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December 23, 2005
More adventuring
hey everyone-
how are things going with everyone? So note to all anyone traveling to Zimbabwe don't do it with out lots of US cash and DON'T change all your money once you get here. This country is so economically torn to pieces, it's really sad. The country used to be amazing. The country was run by the agriculture business, and their zim dollars were equal to 1 british pound and $1.50 US. Now it is $82,500 Zim to the US dollar! We walked around with huge stacks of bills but it was really worth nothing, similar to monopoly money.
So the President had a huge castle in Scotland and a secret Swiss bank account, that were seized and frozen by the World Bank and IMF, so he became mad and kicked all the heads (who happened to be white)of large agri-farms out of the country, and put in local farmers who have no idea about large farming like that. The economy plummetted and everything has suffered. He also went on a rampage and killed thousands of poor who sold stuff on the streets, wiped them out. He has made it very difficult for people who make a living off of street vending to keep doing that. As the white farmers disappeared so did the agri business and everything good about the economy.
It's a shame because this is such a beautiful country with friendly people and amazing scenery, with mountains all over and Victoria Falls in the North. Everything is in crisis here, fuel is only sold on the black market, so is money, local currency, food, bread, eggs. President Mugabe is so desperate for foreign currency that he made laws that most hotels, hostels, and national parks require foreigners to pay in their foreign currency, but chances are you will get change in the local currency. We didn't run into this problem at first in Mutare, and if we did, chances are we would have run back to Mozambique! We did run into it in Masvingo on our way to the Great Zimbabwe monument. Masvingo hostels were terrible and only would take US or Rand from us. So we got bitter not knowing that it was gov't not the hostels doing this. Reluctantly we stayed at a ostrich farm that would take my travelors checques, she told us a little about it but not much, the next moring we hitched to the Great Zimbabwe monument which required us to pay in US dollars but would not give us change in US dollars because they didn't have the correct change, Jerks!!! We also needed to stay in the national park for the night. It was raining awfully bad at this time, and we pouted and walked back to the Great Zimbabwe Hotel and sat down at the bar and ordered two bad gin and tonics.
Up to this time we were very good about drinking and using ourmoney for travelling. It was a frustrating impulse buy, and a bad one at that. The bartender was nice enough to shed light on us about the economic situation about the money problem. And he told us what WE could do and write to the government and complain to them about the problem and that he is running out good tourists by forcing them to payin their currency. So we collapsed and walked back to pay for the horrible night and see the ruins, Great ZImbabwe Monument. So the Great Zimbabwe is apparently the oldest ruins in Africa south of the pyramids. We hicked out to see the so called amazing ruins that they didn’t use mortal on, Rhogue said it looked like Ireland stone fences with stones placed on top of stones. The first formation did not look that exciting really, and I felt crummy for dragging us here and wasting money on this not very exciting place, plus it began to rain. That’s never fun. There were more impressive ruins on top of a steep hill. That part was well fortified against any invaders, until the Portugese came and took all the inhabitants into slavery. We climbed up there in our ponchos, thanks mom for them. We sat and reflected awhile and continued through the maze of large boulders and stone walls. We had a garden-state moment yelling in the rain with garbage bags on ourselves. We were mysteriously answered by not-too-happy monkeys from the trees below.
Later that night in our not-too-nice accomadations, we made a list of things we were thankful for. Our place was a room with two cots, no sheets. So our list was: not going to bed overly stuffed, no leaks in real roof-not thatched, outlet-electricity-working light-we could listen and charge our ipods, curtins for no peeping toms, no sheets=no bedbugs, candle+stolen matches, we were alone and had a key. I guess it could have been worse. We decided to get an early, early start to get to Bulwayo on our way to Vic Falls.
That day would be the best day and luckfor hitching for us. So we left and as we got to the fancy hotel the bag was hurting my back and we took a break just as some men were leaving. I asked if we could get a lift to where they were going, hoping they were going to Masvingo. Luckily they were and gave us a ride into town. Good timing cause it began to rain now too. So they asked where we were from and we said Swaziland, they smiled and asked how our wonderful Monarch king was. They know their African countries well. We smiled back and said he was interesting. We asked how their president was, they smiled and they said interesting as well. They talked and asked us about Bush. They convinced us to go to Vic Falls first because it was ‘imperative’ that we see Harare, the capital, not duirng the weekend ‘cause it’s dead on the weekends.’ That was weird to us, if it really is a capital city. We had no preference and they took us to a spot on the road to Bulwayo where we could either catch another lift of get a bus if we wanted. They dropped us off and gave us their numbers and said to call when we got to Harare. They assured us that we would not have a problem getting a ride here, but we were skeptical at first. But it was early and the rain stopped, briefly.
