Days 44 thru 46

(Rhia’s comments are italicized)

The road from Masvingo to Mutare was surprisingly well kept, in comparison to the road conditions we have experienced elsewhere in Zimbabwe. It might be because of a toll system in place, pretty much at random as far as I can tell. Each time we go through a booth, we pay $3 and they never have change, so we need to be exact. Luckily, Rhia has been hoarding our $1 bills. She even stopped at a couple banks to break some big bills into little ones. At one bank, they gave us some $2 bills that are in decent condition. Aside from toll booths, the police have set up barricades to check for…who knows what! On our way to our destination at Birchenough Bridge, one officer pointed out that our car did not have front reflectors😨. He said the fine was $5🥺, but he eventually forgave us as the car is a rental, and sent us on our way. Other than the stress of police stops, the journey was uneventful and  quite beautiful; even the clouds are really fluffy and pretty.

Just before we reached Birchenough Bridge, I started noticing an increase in the number of Baobab trees on the hill sides. Up to this point, my experience was the lone, enormous baobab randomly growing wherever. Now there are entire forests of them, and “enormous” was now just normal.

Just past one of those forests is the village of Birchenough Bridge. It got its name from the bridge, bearing the same name, that spans the Save river (pronounced Sä-vë). At the time of its construction in 1935, it was the third largest single arch suspension bridge in the world, measuring 1080 ft. in length. The man who funded the 145,000 pounds to have it constructed, Sir Henry Birchenough, is now buried beneath the structure of the bridge.

Apparently, in the 1930s and 40s, this was quite the tourist draw as people came from many miles to see this engineering marvel. The village of Birchenough Bridge sprung up as the center of a farming community, and was quite well to do until the 1970’s, when the bridge’s weight limit was reduced to 40 tonnes, and large trucks could no longer cross to take their farm products to distant places.

The only place that we could find to stay in the village was aptly named Birchenough Bridge Hotel, built right next to the bridge.

The hotel was certainly a nice place back in its day, even once hosting a conference centre (long gone), which is still embroidered on its monogrammed sheets. The sheets themselves were very thin and sporting holes; probably the same sheets that were used when the hotel opened 😵‍💫

We got our choice of rooms, which is to say, either one with a toilet seat, or one without. Spoiled as we are, we chose with a toilet seat. Later, we discovered that the toilet tank could not fill with water (and I could not fix it) 😭. We had to fill a bucket and just dump the water in manually. BUT we had both running water and electricity…just not at the same time.

But we cannot complain about the accomodations, because right outside our bedroom window, were houses that should have long ago been abandoned, but were not. I actually thought they were abandoned until the next morning  when I watched a multitude of people using the water spigot.

The hotel staff worked with what they had, and I cannot fault them for their efforts. They even did their best to make the garden look nice and were, as always, lovely people.

But look at their rake/broom…

We walked into the town to find a place to eat. Being Sunday, we were hoping for a nice roast dinner and, had we found it, I must admit that I would have paid any amount for it. Sadly, the only food served was sadza (boiled maize/mealy meal), and chicken or goat stew which neither of us were interested in. But they had loads of vegetables at almost every hutch, so we negotiated to get about 5 lbs of tomatoes and 25 bananas for $1. But that amount would be wasted on us, so we simply chose 10 tomatoes and 10 bananas and left the rest for them to resell. At the hotel, they had a restaurant that served “made to order” dishes. Which, we found out, consists of what they can go into town and buy when you order. We decided to each order a plate of chips (french fries), and go back to the room and make sandwiches. About an hour later, the chips came, and the amount on each plate was probably about 3 lbs!!! Not wanting to be wasteful, I finished not just my plate, but most of Rhia’s as well. Needless to say, I don’t want chips at all, now 🤢.

Both Dan and I feel that we’re missing something. It reminds me of the time about 40 years ago when my friend, Jules, and I went to Greece; no matter which island we were on, what time of day it was, or where we were going, we seemed to be the only ones going in that direction when the hordes were going the opposite way! This time, we see absolutely no white people anywhere, and we know we’re not the only people traveling in Africa currently!

