Bvumba Mountain Vacation

Our Room through the Garden

Ndundu Lodge

We took a vacation to Zimbabwe the week of July 1-7. We left Sunday and rode the “chapas” to the border. Taking a chapa anywhere is always an adventure and this didn’t disappoint us. We thought that leaving our house at 7 AM might be the time when the chapa from Gondola to Chimoio would fill quickly. Wrong. It took about an hour. Then when we got to Chimoio, we had to wait for a second chapa. On both chapas, we had to hold our backpacks on our laps (normal) and didn’t have any leg room (also normal). The chapa from Chimoio took about another hour to fill. It took longer to get out of Chimoio than the trip from Chimoio to the border (about 90 km).

We were told that it is better to have foreign currency in Zimbabwe because the currency is always changing in Zimbabwean dollars and we knew we could pay for our hotel in American dollars. We exchanged a small amount of our Mozambican Meticais for Zimbabwean dollars. We didn’t have any trouble crossing except for the $60 US visa charge into Zimbabwe. We didn’t know it would be so expensive. I guess the government has raised the visa’s recently. We caught a taxi into Mutare and spent the morning looking around and ate lunch. Jenny and I both decided that Mutare and the surrounding area was more developed than Shickley, Nebraska, or even York, Nebraska. Mutare is the third largest city in Zimbabwe but for a third world country it was very developed. They had huge supermarkets, nice multi story buildings, people were dressed to kill, nice stores, beautiful houses and very well laid out. The stores were beautiful, there weren’t bars on the windows, people’s outfits matched and not every woman over the age of 14 was carrying a baby on her back like here. It made us realize how poor Mozambique really is.

We caught a taxi up to the Bvumba and our hotel. The taxi’s ended up costing a lot more than what we were told so when we got to the hotel we decided to count our money. We realized, even though we had tried to be careful, we had exchanged $80 US dollars at the border and only received $60 dollars US worth of Zimbabwean dollars. We also realized in talking with people that the taxis had charged us two or three times the normal rate. The thing was that we were unable to know what the exchange rate was in order to guard against this because it is always changing. Another MCCer had been to Zimbabwe the previous week and said that they were exchanging informally at $200,000 Zimbabwean dollars to $1 American dollar but evidently the Zim dollar shot back up and so this week it was $150,000 Zimbabwean dollars to every $1 American dollar. The border exchange people gave us $100,000 for every 1 American dollar we realized. Everything was more expensive. What made things worse is that those prices are the black market prices, or informal prices, and it is illegal to change money outside of banks however the banks run at the government rate which is $250 Zimbabwean dollars to $1 American dollar. To put that in perspective, it means if you pay for toothpaste in Zim dollars at the black market rate you pay about $2 American dollars. If you pay in American dollars at the official government rate it would cost over $900 American dollars. We couldn’t believe it. Fortunately the hotels charged the unofficial rate of $150 Zim dollars to $1 American dollar however for meals it was $3 dollars more expensive to pay in American money. We kept asking people what the rate was but no one can tell you because every day it is changing. Jenny and I sat down to figure out what we did have and realized that any way we looked at it we didn’t have enough money to stay the whole week like we planned. We were pretty disappointed. We realized that we had American dollars which meant we would spend more, not enough Zim dollars to pay for meals and meticais which we though we could change at banks but because of the official rate it was worth nothing (maybe a few cents). Once we had it all figured out we stayed until Thursday and with a free ride from the worker at the lodge we made it back. It was kind of strange to be in this really beautiful, more developed and educated country and all we could thing of was how in Mozambique we knew how much things cost, how to get places, the money worked and everything is stable.

Anyway, the rest of the time was glorious. Our lodge, Ndundu lodge, was modeled after an English stone house with thatched roof but decorated with a definite African style with carvings all over. It had a lounge with a fireplace and a small restaurant. It was very cold most of the time but we had a fireplace in our room which we sat around in the evenings talking, took nice hot showers and ate really nice meals. Outside the lodge was lush and beautifully landscaped with trails into the cloud forest (a type of rainforest). Just up the road was a tea shop that was also modeled in the English style but the interior was not African with a stone fireplace, fancy chairs, artwork and beautifully large windows and landscaping. They had about a hundred different teas and wonderful chocolate cake and the owner was quite pleasant. He told us that he had been given notice that he needs to move. We are not sure if it from the government or not. We heard of a lot of farmers being told to leave in the area that are of European descent. We spent the first day hiking down the road to Leopard Rock Hotel which is a very fancy, expensive hotel, surrounded by lush cloud forests, world class golf course, beautifully landscaped lawns and an animal reserve. We saw three or four monkeys on the way and watched them for a little.

Golf Course at Leopard Rock Hotel

It was so nice to get out and walk and not be bothered by people watching us or asking us for money. In fact people didn’t look at us at all like they do in Mozambique. We felt normal again.

The second day we took another trail through lush rainforests and along a stream for the first part of the day and than we hiked to the top of a peak overlooking the other mountains and into Mozambique. It made us feel like we were in Colorado again. The mountains look about as large as the foothills of the Rockies and are much bigger than the Appalachians. The views were beautiful.

Views into Mozambique from the trail

Wednesday we went to the Bvumba Gardens which was a gift to the governor of Rhodesia before Independence. It was comprised of a few lakes, beautifully landscaped lawns with Mazes through Azaleas, beautiful landscaped rainforest with thousands of ferns of different varieties and Aloes with wonderful red flowers. It was very peaceful and we could hear the birds singing all around.

On Thursday we headed home and spent a few more hours in Mutare looking around in the stores. On Friday, for the rest of our vacation, we took the car and went out to eat West of town and bought some plants for our house. We also stopped by a nursery run by a Portuguese man who had beautiful plants and flowers. It was fun to talk to him because he loved to talk about plants and how to grow them. He said I should stop by sometime even if I just wanted to talk about plants.

It was good to get away, to visit another country, to speak English, to hike, to be in nature. We were able to relax and to play like we can’t do in Mozambique.

You can see more vacation pics at our Flickr website.