Within 10 minutes a man stopped for us and some guy going farther down the road. We all jumped in, with this awesome guy, whose last name was Campbell, and he turned into our tour guide of the road from Masvingo to Bulwayo. He told us very much about the country and its problems. He told us that when he was younger the Zim dollar used to be equal to 1 british pound. He also told us that at one point the totally corrupt Mugabe was one of the top 10 richest people in the world. However at one point his Swiss bank account was frozen and his palace in Scotland was seized. All this done by the World Bank and IMF. In reaction to this, Mugabe declared economic war on the white landowners who owend the commerical farms that actually ran the country. He ran out the farmers and with them the agricultural economy ran too.
Cows and goats were crossing the highway as well talked-typical Africa style-and he commented that it never used to be like that but due to all of the econmic hardships peasants were taking down the fencing and seeling it on the black market. Also since there hasn’t been readily available petrol in years, he actually has to get it on the black market which he could get arrested for. He said it costs him twice as much at it does to get gas in South Africa. $6 million Zim dollars to fill up his tank. Mugabe is 84 and everyone is waiting for him to die so they can began rebuilding the country. Mugabe knows he’s done so many crimes that if he left office he would be prosecuted, so he rigs all the elections. He murdered 20,000 villagers once, steals $, has corrupt police. We were stopped once at a security check and he said they are a pretty common way for the police to demand bribes. I guess we didn’t have anything dodgy enough in the truck because we were allowed to leave.
Asbestos was and is a huge industry in an area that would drove through, weird. Don’t breath too deep. Our new friend figured it would take 10 years for the economy to recover from the damage created by Mugabe. The school systems are bad too. The government public schools will have a 400% increase this term that starts in January. Bad news. We came to Bulwayo and realized we were in a city-city, covered garbage cans and fancy street lights.
We searched around and found a hostel that would take our zim dollars no questions asked. This place was a paradise. We were given a private double room for no extra charge. Our room looked out to the pond and stream and waterfall that had catfish and bass that could be caught for dinner. There was also a pool, sauna and a video lounge which we quickly ran to. It was set up 80’s style with three movies dubbed onto one VHS tape. I watched Jungle Book as Rhogue slept and then we watched Armegeddon. We watched Fawlty Towers as we made dinner. We went back to the room and began to make our bed.
Rhogue threw me a pillow case then picked up her pillow. I looked down and just pointed in shock. She looked and screamed. There under the pillow as a perfectly positioned dead squirrel. I went up and talked with the owner and got us a new room. The next day after taking the hottest shower ever. I was talking with Norman and he thought it was one of the workers conspiring against them, the owners. Sunday (Dec. 4) was a boring day in which we decided to go to the city and walk around, in which nothing was open except one internet cafe.
Monday we went to town and bought train tickets to Vic Falls. The trains take longer but they travel at night. We got a sleeping compartment to ourselves and that was fun, we splurged and got a bottle of wine and cheese and other snacks for the trip. The power went out in the city, so we really couldn’t do much else of anything. We went and got our backpacks and made it to the train station. We ended having a SIX hour delay halfway through our trip. IT was horrible, we should have been in Vic Falls by 7 or 8 in the morning, but we got there around 1:30 pm. We walked around to the different adventure places. They had different packages of paying like $145 and you can bungi jump, white water rafting, and sunset cruise. Funny sunset cruise and it had rained every single day we were that country! We found one place really cool and liked the option and found out that they would have taken my travelors cheques, which we had changed at the bank so we had a receipt and could use them.
The more places we went to the more frustrated we got and the more it looked like we were in trouble and wouldn’t be able to go see anything. We even found out that the check passports to see where you are from at Vic Falls and if you are from America demand to get dollars from you or you won’t see the falls.
So one lady stopped and was talking with Rhogue and she explained the only two options we had: either switch money and get US dollars on black market, VERY BAD IDEA, easy way to get arrested there. Or we could use our last US$10 and go to Zambia and exchange money and get US dollars there. And that’s exactly what I did. The next morning I woke up early and started walking to the gate and heading towards Livingston, Zambia. Slowly as if a miracle was happening it stopped raining and the clouds were moving out of the way for the sun to shine on us. I went to the gate and asked for a day pass to Zambia, the guy said ‘oh going over to get US dollars?’ So, this happens regularly then, hmm? Mugabe stop making tourism so damn hard in your country. You make people not want to come to this beautiful amazing country. I took a cab into town and back to the border gate, nice guy. Both times I walked over the Vic Falls Bridge which is set back from the actual falls, and I couldn’t really see the falls all that well, but I sure could hear them.
