Munch brunch in the country…2km from home!

Wining & Dining
I’ve recently rediscovered the pleasures of Mukuvisi Woodland Coffee Shop (formerly Prinsilla’s Restaurant) off Hillside Road.

I’ve recently rediscovered the pleasures of Mukuvisi Woodland Coffee Shop (formerly Prinsilla’s Restaurant) off Hillside Road. Eating Out with Dusty Miller

Not least of the attractions is that the gate to the 265 hectare prolific, rolling nature reserve—lying between Hillside, Eastlea, Msasa and Queensdale, is less than a 2km drive from my cottage. Mind you our complex, set in perhaps three well-treed hectares, is currently experiencing totally stunning birdlife.

Among scores of varieties, we have several Red-Faced Mousebirds, magnificent in their breeding plumage, which literally seem to pose proudly for the camera lens!

A friend who lives nearby reckons the ever burgeoning birdlife in Harare’s leafy northern suburbs may be down to our little feathered friends no longer having much to eat on the once well husbanded farmlands surrounding the capital, which seem to produce squat, since the lunatic land reform “programme”.

You can ramble around Mukuvisi to your heart’s content from 7am to 5:30pm. It is ideal for picnicking, braais, nature rambles, game- and bird-watching; people even get married there!

Plains game to look out for includes eland, wildebeest, impala, zebra, giraffe and warthog. There are crocodiles on site, there’s an aviary and a children’s zoo.

I left my coffee tray at the restaurant recently, creeping through the bush to investigate strange high-pitched baby bird-like sounds, only to peer around a shrub, 250mm lens at the ready, to find….scores of guinea-pigs “wheeking” for scoff!

Pensionable age It costs adults US$4 to enter the woodlands, but season tickets, annual membership etc, bring per diem costs down. For anyone admitting to being of pensionable age (60+), entrance is free, even if the dubious activities of Dr Gono a few years ago mean you must work until you drop!

If your destination is the coffee shop — even for a US$1 cup of tea or US$2 cappuccino, entrance fees are waived.

I went three times in five days and bought the Mukuvisi Woodlands tree booklet (US$5), to help identify clearly numbered specimens. Dendrology’s not a strong point, but even I was perfectly aware that the venerable shade tree under which I sipped morning rooibos or coffee was a mango (Mangifera indica), which I would imagine is at least a century old.

Native to India and Sri Lanka, the Portuguese introduced them to Africa in the 15th century…but they’re still not “indigenous” (I seem to have heard that one before!).

With its rugged, gnarled bark, coating of lichen and scary tortured dark boles, it’s like something out of a Gothic scene in a Walt Disney cartoon…but the geckoes seem to love it. You’ll see them basking in dappled sunspots just above head height.

The booklet lists and cross references 141 different trees and shrubs growing in the miomba woodlands giving scientific, common English and Shona names and the myriad uses for their timber, bark, pods, leaves, seeds and roots.

Bird checklist Sadly the woodlands don’t publish a similar checklist of birds resident there, but hey presto, when I left there on Tuesday after a quick coffee to attend a briefing on the breathtaking changes occurring at neighbouring Cresta Lodge Hotel under the new-broom stewardship of chief operations officer Glenn Stutchbury, he’d organised a lavishly illustrated glossy A4 flyer on birds found at Cresta.

And as the two properties are almost contiguous, I’ve no doubts you’ll find all 42 specimens spotted in the hotel grounds, probably plus lots more, at Mukuvisi.

Eyebrows soared as I scanned Glenn’s list and he’s forgotten more about twitching than I’ll ever know! The Long Crested Eagle, Lizard Buzzard, Gabar Goshawk and Purple-Crested Turacao are among more unusual specimens seen at the hotel, which is still being noisily renovated.

A picture of a Tawny-Flanked Prinia solved one of my problems. Seen fairly often in my garden, I had no idea what sort of a wee bird it was!

I was sure I heard an African Fish Eagle at Mukuvisi (Cleveland Dam is close and there’s a small one in the woodlands) and did see a wonderfully aerodynamic raptor slowly working thermals quartering the park for prey. Even with powerful field glasses, I couldn’t name it.

On Sunday, I was just about focused on a splendid Purple Crested Lourie when noisy neighbours at the next table scared it off.

As I enjoyed a very filling no nonsense breakfast this week (egg, bacon, sausage, tomato, baked beans, toast and butter, pot of rooibos tea, followed by a piping hot rich fruit muffin, which didn’t need the accompanying home-made strawberry jam… and all for US$8!)… a Yellow-Bellied Sunbird sipped his own nectar breakfast within photographic range, a gecko (this time on the ground) caught what looked like a bluebottle with a long tongue and smallish fish (bream?) plopped in and out of one of several ornamental lily ponds.

On Sunday Tsitsi served and was disappointed I couldn’t stay for lunch (roast chicken or lamb with all the trimmings and pudding, US$15.) But I promised to return soon.

Moreleen cooked and served my breakfast, beaming when she couldn’t find change for the US$10 note proffered for the eight-buck meal and I told her to keep the change! What the hell!

The sun was streaming down, woods were alive with birdsong and snuffling noises of animals which don’t want to eat you; I’d breakfasted well and purposefully hadn’t even glanced at a newspaper telling me about the latest political nonsense, corruption and inefficiencies plaguing what should be—and in many ways still is — a wonderful country.

Mukuvisi Woodlands, Hillside Road (East) off Glenara Avenue. Tel 747152. Open every day of the year 8am-5:30pm. l [email protected]