Its main attraction, however, is the electrifying buzz and lively camaraderie it creates within the Dete community. About 30,000 people live here, enduring poverty and unemployment, low standards of education, no running water and minimal electricity. But amid today's party atmosphere, there's a palpable sense of hope.
Slowly but surely, Dete is benefiting from the quiet resurgence of Zimbabwe's once booming tourist industry, which welcomed about 1.5 million guests annually in the 1990s.
The Noughties proved a bleak decade for tourism as white-owned farm invasions, hyperinflation and economic mismanagement deterred visitors.
Some still boycott the country to avoid contributing to Robert Mugabe's dictatorial regime. Others want to contribute to responsible tourism that brings employment, education, community development and conservation.
A more stable economy, based on the US dollar, coupled with Mugabe's fast fading influence, popularity and health, may mean that more decide it's time to come back.
While driving around Hwange, I wish I'd come back sooner. Disproving the misconception that the country is almost devoid of wildlife, the 14,600sq km that make up Zimbabwe's largest national park are home to more than 100 mammal species and 400 species of bird.
On the open plains, we see giraffe, impala, zebra, kudu, sable, jackals, hippos, hyenas, lions and leopards and hundreds of elephants: up to 30,000 plod a migratory route to and from Botswana.
In 2006, while many safari companies jumped ship, Beks Ndlovu and his wife Sophia, owners of African Bush Camps, decided to stay and to work with local communities by establishing the African Bush Camps Foundation.
Over dinner, Beks explains: "If we were staying, we really needed to make a positive commitment. To us, the foundation is as important a part of the business as the commercial side. We're both passionate about it and the travel business allows us to pursue that passion."
Through their foundation, the Ndlovus have made a real difference to lives in Dete.
Sophia takes guests on a village tour, where I meet eight women and 200 noisy, somewhat smelly six-week-old chickens that the Ndlovus will soon be selling for a healthy profit before buying their next brood.
Under the shade of a mango tree, we watch ladies at the Vugani project rolling strips of pages from magazines, transforming them into beautiful beads for jewellery. And in a school classroom, we admire colourful robes made by women in the Thandanani sewing group for sale to visitors and lodges. These women are widows or caring for orphans or both, but are benefiting from Sophia's business advice and micro-finance loans.
At Main Camp Primary School near the gates of Hwange, children in pristine green uniforms sing for us to marimba drums, dancing frenetically. The foundation supports teachers and vulnerable pupils here, covering school fees and salaries.
Some 15km away, along an almost indiscernible, bumpy dirt track, they're starting similar work with Manbanje Primary School including funding two children to go to secondary school - the first ever to have done so from here.
Funding for the foundation comes from guest donations and a percentage of bed-nights from African Bush Camps' safari operations. These include Somalisa and Acacia camps in Hwange, and Kanga and the Zambezi Lifestyles camps at Mana Pools National Park - a place that's long been on my wish list.
This Unesco World Heritage Site lives up to my expectations after a two-hour flight north. Just after the rains, its lush vegetation makes game-spotting tricky. But the dry season brings wildlife swarming to the four pools, left by the Zambezi's changing path, that give the park its name. ("Mana" means "four" in Shona.)
With options for canoeing, walking, sleeping under the stars or camping on the banks of the Zambezi, Mana Pools offers a rare blend of freedom in the bush.
We stay at the intimate Kanga camp. At dusk, an elephant wades across a lily-strewn pan of water; Ian Batchelor, Beks' partner at Kanga, comments: "It's a special wilderness here."
Biased he may be, but he's also right.
In fact, there's a lot that's special about Zimbabwe. Back in Dete, enjoying a beer in a bar, a young man thanks us for coming.
"We just want to get on with our lives," he says.
"We want tourists like you to come back."
Choose the right company and coming back can have far-reaching, positive effects: when you're ready to return, Zimbabwe will be waiting with open arms.
* The NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is currently advising travellers that there is some risk to their security in Zimbabwe due to underlying political tension and high levels of crime. For the latest MFAT advisories on Zimbabwe, see safetravel.govt.nz.
- INDEPENDENT
