After our last morning safari at Tanda Tula in Timbavati private reserve our guide dropped us off at the Hoedspruit airport for our return to Jo'burg. We checked into the god awful Marriott Hotel just outside the airport because we'd be leaving the next day for safaris in Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia. (I swear they have no air exchanges in the rooms.) Since several of our flights to these remote camps will be in four seater airplanes, all baggage needed to be small soft-sided duffels. We planned to reduce our belongings and put the excess in our roller bags and store them at the hotel. We'll pick them up the night before we leave for home. From here we go light.
Our first stop was Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. Our only reason for stopping here was to see the eponymous falls and take a sunset boat ride above the falls on the Zambezi River, the boarder between Zimbabwe and Zambia. We booked the classic British colonial hotel, Victoria Falls Hotel, with a view of mist rising from the falls and the border bridge connecting the two countries.
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| Victoria Falls Hotel c 1904 |
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| View of Vic Falls Mist and Bridge to Zambia |
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| Robin on Hotel Terrace overlooking Vic Falls |
Our first night here our agent booked us for a BOMA dinner. This was to be an immersion into the culture. And it probably was for most of the people at the dinner as I doubt they met anyone other than their guide and the wild animals. When you arrive they drape you with a traditional African print fabric and give you a small (fortunately) glass of traditional corn beer - disgusting. Dinner is buffet style with a counter of traditional side dishes including pap (basically corn grits), rice, and some over-cooked vegetables; a grille of various game meats including Kudu, Springbok, and Zebra; and a wood fueled open fire pit grilling two split and flayed open lambs. After dinner there was a dancing and drum performance with the performers in pseudo historic African animal skin clothing. The part that was educational was the audience participation. They gave everyone a drum and instructed you how to strike it in rhythm. A LOT harder than you think on the simplest slow beat, and totally lost it when they performed fast. At the end they invited the guests onto the dance floor. Of course there is always one drunk middle aged lady that thinks she is grooving with the music and the culture - but she wasn't - just self indulgent.
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| Performance at Boma Dinner |
The Victoria Falls is often claimed to be the largest falls in the world. As most things in life, that depends. It is not the highest, widest, or most volume, but in some mathematical combination of those. Regardless, it's pretty damn huge.
The three most impressive falls in the world based on that combination are:
Highest
Victoria, Zimbabwe: 107m Highest drop, 1737m Width, 1100 m3/sec
(Angle Falls in Venezuela has the highest drop in the world at 984m, but its only a hundred meters or so wide)
Widest
Iguacu, Brazil: 82m Highest drop, 2700m Width, 1746 m3/sec
Volume Flow
Niagara: 51m Highest drop, 1203m Width, 2407 m3/sec
We need to return to Gondwanaland again to understand the formation of the falls. Around 180 mya before its breakup, volcanic lava flows covered the area in successive layers. As this cooled to basalt, a volcanic rock similar to what overlays eastern WA, the basalt cracked in many places. During the breakup of Gondwanaland tectonic activity widened these cracks and over the millennia they were filled in by soft clay-like sediments. When the region was uplifted during the separation of the continents, two river systems (one flowed to the Okavango and the other to the Indian Ocean) shifted course and their flow across the basalt eroded this soft material in the cracks. Eventually, what is now the Upper Zambezi and Lower Zambezi joined at Victoria Falls. The falls, and several canyons the Zambezi flows through below them, are in the eroded parts of the basalt cracks.
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Hard to read, but the falls are just above "Victoria Fall National Park",
and note the zig zag canyon the river flows through downstream. |
We walked the full length of the falls on the Zimbabwe side, just over a mile. This time of year the falls have the greatest flow - so great that the mist that rises often obscures the falls itself - a problem if you want to photograph it. The African name for the falls meant "Smoke that Thunders" - very apt.
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| The mist is so thick you can't see the falls |
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| The wind blew the mist away for a moment |
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| Looking east down the falls through the crack in the basalt |
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| Dr. Livingstone discover the falls for the West |
Then, with Zambia only a bridge walk away, we figured "why not". So we hoofed it across the boarder to another country, but didn't have time to make it to their closest city - Livingston. It was a convoluted process to get visas and taxi rides from the Zim side of the river. We also declined the entreaties to bungie jump off the bridge. As we walked the couple miles back to our hotel we saw the other side of this tourist town. Of course there were numerous curio shops selling wooden giraffes and beaded wire-formed safari animals. There were also sculptures made from a local stone that is grey when left rough, and luminescent black when polished. Surprisingly many of the sculptures were quite artistic, almost modern in form. As we continued past the shops and the entreaties to "just look - stall no. 7" we were followed. Not in any threatening way, but in desperation. These people are so poor because of Mugabe's administration's corruption they beg for the smallest change. I'll discuss the politics of these countries in one of my last posts.
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| After the falls looking down the river in through the canyon crack in the basalt |
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| Entering Zambia |
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| The other side of life |
We returned to our hotel before being picked up for our "sunset cruise" on the Zambezi River. Having been disappointed the night before at our BOMA dinner I was very skeptical of what this was going to be like in this tourist-activity dominated town. But it was a safari in it's own right. We cruised the waters traversing the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe to within 800' of the fall's lip. The captain did a great job getting us reasonably close to hippopotamus and crocodiles, and identified an assortment of endemic African birds. And while there were many boats doing the same thing for sunset, he managed to guide us where they seldom were more than a dot on the horizon or disappeared along the shore.
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| Crocodile in Zambezi |
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| Two Hippos in Zambezi |
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| Elephante crossing Zambezi |
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| Sunset cruise on the Zambezi |
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Full moon rise on the Zambezi
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In retrospect, I should have/could have booked this visit without an agent as we didn't need them for the hotel or the falls walk, and we would have preferred to eat in town rather than the BOMA dinner. Alas, we don't always get it 100% right. Our next morning we will be driven across the border to a small national airport for our flight into the Okavango Delta, Botswana.
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