Sunday 9 March

After the party, a slow day was both inevitable and necessary. We crawled out of bed and convened around the table at 10am in various states of disarray, clutching glasses of water and piecing together the night’s events. Reece partially revived us with coffee and toast and we distracted ourselves by playing darts and gingerly attempting to befriend Charlie, the African grey parrot, who sits on top of his cage and bites everyone except Shelley. Around 11:30 I felt well enough for a walk around the garden and went off to look for bugs and examine plants.

Lunch at Coimbra

At 1pm we headed out for lunch with Paul and Shelley at Coimbra, a Portuguese restaurant near Harare’s central business district. Paul explained that there’s not a lot to do in the CBD and he avoids it as much as possible – apparently it’s seen better days. All we saw from the car park was a handful of skyscrapers and unbecoming concrete buildings, so I heeded Paul’s advice and lost all interest in visiting the city centre. Reece gave a parking attendant a few dollars to watch the car and we went in for food.

The restaurant was nice inside – a bit plain, but cool and clean – and the food was very good. We started with bowls of soft, white bread that came with melted garlic butter and a delicious, pour-on chicken stock. For mains almost everyone went for the half chicken and chips, which was tender, tasty and very filling. I felt much more human after some salty food and sweet mango juice.

More games

On the way back to the house we stopped at a smart-looking shopping park to grab a few more drinks. We got back in time for a game of dix-mille and the England-Italy Six Nations match, which kicked off at 5pm. The evening involved a lot of games: dix-mille, darts, g’day Bruce (to the Germans’ initial confusion), ping pang pong and taps; a lot of laughter and a Shelley special prawn linguine, which was to die for. We were in bed by 11pm, excited for a trip to Imire game reserve the following day.