Harare

Harare has become the new Rabat. Or the new Pointe Noire. We’ve been stuck here for eight days and nine nights (instead of the planned three days) waiting for our passports to come back from our home countries with Ethiopian visas in them. The seven of us Aussies had a bit of an issue. We sent a DHL package way back when in Vic Falls with all our passports in it, only to find out that it had been stopped in Harare and split up into two packages – apparently you can’t have more than 4 passports in one package which they neglected to tell us. So DHL split up our passports up into one package of four and one package of three. The package of three was sent correctly to Australia. However, for some reason, DHL sent the package of four to the UK which then had to be rerouted to Oz…bad DHL…

The people this affected the most were Chris and Caroline. With plans made long ago to return to the UK on a certain date, they could not afford to get to Nairobi any later and sadly had to leave us early, here in Harare. We didn’t let them go without an appropriate farewell though, sitting around our campsite eating four types of cheeses, grapes and dark chocolate accompanied with port and the horrendous ‘Don Montello’ sweet, red dessert wine. After many crazed drunken antics and nearly getting kicked out of the place, we sadly bode them farewell.

I have actually enjoyed Harare. We’ve been staying up the road from Avondale shopping centre and have frequented many of its restaurants including St Elmo’s, Steak Out (we dusted its butterscotch milkshakes), Nando’s, Café Nush, the two Chinese take-aways across the road and Sopranos up Argyle Street.

We’ve also had some day trips – one to the Bird Park which put on a show with an African fish eagle and one to Bally Vaughan.

For the Bally Vaughan trip, Chris acted as our tour guide

and Bruce was our driver. In the minivan we rented, Bruce insisted on having a spare tyre, a fire extinguisher and a hazard triangle, all of which are not only essential for breakdowns, but also to avoid being fined by the cops. Luckily we had them as we did get stopped once and were asked to show our fire extinguisher.

Bally Vaughan animal sanctuary had quite an array of interesting animals to keep us entertained for the afternoon. The marmosets captivated Shaun and I the most, as they followed Shaun’s camera lens around as he moved it and pressed their fluffy tummies up against the bars of the cage, wanting us to pat them.

I don’t think I’ve seen marmosets before. And I know I definitely hadn’t seen a zonkey (cross between a zebra and a donkey) or a zorse (cross between a zebra and a horse) until now.

None of us had also seen such an overweight hyena, leopard or lion before either, all of which are now on special diets.

We also had an afternoon of Barefoot Bowls at the City Bowling Club in Harare for my birthday. My birthday, according to the original trip schedule, was going to be in Tanzania, then with all the passport delays, it moved to Malawi, then Mozambique and now Zimbabwe. All nationalities apart from us Aussies were not too sure about the idea initially as they’ve never played barefoot bowls, but within the first few ends, everyone had been converted.