectly comfortable with what was going on, and things really were quite relaxed and not the least bit pretentious, but something about it just screamed money and made me feel uncomfortable.

But even with all that, I was still having an amazing time, Chimanimani sounded pretty incredible, and I was already four hours out of the city and it seemed kind of silly to head back only to return to see this other place in the same neighborhood. So here are some pictures from the hike we took in the Chimanimani Mountains.

Chimanimani is one of the more beautiful places I've ever been to. I'm not sure how much of it these pictures capture, but the place just took my breath away. We stayed in another expensive, swanky lodge (about 10 kilometers from a backpacker), but the second day there Megan, Desmond, Abby, and I went on a seven-hour hike that was just incredible. The first hour and a half is a legitimately strenuous hike-it's not quite technical, but you spend plenty of time stepping up two feet at a time. For most of this section you're walking on bolder, with only little cairns to mark the path.

At some point on the way up Megan decided it was too tempting to climb on some of the rocks, as they were just filled with handholds. It was pretty great to see her on the rocks--she's a small woman and she could really move around up there.

When we got to the top of the ridge there was this great open meadow that must have been close to a kilometer across. It was great--it really gave you the feeling of being on top of the world. There were other peaks all around us (except behind), but they were just far enough away that you could see the world fall away at the edge of the ridge. At some point the freedom took over me and I jogged the last few hundred meters. When I got to the far edge of the ridge I stopped in my tracks. The terrain changed all of a sudden, and we were looking out onto a bowl filled with hundreds of crazy rock formations and a few trees. There were dozens of places in this little bowl that looked like they were someone's ritual site, just because the rocks were so wild looking.

Of course, Megan was again tempted by the rocks, as were we all. As you can see in the next photo, though, the first place we chose to climb here started with a pretty tall bit that had no holds. But Desmond was there to help us out, so no problems.

At the far end of the bowl is a little hut set up with a mountain kitchen and a couple of bedrooms. This is the view from the porch. We hung out there and had lunch before continuing on to the caves and the waterfall. There are a bunch of caves in the Chimanimani mountains that you can camp in. The one we saw was really just an overhang about 5 feet deep and 10 feet long. There was a fire pit at one end and the grass was clearly beaten down by people's sleeping bags. Just around the corner from the cave was Digby Falls, a gorgeous spill about 70 meters tall (in stages) with three or four little pools at the bottom. Unfortunately by this time I was a little burnt out on the whole camera thaing, cause there was plenty of cold-water nudity involved. It was great to jump in the water after the hiking we'd done, though a little scary for a non swimmer like me.

 After the waterfall, we pretty much had to book on back to make it back before the sun went down. The hike back, of course took a lot less time, but was pretty fun. I love scrambling on the rocks like that.

Chimanimani really was incredible, and assuming that all hell doesn't break loose in this country before I get out of here I will definitely go back there to do some backpacking. It's funny--I'm not even a backpacker, but this place really caught me, and I definitely want to spend some more time soaking in its beauty.