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August 6th & 7th, 2022

Note: This post might not be for everyone. It is long, and only covers two days! And I didn’t take many pics on these days, so it is mostly text. These days were packed and among our most interesting. If you’re pressed for time I recommend the section about money changing, it’s bananas. I have provided quick links below if you want to skip ahead.

A Primer on Zimbabwean Politics

It is time for us to go to Zimbabwe, but before we do, a small preface. It would be a disservice to skip over any mention of Zimbabwe’s politics, race, or unpleasantness. These are sensitive and complex topics. I hope, even in my brevity, I do them justice. If I offend you, I apologize, but I feel it’s better to mention these things rather than not. Visiting all these places isn’t just about nice sunsets and elephants; it’s about trying to understand and untangle the most complex mammals, humans.

A few days earlier, we were camped at Savuti in Chobe National Park and Jenny had a conversation with our South African camp neighbors. During this chat, they mentioned, “Well, since you can’t go to Zimbabwe right now….” This naturally piqued Jenny’s interest since we were headed there in a few days. Jenny asked why and the woman explained that, as South Africans, they know that Zimbabwe is corrupt, that travelers are hassled, that police solicit bribes and that it’s not safe.  

This is not our impression. But it is the impression and belief of many white South Africans we have met. Brutal crimes have punctuated Zimbabwe’s past. Particularly vivid in the memory of the white African population are the land grabs and farm murders of the early 2000s. 

The origins of the farm seizures are long simmering and complex. The forced takeover of farms motivated many of the white population to flee the country, and those who remained lived under Mugabe’s specter, wondering what he would do next. Of course, black Zimbabweans experienced oppression and violence at the hands of Ian Smith’s white government before independence in 1980.

The land grabs and later hassling of travelers by police with small-level shakedowns branded Zimbabwe as an unwelcoming place for travelers. The farm takeovers also turbocharged the loss of productivity of Zimbabwe’s impressive agricultural capacity, contributing to the currency’s collapse. This resulted in the second-highest rate of hyperinflation in history (see Hungary, post WWII for the highest), at a very impressive 98% per day. Today inflation is a little more under control, year on year around a mere 95%.

Recent events in South Africa have returned these memories to the fore. The South African government has moved to enact a law allowing involuntary land expropriation by the government, an attempt to follow through on an old and long unfulfilled promise by the ANC to increase black land ownership. This reignited concerns by some white South Africans that South Africa is headed the same way as Zimbabwe.

Not all Africans, white or black, think it will go that far. The new South African law, yet to be passed, is explicit in what land can be taken without compensation, namely abandoned land, state land and land held for speculative purposes. The big question, and I cannot emphasize this enough, is how the new law would be applied in practice if passed. 

This is all to say that a vocal segment of the white South African population views Zimbabwe with skepticism, fear and anger, as a harbinger and prophetic example of their future. 

Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s current economy is so sluggish and without opportunity that many Zimbabweans are immigrating legally and illegally into South Africa. The fear that Zimbabweans are taking South Africans’ jobs is pervasive among the black South African community and has led to xenophobic attacks against immigrants. 

This history is much more knotty than I have described, but suffice it to say that Zimbabwe and South Africa’s histories are intertwined and messy. Any African, black or white, has something to say about Zimbabwe, South Africa and politics. 

Against this backdrop, we entered Zimbabwe. 

Kasane-Zim Border Crossing

Our day started in Kasane, Botswana. Our friends Gerry and Ronda were with us for their last day, and we wanted to take them on the classic day trip to Victoria Falls, just east across the border. It was 8 o’clock when we drove away from our campsite at Chobe Safari Lodge towards the border, justa 10 minute drive away.

Just before the border, there is an intersection where if you go straight, you end up in Zambia in a few hundred meters, and if you take a right, you end up in Zimbabwe in a few minutes. Don’t make a wrong turn! 

There is always a swarm of day trip visitors to Vic Falls, herded in tour busses and shepherded by guides who organize these trips every day. We were just ahead of the crush. This was Gerry and Ronda’s first border crossing, and we had briefed them the way a coach briefs a sports team, with urgency and detail. 

