Great Zimbabwe Ruins

Traveling through Zim, we stopped at the Great Zimbabwe Ruins. These ruins are from the 13th-15th century and I was impressed by how intact they were.





My group's guide was named Marie. We first went to the museum to learn the history of the place then we hiked the ancient path to the hill complex.




Up up up!





Up here is where the king lived. They had caves, ritual grounds, meeting areas and all sorts of places a king would need. It was believed the last king to be here had 250 wives- that's almost one a day! But they lived below him. He yelled from the top of his rock dwelling if he wanted a wife to come to him. What a player, eh?




Marie draws in the dirt of what used to be the place of rituals.





This is the great enclosure where the main wife lived. It is where Zimbabwe got it's name. "Zim" "bab" "we" means "big" "stone" "house". At that, my friends, is a big house of stone. It's almost all still the original stones and they don't even have cement or plasters holding them together.





Marie and I in front of the famous passage way. It's famous cause it leads to this (the two trees and the tower, meaning abundant food and wealth, which is a symbol for Zimbabawe):




- Sent from Africa using my iPad