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Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

The extent of my research into Africa had been watching a few David Attenborough episodes on the flight over. He failed to mention Africa is freezing at night! It’s as low as 2 degrees overnight and jumps to mid 20s in the day. Quite the contrast to Asia’s 40 degree scorchers. No wonder we are sick AGAIN. I’m thankful Brother Chris insisted on base layers, as we are sleeping in tents for the next month, therefore we’re sleeping in Marino. It’s day 4 in Africa, however the first two days were spent in 4 countries over 35 horrendous hours travelling here, and the last two were spent in the tent, sick. My goal when we reach a first world country is to visit the food pyramid and devour 5 fruit and veges per day. (On day 5 here, I realised Africa has the best steak and veges).

Victoria Falls is our only stop in Zimbabwe. From the air it seems like its in the middle of a brown desert. From our tents at night time you can clearly hear the crashing of the falls, it sounds like the beach. The lovely little town has about 50 shops. There are a lot of tourist police. The rest area camp ground we are staying in, seems bigger than the town. It’s surrounded by electric barb wire fence and security everywhere, including a man who sits guard all night in front of the 10 tents (after the 2nd night there, I realised it was a rubbish bin that looked like a man in a chair at night). It’s odd as we have had no reason to feel unsafe here what so ever (hence, the rubbish bin was keeping guard). Every single person we have met has been ridiculously friendly. Even the man who sold us 51 billion, 850 million, 200 thousand of Zimbabwe’s old currency, for their new currency, US dollars. ($5 USD buys $51,850,200,000) As they don’t have any US coins, often when buying something in the shop for say $2.50, they will say: here have some lollies, or choose something little for .50c or when Dave bought a beer for $1.50, they just wrote .50 on a piece of paper with the bar’s logo. Unsure if having the currency in US dollars is the reason, but the activities are too expensive in this town. Any ‘optional adventure activity’ is around $100pp. We will stay entertained by watching the monkeys climb all over the tents. As an observation, there is not one white local. I know they exist but they must not live here. I’m not keen to ask as curiosity can sometimes be taken the wrong way. At Johannesburg Airport, I asked for brown sugar with my porridge and the waiter said “its on the table but it’s in a black sachet – we have a problem with colours in this country” On day 5 here, I can now safely say that was a joke. I reckon my knock knock jokes are funnier but I giggled awkwardly anyway.

Our first outing in Zimbabwe was to actually see the the Victoria Falls. It’s about a mile wide, falling 108 m into a narrow gorge below. You can see the spray from kilometres away and it sometimes reaches up to 400 m. The local name is Mosi oa Tunya meaning the ‘smoke that thunders’. It’s a rather an impressive sight. But with that out of the way and completed by 10am there was no way on earth we could justify a $250 for a 12 minute helicopter flight over the falls. The ‘only’ other option was to change country for something to do. So, we decided Zambia would be the best place to have lunch. Don’t worry Mum and Dad, I didn’t go willy nilly crossing African borders without first checking the safety implications. I first checked with Dave about the likelihood of getting smuggled into the back of a truck and having my life sold for my teeth… he said that was ridiculous, but just to be sure I checked with Zimbabwe immigration about their thoughts on Zambia. She said it’s perfectly safe. And boy am I glad we went across. Such a great bunch of people and just between you and me, Victoria Falls is MUCH better from the Zambia side. It’s a lot bigger, you are below the top of the falls, looking up at it and its easy to see all the gorges. The falls are currently on the 8th gorge. Within 5,000 years, the falls will go to the 9th. The gorges look like a big S or a snake. Now, the all important Zambian lunch was the best lunch I’d had in 3 months. Who would have thought we’d have to go to Zambia for a good glass of vino, a Greek salad and to see zebras in the restaurant grounds! To really set the mood their band played on their African drums ‘In the jungle, the mighty jungle awoombawayyyyyy”, followed by none other that the traditional African “if you’re happy and you know it clap your hands”. Following our venture we took the 5km journey by foot back home (wherever the backpack is) to Zimbabwe for dinner with our new tour group.

Our tour group consists of 21 (inc. 3 David’s) well travelled bodies and our leader, driver and cook. About 10 of us are joining onto another Intrepid group who started in Nairobi. The group is split pretty evenly in ages from ours up to 50+ and are from all over the world but with Kiwis and Aussies claiming half. Unlike Intrepid Original (what we did in Asia), Intrepid Basic has twice as many people and not as many activities are included. Its camping all the way and participation in all duties….and you have to pay for this luxury!! The advantage of doing this here will mean being more amongst it all. The disadvantage is my neck and back are protesting at spending 23 nights 2cm from the ground. I’m sure I’ll toughen up, just like a microwave steak. I am thankful we invested in good, warm sleeping bags – thanks Chris. I’m now glad I’m lugging my head shaped pillow around the world with me. Poor Dave is sleeping on his clothes bag.

“Love a useless fact #690: the ZimZam bungee (the local name given to the bungee people who do bungee from the bridge between Zimbabwe / Zambia) have gone from using 4th hand bungee cords to 2nd hand. One would assume that’s after the cord snapped with no safety boat below. But don’t worry the girl survived, and since then they now offer life jackets (even though you don’t touch the water) so that you can swim to shore with your broken collarbone – she however got offered a second jump for free…. Wish I was kidding”

Our first thoughts on Africa is what a fantastic place, but as always it’s the people that make or break a place. It took a few days for us to stop thinking that the locals weren’t actually looking at us like walking ATMs, as they did in Asia. The people are incredibly friendly and genuinely want to chat to you or take your photo without wishing for $1. Touristy or not, I love the local musicians everywhere dressed tribally (nearly naked) playing the drums, singing and dancing African music. I’m sure you won’t be surprised but I got up and had a dance. Gutted that we didn’t have the camera but I’m told these performers (and that “happy and you know clap your hands”) are so common you get to that stage of not even taking a second glance. How I doubt that!

Animals spotted in Zimbabwe and Zambia: monkeys, zebras, baboons and just as we went to dinner a warthog ran across the campsite. This is the Africa we had imagined.

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