Kerry cooked us a very delicious breakfast of Scrambled eggs with chives on toast. The eggs tasted delicious, and Kerry told me that her trick was a little cream so that the eggs did not split, amazing! We each had a bath and got ready slowly to drive to the Great Zimbabwe ruins. One of the people who had organised and set off the fire works came over for tea with his son, so we sat and enjoyed recounting the previous night for an hour. Dan and I set off at around 11 for the ruins, with a view to go to their shop and garage, Stop Over. Just before we left for their shop we noticed that one of the tires on the car was looking a it flat so we got out the tire gauge and the compressor and filled the front right tire to the correct level.
Jenny had assured me that she knew exactly where we were going to get to the Nish's shop. This however turned out not to be the case and we spent to first 20 minutes of our drive criss crossing Masvingo in an attempt to orient ourselves. As soon as we figured out we were on the correct road a white bakkie pulled up beside us while we we driving and pointed to our front right tire while beeping its horn a few times. Because of our problems earlier in the morning concerning the tire pressure we assumed they were notifying us that something was wrong with the tire. We pulled over on the side of the road and I stuck my head out the drivers window to have a look at the tire, it seemed fine. The men in the bakkie pulled up in front of us and told us they were members of the Zimbabwe public police and they would need to search our car. The men were dressed nothing like police officers and we had been warned about situations like this. Jenny told the men "we are in a hurry" and I pulled away from their parked car. We took the first turn that would take us back into the centre of Masvingo intending to make a bee line for the police station should the men follow us.
The men carried on straight and didn't follow us towards town. Once we had given them a minute to get a bit ahead of us we turned back onto the correct road and proceeded to the Nish's shop. About 500 metres after returning to the road we crested a hill and found a police checkpoint. We intended on stopping to tell the police about the would be robbers but decided against it when we saw the men and their truck stopped at the checkpoint. We drove through the checkpoint never intending to stop even if the police told us to. It looked very much like the men were working with the police but not as police; corruption at its finest.
When we arrived at the shops Jenny went inside for some drinks and snacks for the day while it put some fuel in the car. Because I had never purchased fuel in $/litre I had no perspective if the fuel was expensive or not. As such I put 20 litres in the car rather than filling it up at $1.40 per litre. Later figuring out that this amounted to a little more than we were paying in South Africa but not much.
Finally after all of the delays and diversions this morning we managed to make it to the Great Zimbabwe Ruins. Before our visit today I had never heard anything about the ruins so upon arriving, and paying our $15 a head, we headed straight for the museum to learn a little more about the ruins we were about to see. The ruins are a large group of stone walls built without mortar between 1200 and 1700 AD by natives who built their houses amoungst the structures. Walking around the ruins I couldn't help but wonder exactly why the walls were built. They did not form any portion of the people's living quarters, did not form complete enclosures and were monumental in height. Why would a group of people build stone walls that did not provide housing or protection and clearly took an immense amount of effort to build? For what purpose? The museum held few answers because it appeared much more propaganda oriented than historical oriented.
When we were finished contemplating the existence of the ruins we drove down the road to have a look at the damn that created the lake on which the boat club is located. The damn was very impressive and after a few minutes admiring it we headed back to the Nish's shop to buy some drinks for the evening. When we returned home we were all in a very cheery mood and enjoyed several drinks and great conversation with the Nish's before firing up the braai for our food. We cooked boerwors and steaks on the braai and continued chatting late into the evening.
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