Money Money Money

One of the things I love most about travel is getting to work with new forms of monetary exchange. My father is a bit of a numismatist so I must have inherited the love of foreign currency from him. I've got a nice little (very little) collection of coins from all over, including Mexico, Columbia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Iraq, Kuwait, and Sierra Leone. Well, now I can add South Africa to that list!

And I think that by far South African money is the most attractive. I remember how excited I was when I saw my first purpled $5 or $20 bill, I forget which now. It was so pretty! Well, S.A. bills are gorgeous. Each one is a different colour AND a different size, with a different image and animal head on it.



I finally collected one of each! Unfortunately the 50, 100, and 200 are worth too much to just let be, I'll have to convert them back (on the other hand, since I lost money on exchange charges going from $>R, I could lose more going back from R>$ and maybe it won't be worth it after all...)

Don't even get me started on the exchange rate!

Also, coins! These come in 5, 2, and 1 Rand form, and then 50, 20, 10, and 5 cent. (I very cleverly said something the other day to the effect of "you don't need to spend a 'rent'!" - see what I did there, combined "Rand" and "Cent"! ... sorry) You'll notice a lack of pennies here. The thing is, the worth of the cent has so depreciated here that it costs more to make the coin than it would to spend it, so they've ultimately phased the penny out of existence and all prices are rounded up. So that's interesting...

Anyway, the coins themselves are also beautiful, each one has an indigenous animal or a plant on the one side and the country's coat of arms on the back.
Except that the arms have changed recently so there are "new" and "old" versions of the coins, the new ones having the new arms and "South Africa" in all 11 languages represented. The only drastic difference is the five Rand coins, which now look a bit like I remember the 2 pound coins when they came out in England years ago.
Hmm... these pictures don't seem to have 1 rand coins on them... oh well!



My favourite coin is the 50c piece, (which is only worth about a nickel at the current exchange rate) because of the strelitzia bloom...

Anyway, speaking of blooms, we're just headding out to the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens this morning! So I must be off to fill my nose with anti-allergy goodness...