8th leg. Zanzibar-Harare

December 1, 2012

The unbearable praying of the Iman in the very early morning, very very loud, relayed and magnified by speakers on the streets, was our wake-up call. It reminded me to East Germany prior to the fall of the Berlin wall. It was the only moment in Zanzibar when we really felt uncomfortable.

Perfect handling at the airport made us forget this wake-up call. We prepared the a/c and we had no delay or problems with the customs except for the fact that Urs had to undo his shoes. It may have been kept as a secret sofar, but this happens really every time so I start wondering if this is not an old pair of Swiss Army shoes with a stainless steel frame in the soles. Classified Army information?

Then we learned at the very last moment that the Agent Equity in Dar-es-Salaam requested payment of $600. We offered a settlement of $200 to the Agent in Zanzibar Aerotech. Since they could not reach anyone of Equity in Dar-es-Salaam at that moment, they decided to let us go. Andy has to deal with this small piracy. Agent Aerotech is beyond any blame and we consider them of one of the best on this entire trip.

over Tanzania

Andy Farmer of NAL Jets remains our hero. It looks like he is able to solve anything for us. Our disaster in Jeddah we will consider incompetency or lack of brains of the immigration officers.

Easy take off. The FPL brought us exactly on a route which stayed away from the CB’s. We had CB’s on both sides, at a reasonable distance.

Not much to see en-route except for the big Lake Malawi.

overhead Lake Malawi

on course to Harare VOR

Arriving at Harare gave us the feeling that we were the only or nearly the only a/c on the platform.

PH-PNG at Harare Intl Airport

Our routine fueling. Routine customs clearance which took longer than we experienced in any of the airports, except Jeddah of course. If the head of the Immigration Department had not show a strong interest in the French speaking Sophie, the immigration might have taken much longer.

Since the writer of these blogs is getting more ill every day, we had a quiet afternoon. Most time we spent in transportation to and from our guest house outside of Harare.

What we have seen of Harare looks to me very much like any USA state, such as Georgia, South Carolina or Florida. Same type of food i.e. not of high quality, big portions and cheap. The exception to this was a late lunch at the Brontë Hotel, which reminded us to the Muthaiga Club in Nairobi.

our nice Guesthouse at Harare

Currency here is just USD. It may be have possible to pay in local currency but everyone requested USD so we never came to the moment of changing any USD into local currency. What surprised is that everything is rather unexpensive here.

In the meantime it turned out that John Burnie, the editor of RORC’s yearbook, with whom I had contact about an article in respect of a race about Winsome, lived 20 years in this part of Africa. He gives us all kind of historical information and started sending some photographs. It looks like Pilatypus has a new fan.

Will be continued with our tomorrow’s trip to Durban.