Sarah's adventures in Zimbabwe: Milkshakes and Climbing Marymount hill

Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances I had to undertake a rather urgent run to Harare to get a visa extension, as my entry visa only lasted 30 days, and my long term visa had not yet been processed. Luckily it wasn’t just me in this position, it was all 3 UK team leaders, so we all could travel together. We made the journey down on the 4.15am bus (painfully early!) and arrived with about 2 hours to spare to get our visas sorted! As we needed to be around to sign any last minute papers we got a night in Harare before heading back to Mutare on Saturday morning. The small advantage to being in Harare was that we stayed at the Small World Hostel we had stayed at on arrival and so we had hot water, wifi and I was able to make myself a bacon sandwich in the morning!

We arrived back in Mutare on Saturday just before lunch, as we had a very speedy bus driver who managed the whole journey in 3 hours!! This gave us enough time to grab lunch and to try out the milkshake place at Meikles restaurant, which was highly recommended by the previous volunteers. They did delicious milkshakes – definitely a good find on a dry programme!

We then headed to the Mutare sports grounds to watch the weekly Rugby match. This week it was Mutare v Harare. Unfortunately for Mutare, the Harare side had 10 national players on their team, and Mutare only had 1, so it was a bit of a one sided match, but it was good craic nonetheless to sit and watch the game in the beautiful sunshine!

On Sunday we decided to be a bit more active and therefore we thought we would attempt one of the smaller hills around Mutare, Marymount hill. Lots of comments were made at the bottom about how easy a hill it looked and how little time it would take to get to the top. One group decided to go straight up, while I joined the other group taking the slightly easier route around the hill.

We quickly discovered that this was not going to be as easy a climb as some had thought as the paths were overgrown with brambles, the hill was steep and the paths were not well defined! However, the views as we climbed the hill were amazing, and as we were so close to the border, we could see over into Mozambique. It was a great relief to reach the top of the hill and to rest on the large stones beneath the cross, even if some of us who were less enamoured with heights found it to be a bit high!

It was a great way to spend a relaxing Sunday afternoon, even if I do still have the scratches all over my arms and legs to prove the challenges we overcame!!