Top tip for any African border crossing: bring a pen; they are always in short supply. 

Armed with four pens, we sailed through Botswanan immigration and customs in just a few minutes. The officers are used to the swarm of day visitors and didn’t ask any questions or care to inspect our vehicle. 

On the Zimbabwe side, the typical border “agents” or runners spotted us and wanted to help. Once we told them it wasn’t a rental vehicle, they relaxed their attack, and we managed to start the process unassisted. The first stop was health, where our covid cards were scrutinized, then onto immigration. 

Moments after our arrival, a line of day visitor tour groups formed behind us. Next time, we’ll leave Kasane at 7:45 instead of 8:00, when the tours seem to depart. Jenny and I got our visas first, but then one of two immigration officers wandered away for 15 minutes, leaving Gerry and Ronda marooned at the window. I was almost happy they were getting a classic border experience, a delay with no explanation. This was their first time in Africa, and their Botswana experience had been entirely too smooth. 

I received my visa and was freed to go to customs to clear the vehicle. After a security guard managed to find the customs officer, things went pretty smoothly, and we chatted while he filled out all the paperwork. $20 USD paid the road and carbon tax, and right around when the rest of our party finally got their visas I was done at customs. We were through.

The drive from the border to Victoria Falls town is about 45 minutes, through scrubland and dry forest that is a hunting safari concession or further along the Zambezi National Park (not to be confused with Zambia’s Lower Zambezi National Park). This drive was a chance to catch our breath from the border crossing and relax before heading into the fray of touristy Victoria Falls on a holiday weekend.

The town of Victoria Falls is a land apart from the rest of Zimbabwe. Many visitors on safari in Zambia and Botswana tack on a short visit to Vic Falls at the end of their safari, never venturing further into Zimbabwe. The government knows this and has invested heavily. The town is very safe, with tourist police all over the place on foot patrols. After covid vaccines became available, Zimbabwe focused heavily on vaccinating the citizens of Victoria Falls, hoping to restore at least some tourist revenue. Here the vaccination rate rivals western countries, whereas the rest of Zimbabwe languished, like much of Africa, in the low double digits. 

We drove straight to Victoria Falls National Park and snagged the last parking spot inside the gated parking area. Immediately upon stepping out, we were swarmed by hawkers. Under this press we managed to establish who would watch the car, a Mr. “KGB” (best to get this over with, as it’ll happen one way or the other), and we agreed to have our car washed while we visited the park, settling on a price ⅓ of his initial offer.

The line into the Park was long; one ticket kiosk was out of order. It took a long time to get in, but it was worth it, the falls are fantastic, and we were excited to show our friends this wonder. As with our previous visits, the falls really impressed. Jenny and I hadn’t visited during this season, having previously seen peak flow and the falls at their lowest flow, so it was nice to see them at this mid-level, where water is spilling across the entire 1.7 kilometer face of the falls, yet not so much water that the spray obscures the view. 

After a morning of wandering around the various viewpoints along the face of the falls, we retreated to the Victoria Falls Hotel for lunch. I’m sure this isn’t the best lunch available in Vic Falls town (as we say, “you can get better, but you can’t pay more!”), but the hotel’s long history, very colonial in feel, is interesting, and the hotel is a tranquil break from the hustle and bustle of town. 

In the afternoon, we splurged on a helicopter flight over the falls. It was incredible to see the falls from the air, particularly the deep clefts of the canyons zig-zagging downstream of the falls. These gorges were the locations of the previous falls tens of thousands of years ago. In another 10,000 years the Zambezi river will have carved yet another face to the falls, leaving the one we saw today dry and dormant.

After the flight, we said goodbye to Gerry and Ronda, who took a shuttle back to Kasane, where they’d continue to Cape Town for the last leg of their African trip.

We camped at the N1 hotel that night, which allows camping on the lawn next to the pool ($10 USD pppn). It’s right in town, but even on this Saturday night, it wasn’t too loud. There were a couple of other international overlanders camping here, and we all had a friendly chat for a while, swapping notes and travel stories.

