Harare

For some absurd reason my head was constantly singing "Harare" to the tune of "Valare". Well, Dad's version of the tune of Valare, as it's the only one I know. It was unexcitingly like any other city, and penniless as we were, we felt we had exhausted it's charms in an hour.

At the Zimbabwean border this morning, we had taken the exchange desk by surprise by trying to change some money. The poor chap behind the counter looked quite befuddled and had to call reinforcements to turn computers on, unlock money boxes and find receipt books. Not surprising really at Z$250 to US$1. Later that day we got a rate of 13,000. Today (a week later) it is up to 20,000. The idea was to change a little so that we'd have at least one official receipt as the 'parallel' rate is illegal. How this is meant to work beats me - a small bottle of water cost US$52 at the offical rate! I thought there might be some complicated economic reason why this dual system works, but I'm assured that it's because "Uncle Bob lives in cloud cuckoo land". No doubt Simon will be able to furnish me with a good explanation if there is one.

We also took the good (but possibly in-bred) folk at our campsite by surprise, due to a communications error. I guess Harare isn't really on the tourist trail these days, but they turned on the water and rushed off into town to buy beers and snacks and whatever else you need to stock a bar and generally made us feel welcome. And found us some Zim dollars, so much fun was had clutching six and a half million dollars before divvying it up.

If you don't hear from me again, it's because Uncle Bob has read my blog...