Trains, Touts and an Invisible Wonder of the World

Back in Bulawayo following our sojourn at Great Zimbabwe, Scott and I may very well have purchased the cheapest first class rail tickets in the world. At $10 US apiece, we reserved a private 'coupee' compartment for the 12-hour overnight journey to Victoria Falls. The bus could have gotten us their in a third of the time, but speed and efficiency be damned, we were going to arrive in style.

After a long and sleepless night next to the sink-toilet.

Arriving at the station after dark on the night of departure, it became very apparent very quickly that we had not in fact scored the deal of the century. Once we found our compartment (we only got it wrong, maybe, four or five times?), we had to dig our headlamps out of our bags to see what it actually looked like. Chartreuse and white speckled paneling covered the walls to almost-match the hospital green mattresses on the beds that folded away from one wall. On the opposite side, in the corner, was some sort of metal receptacle, which we deduced was not a toilet but a sink that happened to smell suspiciously of urine. Not surprisingly, the tap, like the light switches, did not work and probably hadn't since the 1970's – a time when 'Rhodesian Railways' (their insignia is still everywhere) wasn't horribly out-of-date.

Aside from spotting an elephant at Hwange sometime around 6am (our first Big Five! Very exciting!), the train journey was fairly unremarkable. It was cold, there were a few cockroaches, and when I couldn't sleep, I tried to list all fifty states. I couldn't. We arrived in Victoria Falls around 11am, just four hours behind schedule – not bad, if our more recent experiences are anything to go by.

Walking out of the station, we were struck by just how different the town was from anything else we'd experienced in Zimbabwe up to that point. There were sprinklers watering manicured lawns, Land Rovers cruising up and down the main drag, and a large, unsightly travel/shopping/restaurant complex mimicking the style of Great Zimbabwe. What wonders tourism can do for a place.

Ambling around with our backpacks and guidebook, it didn't take long for the touts to spot us and come running over, waving billion dollar bills and salad spoons at us. After Coffee Bay and Hogsback, I had thought that we were reasonably well-versed in hassling, haggling and the art of saying no, but until we met the relentless 'artists' of Victoria Falls (everyone we met claimed to be a carver or a weaver or a painter), we really had no idea just how persistent, constant and intense the harassment could be. Once safely inside the gates of our hostel, we were reluctant to leave – they were quite literally waiting on the other side for us to come out.

But after half a day sparring with pool noodles and downing soft drinks (in the bizarre and unfortunate absence of fruit juice, we've been getting our liquid calories almost exclusively from Coke and Fanta) it was time to get out and see the falls that give the town its name. We headed out early and managed to avoid too much hassle, but at the gates to the park were met with a competitive bunch of raincoat-renters, all vying for our $3/coat. Trying to be fair, we split our business between two different guys, only to be told that it all goes in one pot. I guess that's just how they do things in Victoria Falls – relentlessly, competitively, desperately.

Livin' it up with Livin'stone.

Mostly, this is what we saw.

For a brief moment, the mist cleared and we were able to snap this shot. Ooh! Aah!

Once suited up in ultra-chic head-to-toe yellow plastic, the deluge began. It wasn't so much that the heavens opened up as that the water crashing down over the falls was sent splashing skyward and back down on our heads. Apparently, viewing the falls at the tail-end of the rainy season does have its drawbacks – there is such a thing as too much water and the spray made it nearly impossible to get a clear view of the falls. But the $20 park fee wasn't a total waste – we got a shower with unparalleled water pressure, and were treated to a highly entertaining display of monkey acrobatics.

The next day, we crossed the Zambezi, leaving Zimbabwe behind for good. I wish that I could urge people to put aside their reservations about this country and discover it for themselves, but having seen what tourism has done for the one corner of the country whose international reputation has not diminished under Mugabe, I hesitate. Zimbabwe needs your tourist dollars desperately (just ask one of the dozens of so-called artists) but in our experience, the best part about Zimbabwe (Vic Falls excepted) is the virtual non-existence of tourists. In most of the country, people are friendly, sincere, and eager to help out, not because they want to make a buck or sell you their wares, but because that's just how you treat guests. So go to Zimbabwe, explore its ancient ruins, discover its stuck-in-the-50's cities, meet its charming people – just keep it on the down-low, it would be a shame to see the country become one big adventure mall.

Next stop, Zambia!