Before departing, one of our chores was getting a local SIM card for our phones. Because it was Saturday Econet shop was closed, ostensibly the only place to get SIM cards. 

As anyone who has been in Vic Falls for more than five minutes will have experienced, when you walk on the street unaccompanied by a guide, you’ll be endlessly approached by hawkers trying to sell either small wood carvings or defunct Zimbabwean dollars of tremendously high denominations, now worthless except for souvenirs. “I will make you a Billionaire my friend.” is a common refrain. 

We’d been declining these offers all day while pondering how to get a SIM card. After chatting with George, who had tried to sell us both some billion dollar notes and a small carved hippo, I said, “George, you know what I really need?” He froze, instantly recognizing this was not the standard denial of his services; he had a fish on the hook! He looked on expectantly, ready to fulfill any requirement. “We need SIM cards for our phones, but the shop is closed for the next three days. Can you help us get them?”.

He agreed to try to get two SIM cards and return in half an hour. Sure enough, he brought one Econet SIM and one Netone SIM. After haggling, we settled on a price and installed the cards to ensure they worked before paying. We paid a premium for this SIM concierge service, but it seemed worth it, given the alternative. 

The Murky World of Zimbwean Economics 

In the morning, we decided to leave for the long drive to Chizarira (342km) no later than 10:00. This turned out to be too late a departure, but we didn’t know that then. Before leaving we had to provision, which would also be our indoctrination into a byzantine system of Zimbabwean currency and financial transactions. 

In brief, Zimbabwe has had four currencies, each abandoned after hyperinflation rendered them worthless. It’s now on its 5th series, with moderate success. Perhaps this time, under the new president, it’ll stick? 

The currency now in use is the Zimbabwean dollar, ZWL, also known as “bond notes” or occasionally colloquially, “Zollars.” The problem with the bond notes is that there isn’t enough actual physical currency circulating in the country to do business with any practicality. Without enough paper notes, there isn’t anything to trade with. 

Enter the RTGS. The RTGS (real time gross settlement) is the electronic form of the bond note, used from cell phone to cell phone, like mobile money and Mpesa in Kenya, described in previous blog posts.

The US Dollar is also used, so all goods can be bought in either USD, bond notes or RTGS if you have mobile signal and an Ecocash account on your phone. The official exchange rate for bond notes to USD is lower than the street value, in large part because the ZWL is not an internationally recognized currency. This means that typical economic factors do not determine the exchange rate. The street value fluctuates, even in the week I watched it, at something like double the official rate. Check zimrates.com for the latest actual rates.

What happens when you go into a store and buy something with an international credit card? Remember, there is no practical way to arm yourself with enough physical bond notes to do business, so changing USD cash on the street for bond notes to get a better rate is impossible. We didn’t have an Ecocash account, so we couldn’t get the black market rate with RTGS sent to our phones. 

The discrepancy between the official and street rates is so significant* that stores that accept foreign credit cards offer a “mid rate,” something in between the two rates. Thus there are three exchange rates for a currency that nobody recognizes outside Zim, and you can’t get anyway, even if you want some. Welcome to Zimbabwe! 

*I’m told the rates are now much closer.

I had read online that a curious industry had popped up due to all these fiscal shenanigans, and I went to investigate. Jenny headed into the Pick n’ Pay supermarket, and I started by first going to top our diesel. Fuel shortages are another conundrum in Zimbabwe. While in Zim we’ll abide by Jenny’s maxim, “When traveling in Africa, never pass up a shower or a fuel station.” Unlike the previous fuel station we’d been to that morning, this one had diesel. 

At the pump I asked the attendant if anyone here would pay for my groceries for me. 

If this sounds ridiculous, it is. The attendant didn’t bat an eye and said, “Yes.” Pointing at a plump woman on the street corner. She yelled over to her in the local language and introduced us. 

