Meikles Hotel Harare

... to wait until the artistic creator returns from a Paris exhibition later next week. Maree has made an appointment, as every piece is made to order! Bang goes the budget.<br><br>Got our first taste of Zimbabwe market shopping and made our first tourist trinket buys. Got some great rock carvings which Gemma will have to bring back with her next February as very heavy.<br><br>Did some supermarket shopping and was surprised by how much is now on the shelves. You can get most ...

... longer existed .........the country is run on US<br>Dollars...........wilst using South African Rand for the Smaller Change<br><br><br>Inflation had gone crazy as we had all heard on the news back home,<br>But<br>to hear it from the locals mouth and see the devastation that had been<br>caused as a result really conveyed a feeling that a TV news piece never<br>can.<br><br>one day your 10 million Zim dollars......is worth $10 <br>the next day it is worth $5<br>the next day it ...

The religious upheavals are my own of course, the latest manifestation of the angst that has erupted within me at the news that my computer's not working, and this the first days of a scheduled two-month trip. Zimbabwe&#8217;s got many problems right now, but I don&#8217;t think the religious ones are foremost among them. Still the fact that my current dark night of the soul should coincide with Zimbabwe seems appropriate. For what starts off as a ...

... about a half hour from the Zim border. Because there was no bar, showers even light after a while, we were all in bed by about 8.30. The next morning as I was packing up the tent, i folded it over to see a flamin scorpion right underneath. I don't know if we pitched it right on him or he curled up there in the night but we tread a bit more carefully for then on. We set off that morning at 7am and when we got to the border we were all on best behavior. I think everyone ...

... dollars, however you can only withdraw 50.000 Zimbabwean dollars from your bank account a-day. Money in Zimbabwe is no longer a currency, but more a commodity, and that makes it really hard for the locals to get by. Furthermore inflation is soaring and prices rise on an hourly basis and the use of dollars is illegal. Not an easy life if you live in Zimbabwe. Harare is the prettiest city of the ones we have seen in Africa so far. Harare is supposed to be a pretty city ...

... were really spectacular, much better than I expected and well worth the $20 to get in to see them. We are now in Botswana and only got here yesterday. We did a game drive this morning and doing a game cruise this afternoon in Chobe national park. I"ll let you know what"s happened next time I update. Hope everything is well at home and keep them messages coming coz we like to hear from people. Love you all. Danny and Vikki.

... price of $100 which was still ways ov** the odds, but ways less than his starting price of $780(!) and we w**e about to leave town. I named the elephant Ernest aft** the sales guy. We left for Botswana. Drove to Kuane and en route we got to see heaps of elephants with their babies. We set up camp 7 kms away from Chobe National Park in a posh campsite from wh**e we spent the next 2 days on safari drives taking in the wildlife. From Maun we packed for our ...

... s ZANU-PF party. While the intelligentsia flees abroad to seek their fortunes elsewhere, Mugabe plays to his traditional base of support, the poor and veterans of Zimbabwe's war of independence. Mugabe is from another era of politics and another era of cultural prominence for both men and age. He represents Zimbabwe's throwing off of white rule, and while his actions in the last 10 years or so might be suspect or misguided, that fact and the sentiment attached to it, still ...

... on a horse, because the animals smell the horse before you so aren't scared of you. They may not have been, but I was terrified. I don't know why I do it. I stopped riding when I was 12 because I was fed up with falling off horses, and every time I've done it since then I've just been plain scared. I spent the whole time causing the horse immense amounts of pain as I pulled tightly on the reigns and not letting it go above a fast walk. That, however, changed when we ...

... eggs, fresh biltong, smarties, an en**gy bar, raisins and crisps.<br><br>We arrived in Harare just before light at 04:30. I opted to stay inside the bus this time when the lanky driv** with the scruffy white t-shirt screamed "break time". I didn't particularly want to put my shoes on and wait anoth** half hour outside a 24 hour fast food building. It was cold and I wasn't hungry, so I pretended to sleep.<br><br>The bus drove into a nearby scrap yard, apparently for ...