Sunday 18th March
We arrived at the border Beit Bridge at 2am. Intercape bus loaded full with people. We easily got our exit stamps out of SA, and quickly pressed on to get our visas for Zim. We drove through the boom at 3am, only to find the 8 busses had arrived in the hour before us, and now stood back to back, waiting to get into Zim.
The border process took another 3 hours. In those 3 hours, we queued in darkness, woke up a sleeping visa officer, paid USD$45 each for a double entry visa, un-packed the entire bus’ cargo, re-loaded the cargo pack again, and finally watched the sun rise. Baitbridge – not recommended for a quick get-away.
We arrived in Harare by 3pm, found an internet café by 3.30, and proceeded to contact Philipp- a German engineer living in Harare, working on building up Zim’s water pump capacity. Philipp’s house is in Highlands (for those who know Harare), a rich “Bishop’s court” style area of town. The house has a swimming pool, a massive garden with avocado trees, a tennis court, and permanent security guard. The only problem? The house doesn’t have connected running water. It has to be supplied by a tanker which sells Philip water at $8 per 1000 litres. We had some supper which Martin (a second German couch surfer) cooked for us, and crashed early.
I think it's more difficult to border cross there than even Mexico where we have had to go thru Customs for 3 hours or so to board a plane.
ReplyDeleteAt least you found the internet. :)