I met Anna and asked how it works. She said she would give me her local debit card, and I could go in and use it to purchase groceries. When we came out with the receipt in ZWL, we’d convert it to USD and pay her cash. Because she’d give us a better rate than the Pick n’ Pay rate, we’d get a discount on our provisions. I asked her what rate she’d give me, and she said 650. The official rate at the time was 458. 

Now we were at four exchange rates: the official rate, the street rate, the mid-rate and the Anna rate. Effectively Anna and I would be splitting the profit, the discrepancy between the street rate and the official rate, enabled by our US Dollars and her Zimbabwean bank account.

As I wavered, she thrust her debit card at me and said, “The PIN is 2034. I will wait outside for you. No problem.” 

Money and economies are strange things. They only work based on trust. Money has value because we believe it to have value. A dollar bill can’t perform any actual work or service other than as a medium of exchange; it’s just paper. Here I was, in a country where a lack of trust in the currency and the rule of law had driven the country’s economy into the ground with hyperinflation, yet a woman I’d just met gave me her bank card and PIN without hesitation. Trust. 

I headed into the Pick n’ Pay to rendezvous with Jenny. On the way in, I asked a cashier about the rate for a foreign credit card; she responded, “511.” We were at five exchange rates, and it wasn’t even 10 AM. 

After shopping in the exceptionally well stocked and spotlessly clean supermarket, we checked out. Anna’s debit card worked fine, and we got our receipt indicating some 72,000 ZWL. Outside I wandered around until I found Anna and showed her the receipt. We did the math together on my phone, and I handed over $111 USD, earning us a 26% discount on groceries. 

More than the discount was that it felt fun and very interesting to participate in this curious corner of economics. I had a great time. Feeling the spirit of Zimbabweanhustle and knowing that Anna was clearly a woman who could make things happen, I asked her if she could sell us some airtime. Yes, she could do that too. We made another deal. 

This was made in a group of five or six ladies hanging out on the street corner. These women are a small cartel of money sellers, changers and debit card lenders, making their living in this complex world of dealing. 

I thought having a few physical bond notes might be handy and fun, and Anna introduced me to another woman who dealt in physical cash. I wanted to exchange $40 USD for bond notes, and she looked at me like I was an idiot. “How much can I get?” She said 2000, at 400:1. We haggled over the exchange rate and I got her to 500:1. $4 USD got me a fist full of blue-green $20 bond notes. I was beginning to think the street rate I’d seen on zimrates.com of 800:1 was not for a dumb tourist like me. After all this, we hit the road, excited to dive into Zimbabwe. 

A Breakdown

Heading out of town the road is in good shape and the tarmac lead us easily over long rolling hills. The land here, mostly woodland, looks dry as we leave the green banks of the Zambezi River. As soon as we passed the Victoria Falls Airport the condition of the tar took a turn for the worse, but it still wasn’t too bad. The only police roadblock so far just waived us through.

At the town of Hwange, we entered coal country. There are signs in English and Chinese for collieries and coal coking plants. The roads are in terrible shape due to all the heavily loaded coal trucks heading back and forth. In the distance, we saw tall towers of processing plants flaring, burning off excess gas. There was a fuel station here, and we topped up on fuel at the cost of $1.85 USD a liter. Yikes.

Top tip: Fuel stations are one of the few places that are likely to be able to make change in USD.

Along the roadside are occasional stacks of firewood, baobab seed pods and sacks of something we could not identify. Needing firewood, we pulled over. As usual, someone materialized to make the sale, and we loaded up on heavy mopane wood. While stopped, Jenny asked about the thing we could not identify, a sack of what, on closer inspection, appeared to be dung. The man confirmed that it was. 

He explained that this indicates that the seller has charcoal for sale, but if they leave charcoal on the road to sell, they get hassled by police. We supposed that charcoal is a regulated business. In other countries, this is done to control deforestation; I don’t know the rules in Zimbabwe. The bag of dung was a thinly veiled screen against regulatory control. 

