Travel Guide Beitbridge

The border town of Beitbridge, the only crossing point between Zimbabwe and South Africa, is located on the Limpopo River. It is named after Alfred Beit, the founder of the Beit Trust, who financed the first bridge over the Limpopo. The border has long had a reputation as a long, difficult and corrupt crossing point, but since the fall of Robert Mugabe in 2017 and the installation of cameras at customs, crossing is easier and faster. Aside from being a crossing town, Beitbridge has no other really interesting aspects. It is a dry and often dusty place, whose surroundings are hills of stunted trees and plains of mopane, from which a huge baobab tree sometimes emerges. The place will however attract the attention of paleontologists, for the fossils of Massospondylus (a dinosaur that lived there 200 million years ago) that have been found there.The rail link has not existed since 2014, but coaches and chicken buses leave from Beitbridge to Bulawayo, Masvingo, Harare and other destinations en route. For South Africa, buses from Zimbabwe go to Pretoria, Johannesburg and Cape Town. The bus station is behind the stadium, 1.5 km from the Zimbabwean immigration. The border can be crossed on foot and local minibuses leave from the South African border post at Musina, from where trains and buses leave from all over South Africa. The border is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.