As I was walking back a woman was bungi jumping. She was older and her daughter had just got back up from doing screaming how fun it was and encouraging her mom. I stood next to the 15 year old son. He looked scared like he didn’t want to do it. I asked him if he was nervous, “Hell yeah I am”. I asked him how he was able to convince his mom to bungi jump. He said, “Are you kidding this was all her idea. So I got back and we bought tickets back to Bulwayo for that night, we had bigger plans and we decided not to go rafting or anything like that. So I got the money and went back to the backpackers so see if she had US change. The bureau de change gave me all hundreds and I wanted exact change for seeing the falls, $20 per person.
We go in and we could hear the falls from the gate. It sounded amazing. Rhogue had seen Niagra Falls, I had not. See we got around and finally saw the most amazing sight ever. There it was Victoria Falls. All the pics don’t do it justice. The first time we saw it, we stood in amazement for 5 minutes before finally moving closer. We took our time gazing at the falls from different angles and stopping and taking pics almost everywhere. It was so amazing. We felt good and it was worth it seeing it, after all the pain and problems the rest of the country was given us, we totally forgot about it for the 2 hours we were in the park. Slowly dark scary clouds began to sneak into the area, followed by lightning. We thought it might be a good time to leave then.
We went to the market where most of the carved wooden pieces in Sub-Saharan Africa originate. The guys were wanting to trade for our shoes, visors, hats, even the shirts off our backs. One guy offered Rhogue two huge masks for her nalgene bottle that she had since 2002. She laughed at first but later on, she totally regretted not trading with him. We found the awesome dolls, that are special to only the tribes that inhabited the Vica Falls area. We also bought cool neckalces with the water good on it. Really cool looking. We stopped by a booking agent to see if there was room Thursday at a place called Antelope Park. The brochere said, “Only in Africa....” Sadly they were booked Thursday but had a cancellation for Friday. Good we thought.
We went back to the backpackers and picked up our bags and ran into a couple had done the rafting earlier that day. Normally the rafting here is a Class 5. But when it rains it floods the Zambezi River and it makes the rafting not as good. The guy said that it was so tame, they flipped only once and it was because the guide made them flip. He said we didn’t miss out on much, and that made us feel better about not rafting. So we jumped back on a train and headed back to Bulwayo. Got there in the morning and we back to the same paradise backpackers place! We hung out in town and got food and enjoyed just hanging out, not having to be anywhere.
Next day we headed out to Gweru and to Antelope Park. They had free pick ups from town. So when we got to town we called and a new girl was on the phone and sounded very confused and not sure where people were or anything. Dark, Purple scary clouds began to move in and fast. We kept ourselves busy by giving random people smiley face stickers. We went as far as daring eachother to give certain people stickers. Rhogue was more creative. She had me go into a bar and hand some out. She had me go up to this rough and tough looking guy and give him one, he started laughing and giggling. Then she had me go and give him one that he had to give to a stranger. He did and it was rather funny. The rain hit and kept coming. We ran into a nearby bakery with other street walkers and quickly had to close the doors and the rain began to sneak into the bakery coming in sideways. Trash began to drift by as the rain collected and created small rivers. We kept calling and the girl kept saying someone might be on their way, she wasn’t sure. Next time we called no one answered their phones. The rain began to slow and we opened the doors.
Some people took the chance and ran for it. All of a sudden a car pulled up and asked if we were going to Antelope Park. Finally they were here. Rhogue walked down two blocks where the water was passable. I just jumped the four feet to the car and barely got wet. The people in the bakery were quite impressed. The girls in the car worked at the Park and were in town and their phone died so they didn’t get the message to pick us up. But they finally did and asked how long we were waiting, 2 hours we responded a little pissed about the waiting. But we got to wait out the storm where we wouldn’t have been able to do anything anyways. So the storm created a river on the property not quite to the park, that wasn’t there before. It was so much that we couldn’t get into the park, we had to go in through the back entrance for employees.
So we made it in and J.P. was our tour guide and really nice and helpful and wanted to know what we wanted to do and figured out a way so we could do all of it. We went out after checking into our accomodations, with mosquito nets, Finally. We had spent all of Zimbabwe without Mozzie nets. Finally nice to get them back. We went out on a wonderful lion walk. The park takes lions 2 weeks old from the mothers and trains them and feeds them so they become familiar with humans and takes them on walks with the guests. After a certain age around 2 years they ‘retire’ them from walking. Most are put back into the wild, in neighboring Zambia, Botswana, or Namibia. So we went on a walk with 2 females and one male, all 13 months old. It was really fun. They were sort of lazy because they had been fed the other day, and they are only fed every three days. We toured a small part of the park with the lions taking us around and wrestling with eachother and climbing up trees and wrestling and just lying around being lazy cats. We made it back to camp just as the rains were starting. Hopefully it won’t be raining tomorrow when we got out for the fun activities.