After coal country, we turned onto a road marked on the map simply as “road” and found ourselves on gravel in proper rural Zimbabwe. We put on an audiobook of Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, The Long Walk To Freedom. Driving through the backwaters of Zimbabwe, rumbling over the dirt roads, and listening to Mandela’s tales of boyhood in the rural Transkei of South Africa was transportive. 

Initially the road is steep and hilly, with some hair-raising bends if taken at too much speed. There were also numerous bridges over mostly dry riverbeds, and each bridge seemed more dilapidated than the last. They were narrow one way strips of concrete, hardly wider than the vehicle and with no guard rails or curbs whatsoever. 

In a particularly empty stretch of straight gravel road, punctuated by potholes and corrugations and amongst scrub mopane forest, we saw a car broken down in the middle of the road. Drawing closer, we saw it was a Toyota Hilux with a rooftop tent, missing a front wheel, with two chairs set up in the shade. 

Two lanky young men got up as we arrived, and we asked if we could help. They were from Holland, on a month long trip with a vehicle borrowed from a friend in Cape Town. This rough road had taken its toll, and the front wheel had come off while they were driving, which in turn had caused damage to the front left ball joint of the Hilux. 

They had very little in the way of tools. As we started to see if we had anything that could help, a minibus approached, heading in the opposite direction. They stopped, and the passengers poured out for a break while a few guys from the bus surveyed the situation. 

One passenger from the bus turned out to be a mechanic, who introduced himself as Sylvester. After assessing the situation, he thought he could help. He told the minibus driver to continue, he and his brother would stay to help the tourists. 

Over the next two hours we labored on the Hilux, trying to devise “an improvisation,” as Sylvester put it. The best we could hope for was a repair enabling the Dutch tourists, Tom and Simon, to limp to the nearest workshop.

There were missing nuts, damaged threads, sheared cotter pins, a bent stabilizer bar and sheared lug nuts. We were missing the crucial tools, a key wrench size that would have made the job relatively practical. In the end, using three jacks, our tools and parts, baling wire, and several of our spare fasteners, the progress reached a place where our resources were no longer needed. The sun was sinking low in the sky, and we were anxious to get on the road to try to reach Chizarira before it was too late.

Sylvester did all this work wearing his Sunday outfit, a blindingly white t-shirt, clean dark jeans without a blemish and fashionable black leather shoes with pointed toes. I remarked that he was doing an admirable job of staying relatively clean, and he responded, “My wife will beat me.” And we all laughed.

They planned to divert to Binga, about 40 km away, where Sylvester lived and had a workshop. Sylvester said more than once that you must help people broken down on the side of the road because it could be you the next time. It was a great introduction to the Zimbabwean spirit; he and his brother stopped and derailed their afternoon to help stranded travelers. No doubt Tom and Simon will compensate them one way or another, but this was never brought up when we were there. 

Simon felt bad that we had stayed with them so long and urged us to go, thanking us for our time, tools and help. They were getting the tire on the hub as we left. We drove off and made the turn to Chizarira at dusk, driving the ascent into the park in darkness. 

The road was narrow and bumpy, but we kept it slow and had no problems, wondering what we’d find at the gate. Would the rangers let us drive into the park in darkness, or maybe we’d have to camp at the gate? 

The guards at the gate didn’t seem fussed about our late arrival, particularly after learning that we had a prior booking. After signing in, we were allowed to proceed to our booked campsite, Kaswiswi 1, in total darkness. I drove slowly, blindly following the GPS. Partway along, we heard the angry trumpeting of an elephant close by. This got my blood pumping; I half expected to feel the Cruiser lurch as a tusk punctured the canopy. 

We’d been warned that Zimbabwe’s elephants are much less friendly to people, being more persecuted by poachers than in neighboring Botswana. This warning was driven home when we were shown photos of a Toyota pickup destroyed by an angry elephant. Its occupants had retreated to another car behind them, abandoning their vehicle and looking on as the elephant took out his aggression on the empty Hilux. 

