Zimbabwe-land – by Evan

After the crossing into Zambia, we were both a bit nervous about the Zimbabwe border – once we had actually crossed into Zimbabwe, however, we were amazed at the efficiency, orderliness, and friendliness of the immigration staff. In about 20 minutes we had all our necessary stamps and bits of paper to enter the country, and were only held up at the actual boom as the chap in charge wanted to see our receipt – he wasn’t particularly clear on which receipt we needed to show him, all he knew was that he wanted to see one or he couldn’t let us through. Unfortunately, we didn’t have one as I had arranged our visa in London, so didn’t have anything to offer. No matter that we had everything in order, stamped visas at the ready and Temporary Import Permits in hand, he wasn’t budging. After a very long time persuading him otherwise, he eventually relented after I promised to write my name in his little book, and he let us through into Zimbabwe.

Our first task was to find the house in Kariba that we were staying out, without a) an address or b) a map. This we did remarkably quickly for us, after developing a worrying knocking sound (turned out to be mud when taken to mechanic the next day) on the front left hand side of the car – by bumping into two fellow house guests at a nearby garage.

Once we arrived at the (enormous) house on the shores of Lake Kariba, we were immediately made completely at home by the Wettons and Passaportises, and beer in hand and braai on the go in the promised-land of Zimbabwe, I felt as relaxed as I had been for months.