Ideas to reduce school fees. Brilliant!

So - time to get you to the top of Inyangani! And apologies for disappearing again - duty called and much time taken up with books and things. (As my forward on Facebook will attest)

The last blog was with a pile of bones at the top - but what was it really like up there - after a 2 hour scramble to the top? Well - rolling plains on the one side and mountainy bits on the other - but everything all around us was below us.  Here are some of the mountainy bits!

And - almost unbelievably, because this is Africa, indeed Zimbabwe... unbelievably - you can actually see the curve of the earth from the top of Mount Inyangani!

 

 

So - did we make it to the top? Well of course we did. My cousin Alice and I arrived half an hour after everyone else, simply because we were admiring the view on the way up, but we did all get there. Remarkably! The top of the mountain is 8,504 feet high (2,592m) - and that is probably a piddly little hill to some, but high enough for us! Here is our intrepid group at the beacon on the top. The highest point in Zimbabwe!

Take a very close look at this photo - and tell me what you can see? I will tell you that there are 4 of them including ours - and a toilet block. just to the right of centre!

Now - this is exactly the same view, and the photo taken without moving an inch... except this time with full zoom on the camera lens. Yup - the car park, and our car, were visible from almost the top of the mountain - but hopefully this gives an idea of just how high we were!

The children, of course, were far more daring than I, and balanced on the very lip of the vertical precipice, with their toes hanging in space, and nothing but fresh air for thousands of feet below them! I bet they wouldn't allow kids in America or England to do this - but our school fees in Zimbabwe are very high, and we take every opportunity to try and reduce costs...

In this case - it failed, and we all safely made our way down the mountain... on foot.

Next I plan on taking them on a tour of the artillery range during a live-firing session!

Have a great day!