Got stopped by the police on the way down to Bulawayo - he tried to fine us $20 for a missing test sticker on the fire extinguisher and another $20 for not having a licence to carry firewood! Ian was asked to get out of the vehicle but I was told to remain where I was, so Ian was left to argue with the policeman. Explaining that the fire extinguisher had a warranty date and didn't need a tested sticker didn't hold the mustard and we eventually had to threaten to call our travel agent before he relented saying "it is clear we are not getting along" and let us on our way. We did think we may have pushed it a bit too far as he had started to imply we would have to go to the police station to pay our fine. The next hiccup was reaching a toll booth - the charge was $Zim10 but of course we had no local currency. Luckily the toll booth attendant was willing to accept payment in $US - I am sure he pocketed the $US and paid in $Zim himself but we didn't see this. However, having just stopped to buy a bunch of carrots for US$2 by the side of the road we had a bit of a struggle to actually find such small denominations - something else we hadn't considered.
Arrived in Bulawayo at 1pm and drove around looking for the Spar to pick up some essentials. We had managed to get some diesel at the garage that AJ had flagged to us with a drip sign just outside Bulawayo. We managed to completely forget that we needed to ask about payment before doing our shopping but luckily the check out assistant indicated that they would accept US dollars - phew!
We arrived at Matopos National Park at 3pm to find a queue to enter and fill out all the paperwork - having see so few people in Hwange this was a surprise. We were directed to the Main Office to find out exactly where we would be camping. The park is quite small but the rock formation were quite impressive although we kept comparing them with those we had seen in Namibia and Zambia. The difference being Matopos had both the large granite "catapiller" like rocks from Zambia and the "Giant's Playground" piles of rocks from Namibia.
We were to camp at Campsite 11 at the main Maleme Dam Campsite. On reaching it we realised it had definitely seen much better days. There was no water in the dam so again no water in the facilities. As no-one else was camping there we ignored the campsite numbering and just found the best site and set-up camp.
Saturday night is evidently barbeque night for Bulaweans in Matopos. There was a large party ongoing on the other side of the dam and a group of locals arrived on our side as we were cooking dinner. Amusingly they came over and said they had a big problem, expecting something along the lines of they needed firewood or they had broken down, I was exceedingly surprised when they said they had forgotten the salt! They were also excited to see we had some spices. Later they came back to thank us and offered us rum and coke - this was a new meaning to drink driving as the driver was literally drinking a pint of strong rum and coke whilst driving! We meanwhile had a strange dinner of curried carrots, peppers and smoked chicken (this had been bought on the advice of Gene - we won't be buying it again) . As we were finishing eating another couple turned up so we would not be alone for the night which was a relief as it was quite an odd place. The couple wandered over to have a chat - they introduced themselves as "coming from a small country North of Spain - the Basque Country" - this amused us as it seemed an odd way to introduce yourself.
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