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Thupeyo Muleya : Beitbridge Bureau
At least 230 new tourists participated in this year’s edition of Tour de Tuli tourism expedition that is held annually in the Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area. The mega-park is located on the western part of Beitbridge and this event has been bringing in hundreds of tourists despite the negative publicity Zimbabwe receives.It comprises the Northern Tuli Game Reserve (Botswana), Tuli National Park and Maramani Communal lands (Zimbabwe) and the Mapungubwe National Park (South Africa).
The expedition involves mountain bike tours and seeks to market the GMTFCA as one of the best tourist resorts in the sadc region.
The cyclists pass through three countries during the course of the event.
The participants were drawn from countries such as the United States of America, Britain, Canada, Germany, Australia, Austria, Italy, Netherlands, South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe has been participating in the event for the past seven years. The programme was launched 12 years ago.
Tour director, Ms Nicola Harris, said they had received over 500 applications from tourists who were interested in partaking in this year’s expedition.
“We had about 500 people who were interested in taking part in this tourism expedition, but we can only accommodate 350 and 150 support staff. This year we had 340 participants and two thirds of these are new entries,” she said.
Ms Harris said the group entered Botswana on 28 July from South Africa, through Pondrift border post, where they spent two nights at Limpopo Valley Airfield, before moving to Mapungubwe National park in South Africa.
She added that the money raised from the expedition would be channelled towards charity programmes in the participating countries.
She said each participating cyclists had paid R24 900 and would bring their own bicycles while others were sponsored.
Miss Harris described the expedition as a great success and commended the level of coordination and cooperation between authorities from the three countries.
“The event has been growing with each passing year and this year we had a temporary glitch when we had to move camps from Zimbabwe due to the new customs laws requirements.
“We wanted to bring in a few consumables but we were told that we needed to comply with the consignment based conformity assessment requirements at the eleventh hour when the event was about to start.
We had to move the camps and increase time spent in both Botswana and South African components of the TFCA,” said Ms Harris.
She said complying with the CBCA required extra days.
Online Reporter