It’s been a great, great day and now there’s a great, great afterparty at Shoestrings. I’ll show you proper photos and tell you more once I’m back in Maputo. Vic Falls is an amazing place, there’s something about all that water.

Good morning. I’m at a place called Shoestrings lodge. It’s a backpacker hostel that turns into a bar and fills up with locals in the evening. I had some great talks yesterday.

Today I have decided that I will have an empty day, just walking around and see where I end up. After breakfast.

Oh, and there’s two horses living here. Haha

I don’t have internet at all times so don’t get upset when I don’t answer on Whatsapp, also – I’m taking a break. :)

Beijos!

Written at 8:20, on the bus to Vic Falls.

So I arrived to Harare yesterday and took a walk around the city centre. I got a great impression of the city. Safe, friendly and bustling with energy.

It was different from other places I’ve traveled in many ways. It was one if those places you instantly like without being sure about why. Harare was green and there was a calm in the chaos. Also, people who stopped me didn’t necessarily do so to sell something, they were genuinely friendly.
Even the classic taxi conversation ended different than normally:
“Where are you going my sister, you need a taxi?”
“No, thank you very much”
And instead of – “Miss, miss, miss, wait I can take you good price!!”
I got – “Ok no problem, have a good day!’

I walked to “Copacabana” where I took a kombi taxi, which is basically a bigger car that works as a bus and costs 5rand. I ran some errands and then went to Mount Pleasant where my friends live.

We had a nice talk, wine and food at their house, and I spent the night there.

This morning I went out and grabbed a minibus back downtown, had a walk around Harare and decided I would hop on the bus to Vic Falls. It basically means I will be spending another day in a bus, but I will get one day more in Victoria Falls and be close to the border to be able to cross it before my visa runs out. I would have loved to stay in Harare another day, it was a really great city.

The bus I’m taking now is with a company named Pathfinder. The office is situated on the crossing of Nelson Mandela Avenue and 5th Street and the bus to Bulawayo and Victoria Falls leaves every day at 7.30. I got to their office without a ticket and it was no problem, the ticket to Bulawayo is 30USD and all the way to Vic Falls is 55USD.

I got the front row seat again. Nice.

———-
15:15 Bulawayo to Harare.

Had a short stop over in Bulawayo where I got to prevent a disaster by charging my iPod and getting cookies before the second long busride of the day.

I’m now sitting next to awesome Hudson who has an android phone and shares his network with me! So nice. Expecting to be in Vic Falls by evening, see you then!

Written at 12:50, from the bus.

I was happy to see that I got a great seat in the Intercape bus that was going to take me to Harare. I am sitting in the front row on the top floor of the bus, next to Lloyd, Mercy and Prosper, all super friendly young people from Harare.

The ride started off with a collective prayer “Say amen like you mean it! One more time, say it like if it was the Champions League!” and “No number two in my loo!” by the very funny bus host.

We continued on great South African roads with less good movies and random R&B music. As we got to the border post by 4am, we had to stand in line for a long time and Prosper and I ended up being the last ones from our bus. After finally getting our stamps we saw that the bus had left to the other side. We started walking towards it and were picked up by the bus host who came rushing and said that we would have to take another bus to the other side, as the short stretch of “No mans land” bridge between the border posts of South Africa and Zimbabwe was a very dangerous area.

We hopped on a random bus to cross the bridge and arrived on the Zim side, reunited with our bags and travel buddies. The visa application procedure was a bit messy as they required me to leave the contacts of a host and a physical address in Harare, which I didn’t have. Found an address in my guidebook which worked fine once Prosper had written his name as being my “host”. Then I was asked how long I was planning to stay in Zim and told the truth. Got a 30$ visa for 5 days. Damn! Haha. I probably won’t stay longer, but I should have said two weeks anyway just in case. I just wanted to get out of there as it was all so messy.. but I wouldn’t get to do that yet.

Blue customs declaration forms. Everybody told me I wouldn’t need one as I had nothing to declare but I took one anyway and filled it out just in case. When I approached the visa window I was told that it was not necessary so I just folded it up and saved it in my pocket.

When I came back to the bus, the customs officers had taken all the bags out from the bus, looking them through with flashlights. I only have a medium sized backpack so it was of less interest than the huge boxes of food and TVs, fridges and other things that people had to declare. Still, the officers approached me and asked where my bag was, I pointed at my open backpack and said I had nothing to declare. I got a “We need the blue form.” and an angry look so I took out the piece of paper from my pocket, wrote “personal items” and got it stamped after they had flickered over my backpack with their flashlights.

Then we waited for at least another hour in the dark outside of the bus for a man from border control to come and check our passports for the last time before we would finally get to leave. The man came, the doors opened and then he barely even glanced at our passports. We drove off, after at least three hours at the border. I wasn’t keeping track of time, but I was very surprised and happy that there were no mosquitoes around.

I fell asleep and the next time I woke up I had a beautiful sunrise and amazing landscapes all around me. Zimbabwe is really beautiful. Oh, and that blue declaration form? We were stopped again, having to show it. And then we were stopped by the police at least another six times, then I stopped counting.

Lloyd bought a pizza for us four to share and right now i am 10km from a place called Featherstone and Harare is nowhere to be seen yet, but the bus is playing old R.Kelly, Brian McKnight and Boys II Men songs so we’re having fun guessing the artists and titles. And I could watch these landscapes for hours.

22:40 Lisa’s home

Got to Harare at about two thirty, after 19 hours, and took a stroll around the city before taking a minibus to some friends place. We’ve been talking and eating and I actually might continue straight to Vic Falls tomorrow. Harare is really great but I have a thing for water..

Oh, and I have been adviced to skip out on Lusaka. Mainly because it isn’t very exciting and because the Victoria Falls should be seen from the Zimbabwean side. I also figured that paying 50$ for a Zambian visa just to be there one day is difficult to justify. We’ll see.

Good night!

Joburg bus station, waiting for my second bus, reading and eating. Looking forward to see which movie they will show this time. Just saw “big mama’s house” and “day and knight” haha gosh.

Anyway – see you in Harare!

It didn’t take much for my over-optimistic brain to go into travel mode again. A couple of days off for Easter and “when will I be able to do this otherwise?” triggered my curiosity and eagerness to experience something new.

I wanted to go to northern Mozambique where beautiful beaches meet untouched villages where time stands still. So I checked airfares from Maputo to the north.. frowned.. started looking at the costs to go anywhere around Africa.. and let me just tell you how spoiled we are with our cheap European airlines. The prices here are insane and not in any way justifiable. 500€ for a one hour flight? I can’t do that.

So I started looking to the west instead, mostly out of curiosity. It was an area I had not really considered going when planning my Africa life. It is also an area where roads are good enough to actually take buses, and then I realized that buses aren’t as insanely overpriced as flights – and started tripping.

I printed a map and started looking at distances and prices. Drawing lines and taking notes. And then I found myself in that unpredictable mode I’ve gotten into so many times before.

A simple thought that sparks some research for information, turns into various options, into making things clash perfectly, counting days, places and hours of transit until it becomes a master plan. And then you suddenly sit there with three bus tickets and a flight ticket, not really sure about what just happened.

All I know is that I’m going on a little trip.
It starts with a 28hour busride to Harare.