Great Zimbabwe

As well as being the country's namesake, the ruins of Great Zimbabwe are supposed to be the nation's second-most visited attraction, next to the tourism behemoth of Victoria Falls. That may be so, but in keeping with our experiences in Bulawayo, we didn't exactly have to sweat over other foreigners crowding our photos. Lodging within the park consists of double-bed huts, dormitories, en-suite chalets, and a campground, all spaced generously across manicured lawns with views of the ruins; and fives minutes towards the main road sits a four-star hotel with white-linen restaurant, bar, tennis court and swimming pool. There was a large village's-worth of beds available in all, but aside from a brief conference of some sort at the hotel, our only neighbours among all this accommodation was one other young couple with a tent. Needing a kitchen to reheat our can of curry, we ended up in a spacious chalet that along with a stove (which we only used once) had two bedrooms and a television. We've grown accustomed to the twenty-square-foot life of dorm-hopping and by no means needed the space, but the ability to scatter our meagre belongings across the surfaces of three separate rooms was a luxury in itself. I had a candle-lit bath. The TV had only one channel, the Home-Videos-Of-Church-Sermons Superstation.

Why this amused me? I don't know. It's a flaming billy club!

We welcomed Great Zimbabwe's sprawling emptiness, aside from the tinges of pity towards the armies of idle hospitality staff and overalled men raking the same patch of soil day after day. Though the term doesn't usually bring to mind anything outside Europe, GZ is indeed a medieval city, dating back almost one thousand years, and is the largest ancient structure in sub-Saharan Africa, home to 20,000 at its peak. Research shows the sophisticated structures were built by the local Bantu people of the area (though colonial authorities of yesteryear were eager to prove otherwise) and there is much evidence pointing to healthy trade routes through Mozambique and beyond – a museum displays ornate artifacts from India, Persia and China, all excavated from the ruins. Also in the museum are a set of treasured soapstone birds, one of which is reproduced on the country's flag. Their significance as national emblems was offset somewhat by their being modestly propped within a dim, stuffy papier-mache 'cave' diorama, dead moss glued to the walls.

Watch out, mid-century British man!

The ruins themselves are epic. Divided into two 'enclosures,' one laid whimsically on the peak of a huge stone 'whaleback' and the other more bulky and spread out within a valley, they satisfy all the criteria for a good castle romp: winding passageways, narrow doors, and the sense that you're the first to move among their walls in centuries. What differentiates Great Zimbabwe from similar European structures is their classification as 'free-stone,' meaning no mortar or sealant was used in their construction. Everything we explored was built of stacked, free-standing granite, at times two meters thick and eleven meters high, and all we had for company were a community of blue-tailed lizards and more loftily dropped baboon dung.

Making use of the natural landscape in the Upper Enclosure

Poo with a view

While the state of Zimbabwe's tourism economy sometimes overshadows the sights themselves (in commenting about our visit since, “we were all alone!” is often the first thing from out mouths), visiting the ruins was an affirmation of what the country has to offer – we visited a solid, world-class attraction, with a singularity and historical resonance that no game lodge or snake park can match. So please, come to Zimbabwe! And maybe do a little littering while you're here, or scuff a footpath at least – tell the groundskeepers Scott sent you.

While waiting in a minibus this guy wanted his photo taken, so here he is.

Into Zimbabwe: Bulawayo

We had no kitchen at our accommodation in Bulawayo, where we spent the first of our days in Zimbabwe, so we were often looking for places to eat. In areas of Africa less touched by tourism, sit-down restaurants are scarce, most eateries being of the take-out variety: bare concrete floor, stainless steel counter and rarely more than a Coca-Cola poster for decor. Many had good-sized menu boards on the wall with a wide variety of options, all for $1-$3 a serving: meat pies, beef stew, vegetable curry, samosas, and sadza (stiff porridgey maize meal, an African staple). But whenever we stepped up and tried to order off said menu, the woman behind the counter would look at us like we were out of our minds.

“We don't have it.”

“What do you have?” We'd ask.

She would then have a quick exchange with a man in the back room.

“Chicken and chips?” She'd say.

Chicken and chips, chicken and chips, chicken and chips. Regardless of what the menus show, apparently all Zimbabweans eat is chicken and chips, meaning a piece or two of anemic fried chicken and some soggy fries, freed at last from their heat lamp and stuffed into clear plastic bag. The one time we decided to eat at a sit-down place (you know, with tables, chairs, laminated menus, etc.) we told our waiter after he'd brought our drinks that we'd like to order food as well. He got a bit frantic and scared, ran to the kitchen, and came back saying, “here's what I can get you– I can get you chicken, some pieces of fried chicken... and some chips on the side. Yes?”

Disregarding the argument of whether these menus should stay posted, I assume they at one time more accurately reflected the repertoire of the establishments upon whose walls they were nailed. This is Zimbabwe, however, and while the situation has improved plenty, the menu boards above Bulawayo's take-out counters are evidence that, possibly in more stable times, the veggie curry was once available. In the same way, there is evidence of a once-healthy tourism economy in Zimbabwe: outside our hotel, a safari company's sandwich-board advert had been given a permanent home hidden behind the locked grate of a neighbouring doorway. On the highways we passed countless disused rest-stops, their picnic tables and garbage bins shrouded in overgrowth; in the tourist-info pamphlet rack there sits a fantastic brochure for Zimbabwean golf which likely hasn't been moved since 1973, and in the three nights we spent at our two-storey, fifty-room hotel right downtown, we were utterly alone.