As we left town the following morning, we were expecting to have to pay to cross Birchenough Bridge. But I guess it was Toll Free Monday or something. That was a bonus…not because of the amount of money, but because dollar bills are like gold here! However, even though we were only driving about 130 KMS to our next stop (Mutare), we encountered 5 police barricades! I was asked for my driver’s license (check), my name (check), my passport (check), my fire extinguisher and its location (check). We were quite proud of ourselves…until we were told we were being fined for not having front reflectors (😳😖😵‍💫). Our luck had run out and I was given my first ever traffic ticket and had to pay an immediate fine of $10. Okay, now that’s just boastful; just because some of us had a need for speed (before children), you don’t have to rub it in!  I was extremely relieved to pull into Mutare without any further fines.

For three days, our diet had been pretty substandard consisting of sandwiches and chips. Also, we were staying at places that would have hot water and electricity, but not both at the same time. So we were excited to see online, that Mutare had a Holiday Inn for just $75 a night! The hotel was in a great location, close to real restaurants, and had comfortable rooms!!! I know you’ll all be shocked but we decided to stay there as we wanted a bit of luxury but, more importantly, we wanted FOOD! The way we travel, it turns out that finding restaurants is extremely difficult. Regular people don’t have the money to eat out and we don’t seem to be very successful in finding tourists. But we were confident we would nail it this time and the whole way I dreamt of a roast dinner, hot water AND electricity, a toilet seat AND a working flush. I was so excited! However, the internet  turned out to be wrong; the room was actually $220 a night!! I know I’d just spent a couple of hours daydreaming about some luxury, but let’s not be silly; after all, we didn’t NEED food, hot water, electricity, a toilet seat or a working flush. So Dan dragged me, kicking and screaming, from the Holiday Inn 😱 and we got back into our illegal car to find a place to stay. Not more than 200 meters from the hotel, was a quaint little guesthouse for $35 a night! The catch, the toilet was broken (seems to be a theme here in eastern Zimbabwe). The handle was broken, so we just lifted the mechanism by hand, and all was well. And it had hot water and electricity consistently and at the same time!! This bargain version of heaven, I can live with.

And the cherry on top was that Google pointed us to restaurant about 100 meters away named Karen’s Kitchen that served MEALS! However, as is common in Zimbabwe, the restaurant was no more (😢) BUT had been replaced by a different restaurant (🎉). As we have described in a previous post, what is listed on the menu, is not necessarily what they have to serve you. I think the same was true here. I ordered roasted chicken with sadza. The chicken was great, but they replaced sadza with french fries!!! I’m getting fed up with fries! I ordered spaghetti Bolognese but was served some other spaghetti dish instead. I didn’t care…I was so hungry, I think I’d have eaten anything.

We had an English breakfast the next morning and then, tummies full, we decided to go to the local Mutare Museum to get learn some local history.

I learned that agriculture is the backbone of this area. The traditional crops are millet, sorghum, round nuts, ground nuts, cow peas, pumpkins, watermelons, wild potato, coco yams, and cassava. When the Europeans tried to introduce maize and rice, they did not fare so well (probably why I got served french fries instead of sadza (maize meal)🤪). Because of the mountainous area, they practice terrace farming. They also farm honey. Along the roadside from Birchenough Bridge to Mutare, there was a little stretch that had wood plinths displaying a single row small plastic jars that contained honey. (Sadly I don’t have a picture of them). That’s because Dan won’t slow down for me to get those photos!! 😤 The museum had a display of a living bee hive.

They had an English phonebooth there, so naturally, Rhia wanted a photo in it. 🤪

The museum had one of the biggest gun displays I have seen. They had about 175 old pistols and rifles on display. They were probably donated by a collector.

They also had a collection of classic vehicles. There was an American made Chevrolet in the collection with a right side driver seat 😲

Outside the museum, Rhia found an extremely unique chair carved out of a burl of wood. So I naturally had get a picture of me sitting in it 😁

The beauty of this country is undeniable. We will continue to explore the beauty of the eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe for the next couple of days. And, if Dan will slow down…or stop the car momentarily, we may even get some good photos!

This is probably a good time to explain that, when we’re around people or in ‘towns’ we don’t pull out my good camera. It would seem cruel to do so when people are fighting for every dollar they can get. We may be able to use it tomorrow 🤞