No elephants charged us, and we rolled into Kaswiswi No. 1 in total darkness. The campsite looked to have been recently cleared of high grass, with scorch marks from brush fires in camp. Given the late hour, we dined on a simple dinner of quesadillas (comprising the two most important food groups, gluten and cheese) and raw veggies while we sat by the fire. It would be interesting to see what this park looks like in the morning. As we sat around the fire, we could hear the melodious call of the fiery necked nightjar from the darkness.

The Nitty Gritty

Immigration – Note that most foreigners are eligible for a visa on arrival in Zimbabwe, which is $30 USD. You can ask for a KAZA visa, which is $50 dollars and allows for entry to Zimbabwe and Zambia in one visa. This is so people can visit both sides of Victoria Falls. Zambia recently dropped the requirement for US Citizens to have a visa at all, so in the future, the KAZA may not be relevant depending on which country you’re from. 

Customs – We already had COMESA, which simplified the process; we didn’t have to buy any insurance. They did ask, and if we hadn’t had COMESA, they would have required we purchase insurance at the border. Road tax and carbon tax were combined, $20 USD. I had completed an online TIP application before arriving at the border, but the customs officer informed me that an eTIP is not accepted at this border, and that they’re only used at the Beitbridge border. 

The customs agent was super friendly and filled out all our paperwork for us. He found that our TIP had yet to be closed out in their computer system on our last visit to Zimbabwe in 2019. Technically this is supposed to result in a modest fine ($20-50 USD, I can’t remember the exact number), but he judged it to be an error on their part, not ours, and without asking us waived the fee. 

We did not declare anything and brought in 4 jerry cans of fuel without issue. I have read a few reports of people being unable to bring jerry cans of fuel in, or being restricted to only two jerry cans, but nobody seemed to care in this case.

The final step is to ask the customs agent for a gate pass. They will give you a slip of paper with a stamp on it. When you show this to the guard at the boom, they know that you have completed all the required formalities, and they’ll let you out.

Vic Falls Town

We stayed at the N1 Hotel, pleasant ad-hoc camping on the lawn next to the swimming pool. There is not very good wifi here. 

We ate at a trendy bistro near the N1, the Three Monkeys. It was pretty good for what it is, but damn expensive! Across the street from the N1 is the River Brewing Company, a hip-looking microbrewery. We didn’t think the beer here was that great, but it has a lot of potential.

Helicopter Flight – Helicopter flights are darn expensive. You can do the short over the falls only flight, a slightly longer flight or the full gorge tour. They are something like 15, 18 and 22 minutes long. The longest flight gets you a tour over the gorge downriver from the falls. Our friends Pete and Melissa did this in November and had a fantastic time; the pilot flew the helo in the gorge. This convinced us to hope for the same, but instead, we stayed high above. It was cool, but I wished we’d had the more daring pilot. They flew with the senior pilot on the Zambian side, so if you want to try for that experience, I suggest you try from the Zambian side. 

The helicopter company, The Zambezi Helicopter Company, guarantees window seats for all passengers. Upon boarding the helo, we found this not the case; Ronda sat in the middle seat. We didn’t have time to argue and still had a great flight. We stopped by the ticketing agent and complained politely that we were not given the guaranteed window seat. They took this seriously, and after a phone call to the helicopter team, they admitted that they were wrong; we should have gone up in two helicopters. They practically insisted on flying us again the following day, but Gerry and Ronda had already taken their shuttle back to Kasane, and we would be hitting the road. Nonetheless, they were very professional about the whole thing, and we appreciated their effort.

Sim cards – you can check this excellent website to get data rates for Zimbabwe and almost everywhere else, so you know what data should cost. I’ve found this to be accurate, or nearly so: https://prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com/wiki/Zimbabwe.

This website has an excellent write-up on the Zimbabwean currency situation: https://www.victoriafalls-guide.net/zimbabwe-currency.html.

Latest exchange rates are here: https://www.zimrates.com: 

If you’d like to learn more about Zimbabwe I recommend these books:

Alexandra Fuller’s autobiographical account of growing up in Zimbabwe in Don’t Lets Go To The Dogs Tonight isn’t as light hearted as Rogers, but is every bit as good.