Next Stop: ZIMBABWE - 10 Days With Big Bertha Part 2.

August 2024

After our days in Zambia it was time to pack up good old Big B and take her out on the road again. We said “shalapo“ (goodbye) to the people of Zambia and “mhoro” (hello) to Zimbabwe, ready to learn more about this neighboring country and its history.

Zimbabwe has a complex history, colonized by the British in the 1800s, the region's rule moved through the different hands of power, once known as South Rhodesia, then Rhodesia and after a 15 year civil war finally gaining independence in 1980s with the establishment of Zimbabwe. Unlike Malawi, Zimbabwe's soils are rich with natural raw resources such as platinum, coal, iron, diamonds and gold and mining is one of the country's top industries with over 60 international tradable minerals.

Now back to the road trip....upon minutes of crossing the Zimbabwean border, we (almost) became billionaires. That’s right, a true story of rags to riches. As we tried to trade our money, we learnt the history of the Zimbabwean dollar, a currency that in the 1990s- 2009 faced an extreme hyper inflation causing the creation of billion and even trillion dollar Zimbabwean bills to be printed and enter the market. In 2009, the currency eventually fell and is no longer accepted, however, people still tried to sell us the currency as a "souvenir" and today you can even buy these rare billion dollar bills on Ebay for a pretty penny! To conclude, we felt like ballers for about .5 seconds to only realize we did NOT win the lottery 😂

Zambia and Zimbabwe share the beautiful Victoria Falls and we had the opportunity to see the falls from both countries' borders. The Zimbabwean side was much bigger with many view points and different angles to view the wild thundering volumes of water.

We did a zip lining tour across the gorge and swung over the fierce flowing water, wind in our hair like we just don’t care. It was exhilarating to “Tarzan” over the gorge and experience different angles of this world wonder. We also ran into a few stray elephants between the zip lines which scared me enough to jump from platform to platform like it was my second job 😂

After viewing the beautiful Zimbabwean side of Vic Falls we began the long haul drive back to Malawi which took us two full days. Big Bertha, and frankly, little Gab were put to the test as we crossed pothole after pothole and checkpoint after checkpoint to make it back to Malawi.

We spent the night in Zimbabwe’s second largest city called Bulawayo. The more I travel across Africa, the more I have come to appreciate the variations across African cities. Bulawayo felt far more developed than our beloved home city of Blantyre, Malawi, with working traffic lights and wide paved roads (I know, the basics!) but also large convention centers and buildings. It was cool to see the nightlife and energy of this city!

We continued chugging along and on our final day, we had a 10 hour drive from Harare, Zimbabwe, back to Malawi. At this point in the 10 day road trip, we were tattered and a bit in shambles, ready to crawl ourselves over the Mozambique-Malawi border no matter what it took and even more ready to crawl into our beds to stay for another 10 days. 5 hours in and we made it to the Mozambique border only to meet an immigration officer that gave Gabe a single look and put the fear of god into him (honestly, quite impressive as I have been trying to do this for years 😂). She said the single word “money” and we immediately knew that we would be waiting at this border crossing for hours.

Some hours later, we finally passed into Mozambique and were in the final stretch to Malawi.…only 40 minutes left to the border! As we drove, Gabe’s phone got a notification that he could take a short cut that would cut 20 minutes off of our driving time. After 10 days of living in Big Bertha we jump, skipped and leaped at the opportunity to shave off a few precious minutes and I told Gabe to make that turn! We turned off the tarmac and onto a dirt road only to discover that the “short cut” went through 3 villages, over a mountain, around multiple bends and as we kept driving we realized, this was becoming a bit of a “long cut”. We finally stopped the car in a village and a man ran over to our car and slammed a piece of paper on big B’s window.

He said: “I am from the Congo, I got lost and have been stuck here in Malawi for two weeks, check my papers!! I have been stranded in this village and am waiting for my brother to come and get me”

We thought: how did you get lost here from the Congo…. for two weeks???

We said: “sir, did you just say we are in MALAWI? “

Low and behold, our “short cut” detour had accidentally crossed us into Malawi by non-official roads, bypassing the border crossing entirely. No demarcation or signs, no stamping of passports, we simply made a right turn and were back on Malawian soils. Although we were home free, we knew that not stamping our passports would be nothing but trouble so we wished our new Congolese friend good luck and goodbye and drove BACK into Mozambique to then enter BACK into Malawi properly. Google maps should really have a warning, “turn right if you want to illegally enter into an entirely different country just to save 20 minutes”, “stay straight for a simple life”. We certainly learnt our lesson.

All in all, we had an incredible trip pioneering across Africa in big B, seeing the beautiful nature, animals and cities that these neighboring countries have to offer, but as we crossed back into the Warm Heart of Africa, I had never been so happy to be home ❤️