2003.12:
Zimbabwe
Thoko,
Jasmine and myself travelled out to Zimbabwe in December
2003. We stayed for 4 weeks using Bulawayo as our
base. The money was crazy! For £100 we got $1,000,000!
Rates have dropped now but the BCs are still in use
and be carefull as they all carry expiry dates!
Zimbabwe
is so desparate for money that they are overprinting
$50 notes with these 5, 10 and 20 thousand dollar
"Bearers Cheques"!
Be carefull - they have expiry dates!
Click to enlarge
From
here we spent time in Intabazinduna with Thoko's folks:
her old man slaughtered a beast so we had a big family
"braai"! I was given a haunch to make biltong
and so her dad and I sat down and prepared 15-20kgs
of meat for the drying process. This didn't go as
well as planned as, being the rainy season, there
was alot of moisture in the air and the meat didn't
dry quick enough to stop maggots hatching out. No
problem, we just took them out and resalted the meat
to make it edible again!
We
traveled from Bulawayo, through Gwayi and up to Main
Camp, Hwange National Park, where we stayed in National
Parks chalets - clean and basic - and we spent some
time at the Hwange Safari Lodge. The bush was dense
and we did not see any predators at all and the game
we did see was staying hidden as there was plenty
of surface water away from the main pans.
The Gwayi is the area where I used to work for Oom
Buck de Vries and his family business, and I had many
friends there - now they are either dead or they have
been chased out by Mugabes thugs and their farms have
been stolen and are being asset stripped by his ZANU
(PF) cronies. Buck even funded my Environmental Education
Project: KwaThembeka, I did lots of PR work for Buck
and the other Gwayi residents and I even ended up
designed the logo for their conservancy.
We
then travelled up to Vic Falls with a company called
"Circle Court Tours & Safaris" - Do
not touch them with a barge pole! They were
dis-honest, dis-organised and they overcharged us.
They checked us into unsatisfactory accomodation so
we checked out and moved into "The Kingdom Hotel".
Fantastic! A super hotel that is modelled on Great
Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwe Ruins.
We
took a river cruise on the Zambezi and watched 3 eles
swim from Zambia to Zimbabwe, obviously they haven't
read the news about poachimg in the Gwayi Valley Conservancy
yet.
We
thought that nothing could beat our old flat on Main
Street but when we saw a friends place in Burnside
we immediately fell in love with it. Set on an acre
of land filled with indigenous plants and trees it
seemed the perfect "getaway" from chasing
the English Pound and so when John and Cecile Knight
said they were selling we snapped it up! Currently
the place consisits of two large rondavels joined
with an extention off the back for the kitchen and
scullery but we will be building a third rondavel
there. Two more rondavels, used by the maid and for
storage, are in close proximity and I'll be converting
them into extra guest bedrooms and relocating the
maid to the bottom of the garden!