Zimbabwe is a land-locked country blessed with fertile soils, mineral wealth and wonderful scenery. Destinations like Victoria Falls, Hwange National Park and Mana Pools are world-renowned and the country is blessed with diverse habitats, from the granite hills of the Matopos to the majestic mountains, lush forests and beautiful rivers of the Eastern Highlands. As such, there is much to attract the traveller, from wildlife viewing and adrenalin adventures to delving into the history of the Zimbabwean people going back thousands of years.
Zimbabwe is cradled between two great African rivers - the myth-shrouded perennial Zambezi and the "great grey green greasy" seasonal Limpopo - between which two majestic watercourses lies a wealth of scenic landscapes, remnants of ancient civilisations and incredible wildlife. Spectacular granite landscapes rise up out of miombo woodland and mopane savannah in the south-west, while on the central plateau are extensive moist grasslands and broad-leaved woodland; to the south-east lie the dry woodlands and bushveld of the lowveld while in the north-west corner the Zambezi River pours over the world-famous Victoria Falls.
The Limpopo is a very different river, as it ploughs its way between Zimbabwe and South Africa providing a corridor between Gonarezhou National Park and South Africa's Kruger in the south-west and forming the nucleus of another transfrontier park between Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa in the south-west. Both the Zambezi and the Limpopo reach the Indian Ocean on the coastal plain of Mozambique.
Along the Botswana border the easternmost tongues of the Kalahari sands creep into the country and mix with the teak forests of the interior. Here Zimbabwe's largest national park, Hwange, is home to some of southern Africa's last great elephant, buffalo and sable herds and plays an integral role in a network of southern African conservation areas. Likewise the mopane woodlands of the south-eastern lowveld, whose elephant herds continue to migrate between here and neighbouring Mozambique and South Africa. For these and other reasons, this beautiful river-bounded country is a vital link in the broad sweep of intact wilderness areas across the southern half of the African continent.