In the courtyard at Berkely Place

People evidently just don't go to Zim without a reason. Prior to going ourselves, we'd met only three people who'd crossed its borders: a young woman who was born there and had gone with her boyfriend to visit relatives (fair enough), and one other Irish fellow who'd been on the road for over a year, traveling overland all the way from Europe (and who was contentedly riding minibusses with a backpack the size of a Frigidaire, therefore fitting into the 'crazies' category and needing no reason). President Mugabe's reckless tampering and the country's general economic and political woes have tagged the country as one best avoided. And as many a local will eagerly relay, this was true as recent as 2008, when inflation peaked at five billion percent (someone please explain to me how that is possible) and the supermarket shelves were barren. People are happy to complain about Mugabe, and use similar rhetoric to folks at home complaining about any disfavoured Western politician. “This is a peaceful country,” is what we heard time and time again, and while we're sure life in Zimbabwe is not all singing and dancing, as tourists we experienced a country as easy, friendly, and pleasant as one could hope for.

Upon arrival in Bulawayo, one of the first things that struck us was the money: since the Zim dollar is altogether worthless (more on that to come), the country now runs on US currency. We were armed with mint-fresh notes from home, but the first domestic bill we received (as change for a serving of chicken and chips, of course) was the soggiest, most worn out little one-dollar we've ever seen. The date said 2006 but it looked like it had spent the last four years taped to the forehead of a coal miner. While US money is dominant, no American coins are used – we received South African change, eight Rand going into one dollar. To help with the confusion, many stores accept Rand as well, the exchange rate varying from 7:1 to 10:1.

That extra year can make all the difference!

Bulawayo is striking in that the city has apparently undergone zero development since the 1950's. I'm no expert, but the entire downtown core hearkens to a single era of architecture, with little modification over the years. Boxy buildings, rarely extending higher than six or seven storeys, are graced with evocative art-deco lettering, and the double-wide boulevards are lined down the center with turquoise lampposts. In amongst the time-capsule edifices are a few Victorian buildings from the Southern Rhodesia gold-boom years (Zimbabwe has only been called so since 1980). At the edge of the city sits a mammoth relic of a power station that, while apparently plagued with mismanagement and inefficiencies, sure looks cool. The freshest and most contemporary additions to the city are the beer ads.

Whether or not said ads can be erected level is another story

We took a train from this station. More on that soon!

If the company we kept at our hotel was any indication, it's safe to assume we were the only travelers in the entire city. There is not a great deal to do in terms of traditional sights, but we did make it out to the Bulawayo Railway Museum, behind the train station. Neither Alanna nor I have ever been ones for steam engines, but it was good fun, and pleasing in how it differed from anything similar at home. One of the museum's most significant possessions is the luxury rail car used by our pal Cecil John Rhodes in his travels around the country. Given the man's stature no expense was spared, and the car remains outfitted with piles of original silverware and crystal. The car's value must be astronomical, and we would have been satisfied simply gazing into the windows, but the museum's 'acting curator,' a guy my age, produced a key, and led us through a casual tour of the car, encouraging us to touch or pick up anything we pleased. Any such exhibit at home would have been sequestered with velvet rope, but in Zimbabwe, Rhodes' most precious cutlery is fair game.

After the Rhodes car, the curator left us alone to snoop around the acre-plus yard of train cars and engines on our own. Some were locked, some weren't – we were permitted to wander as we pleased, force doors open, and climb over things. I wouldn't doubt that we browsed the best and biggest large-scale train collection on the continent, and in terms of bang-for-buck and pure explorability one would be hard-pressed to find an equal anywhere. Many a four year-old would have thought they'd died and gone to heaven, and there there's something alluring about big weighty machines that even a flimsy art student like me can't deny.

As far as food goes, we did manage to find some more diverse meals, including a very decent fast-food pizza chain that had – gasp – a vegetarian option (though the chicken and chips thing still plagues us, we're in Malawi now and thought we were ordering shawarmas for lunch today but received what was basically chicken and chips with fancier seasoning). Bulawayo was the first real instance of us being without certain amenities we'd become used to on our travels: namely any form of self-catering kitchen, or hot showers, or toilet paper in the bathrooms, or cheese in the supermarkets (we are going to miss you, cheese!). I felt we were on the brink between the “well-established backpacker circuit” form of traveling and something different – 'harder' may not be the right word, but at least more alone, more expected to step out of our comfort zone a smidgeon. But who am I kidding, there was fast-food pizza, so really, how hard can it be?