(We’re always delighted to hear from our globe-trotting friend, Auerbach & Grayson’s Jonathan Auerbach, who visits the most exotic places on earth in search of lucrative investment opportunities. From the sounds of it, Zimbabwe has come a long way since his last visit.  RA)

Today I shall not challenge you with numbers or intense points of view and just relate a few anecdotes of travelling on the ‘Frontier’ over the past couple of days. Dinner in Harare on Tuesday night at Victoria 22… just over 2 years ago I regaled you and sent an attachment of the bill for dinner at this palace of gustatory delights; it was Z$ 1.7 billion which I paid with a stack of bills 6 inches high. This time the bill for 7 of us including the post-prandial cigars and exotic quaffs was $470 with tips and no problem sending a bill. In the new world when many more of you will travel to Zim, plan ahead and book a table here; it was packed.

Yesterday morning we left Bulawayo by car at 0600 for the 500 KM trip North to Victoria Falls and the Zambian border. Our lovely Garmin guide on GPS once we left town announced ‘continue straight for 480 KM’…so much for getting lost in Africa. Diesel, however, proved to be a problem en route as every station we stopped at for the first several hundred KM had nasty signs which read…’no petrol, no diesel’. Well,just as our further progress looked problematic we found a station with diesel, but the attendant said he couldn’t pump since electric power was out in their area. Your intrepid brokers solved this with a small donation and we suddenly heard the sweet sounds of a generator firing up and providing satisfaction for our thirsty vehicle.

So on to Vic Falls…I won’t succumb to all the deserved hyperbole when you are physically in the presence of one of the 7 Wonders of our World…it is extraordinary…go there once. Late yesterday, and we are now in Zambia, we came to a screeching halt as we came upon a bull elephant in the middle of the road. Armed with my FLIP video-cam and not quite Scorcese skills I did my best to show him charging various vehicles that attempted to cross his path as we cautiously waited for him to move on. I have sent the video to my children and hopefully after judicious editing that I would have no idea how to do perhaps I can have an Andy Warhol moment on UTube.