So once again we left the packing until this morning. I packed while Jenny showered and she packed while I showered. We had asked the maid at Dave's house the day before if she had any old Zimbabwe bank notes and she agreed to bring what she had for us to have a look at this morning. While Jenny was busy sorting out the last of the packing I asked the maid if she had brought the notes. She produced a bag of assorted currency ranging from $100 to $10,000; probably 100 notes in total. I asked her if we could buy them from her and offered her 5USD for the lot. She told me she wanted much more for them, because she was hoping that Zimbabwe would resume use of the old dollar and then "[she] would be rich". This clearly is not going to happen, so I wished her the best of luck and didn't buy the notes.
We drove into town once we packed the car and headed straight to the bank to ask the woman at the information counter if her friend had the other notes we wanted. She told us that he would be arriving in an hour, so we left to drop Dave's keys off at the factory with his colleague Christine. From Dave's work we drive to the Internet cafe where we emailed and posted some blog posts. We then picked up some food for our week at Modumela lodge in Botswana. Once we finished our tasks at the shopping centre we'd used up enough time and drive back to the bank to see if our man had found us the right notes.
When we arrived at the bank the tellers friend was waiting for us. We had parked the car just outside the bank so we could move there to discuss payment for the notes. Unfortunately when we got in the car he told us that he didn't have any of the 1 or 5 billion notes but he did have another pack of 100 millions. We paid him $10 for the pack of notes and thanked him for his efforts in helping us, he even gave us three 5 billion notes he managed to find. Once we had the last of the currency we were going to find we set off from Bulawayo and headed towards the Plumtree border post.
The drive to the border post was fairly uneventful except for the numerous police road blocks. We made our way through the border with relative ease and were back in Botswana where the police generally leave you alone and corruption is nowhere near as rampant. Just down the road from the border was a station where we had to pull of the road and get the car sprayed with a solution to prevent the spread of foot and mouth disease. We even had to get out of the car and step on a damp cloth soaked with the same solution. From there we continued until we found Modumela Lodge about another 15 minutes away. When we arrived at the lodge we met the owners Clive and June and sat down for a drinks and introductions with them on the porch of the main lodge.
We found out soon after our arrival that we were the only guests staying at the lodge for the duration of the week. As such, June and Clive decided to put us in the nicest chalet they had! One of the few times we have been upgraded on this trip and we really appreciated their generosity. After our chat with them we went to our lodge and had another drink or two and watched some tv before getting ready to head back to the main lodge for dinner with our hosts.
Meals at the lodge are P1500 for two people for the whole week, and that is for a full english breakfast and a three course dinner. Very very reasonable if you ask me! Our dinner tonight started off with asparagus in butter, our main was a scrumptious steak and kidney pie with squash and carrot sides and dessert was the most amazing fruit salad I have ever eaten!! I went back for thirds :D We enjoyed a few beers and ciders with June and Clive after dinner whilst chatting to them about the lodge, themselves and our travels. I feel very privileged to be here and Clive and June are such wonderful hosts! The food is delicious and all the staff we have met are so kind and professional, I would highly recommend it here! Eventually we went back to our house to go to sleep, in the large and comfortable king size bed :D
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