J.P. took us out for a game safari first thing in the morning where we saw wart hogs, impala, vultures, cheetah, giraffes, water buffalo, spring buck, zebras, and some more lions. We even saw some sheep. We were out in beautiful sunshine and were out for longer that the supposed time limit for game drives. We came back and got to play with lion cubs, who were like 6 months old and they were really big, even for that age. They were just as lazy, even more docile than the lions on the walk. But we played with them taking pictures and having a good time. Next was the last event of the day, before we were to get on a bus back to Bulwayo.
We rode on a elephant into a pond where in flopped into the water, getting us soaked. He would dip his head in then get back upright, then dip his backside. The girl on the other elephant, got the elephant that was flopping all over and she was going under water much of the time. Only in Africa.
We got out and changed clothes and J.P. took us to town. We thanked him so much and he brought us all the way to the bus station. We were able to get a bus immediately and got to Bulwayo in time to get tickets to Johannesburg. $2 million zim dollars, well we were hoping not to have any zim dollars left over from our time there. So we made it to the SA/ZIM border around midnight. We had a nice friendly make (mother) in line behind us and chatted us up while in line. For some reason since we were white they let us go first, it didn’t make sense because we still had to wait for everyone else to go through the line.
Finally around 7:30-8 we made it to Johannesburg. We needed to leave so we could get to Durbin before night fall. We found a reasonable priced bus and got on, they were leaving within 15 minutes. It was a crazy futuristic double decker bus. It seemed like a plane, they gave us snacks and coffee or tea, and had a slightly nice bathroom. We even got to watch that horrible Jennifer Lopez movie Monster-in-Law. Then the showed us a horrible Indian talent show from J-burg. Really awful.
We made it to Durbin and got a nearby backpackers called Banana Backpackers.
We looked through the book and knew we wanted to go to this place called the BAT Centre. It is an art studio/store, restaurant, bar, jazz venue. Pretty much everything. We went to check it out and there were some guys there selling their stuff, directly in their studio. I saw a pottery guy, named Clive and started talking to him. His stuff was really good. He has been in several African exhibits in England and two or three in the States. Bill Clinton, Susan Sarandon, and Oprah even have some of his pieces. He was nice and took us out and took us to the only place still open for food on a Sunday night. It was an Indian place and fairly close to our backpackers. I got the bunni things. It’s bread hallowed out and they put in Curry chicken inside. It was spicy and really really good.
The next few days were filled with going to the beach, and to the Indian market and back to the beach. Durbin was amazing. I fell in love with the city that night. Everyone is so friendly. The beach is not touristy. Locals come and hang out there during the day and even the night. It’s not shady at night. It’s well lit, and patrolled by police. There’s a skate park and an amusement park, a free public pool. Afrikaans children playing with Indian and Black children. One night we met a wonderfully nice Indian man, and he put it perfectly: “Kids play with whoever. Kids don’t see color, they just want to play.” He was very friendly and we talked for nearly an hour about everything from Indians in Durbin and America to finding jobs in Durbin and the job market in the area. We exchanged emails and left him with some stickers for his nephew whose birthday brought the whole family to the beach that Tuesday night.
On Thursday we met a couple late 20s from Chicago. They planned this for a long time. They were traveling through Africa for the past 4 months. They were meeting their families in Cape Town for x-mas then continuing on to India and then Australia. They were going to be gone for 7-8 months total. They had budgetted and saved for years before going on the trip. Sounds like it was really fun for them.
We got an email from Alan Brody the UNICEF representative of Swaziland, and who we were staying with before we left. He was having a Christmas, Chaunika, Kwanza, whatever your denomination party for Peace Corps Volunteers. He wanted us to come back for the party. It sounded like a good idea. on Friday Dec. 16 we head back to Swaziland to where we started our whole huge adventure. The party was fun and most of who we wanted to see came out for the party. It was good to see everyone and hear what they were up to and hear that the office was still and crazy and unorganized as they were when we left. So what next? Not sure maybe come home for a bit, who knows.
I know I want to work in Durbin if at all possible in anyway shape or form. That would the be ultimate. I’ve collected all the papers from the area and will start by seeing if any newspapers want photographers. Happy Holidays all Seasons Greetings, Happy New Year, and all that fun stuff.
PS PICTURES COMING SOON.....stay posted
Posted by colin at December 23, 2005 10:30 PM