Wildlife & Wild Water!

Our tour group only allowed time for one evening game drive in Chobe Park but it was a fantastic one. We got a close-up view of elephants, giraffes, antelope, baboons and a distant view of some hippos. The highlight was a “not-so-shy” leopard. She was initially napping in a branch of a tree but she ended up waking up, doing some stretches and running nimbly down the tree trunk to look for some dinner; she seemed completely un-phased by the small army of vehicles around the tree. As if that wasn’t enough, we were also lucky enough to see three lions as we exited the park.
The next day we crossed the border into Zimbabwe. I was a bit worried when I saw the massive visa stickers that they were issuing as I didn’t have any spaces that big in my passport. Fortunately I talked the officer into sticking it onto the endorsements page of my passport- phew!
Just inside Zimbabwe we were stopped by a group of officials for a bogus demand that our brand new Toyota truck should have better reflectors (inspite of the reflective strip running all the way around the van). Ncane tried to reason with them for 30 minutes and finally gave-in paying them off with $20 USD to avoid having the vehicle confiscated. The fine was supposed to be 175 billion dollars in the local currency which we obviously didn’t have, having just entered the country. The exchange rate fluctuates wildly jumping from 3 billion dollars to 7 billion dollars for one USD in the three days that we were there.
Our first night we took a cruise along the Zambezi river above the falls. The captain alleviated our fears early on by telling us that he was restricted from going within 2 km of the falls themselves, otherwise we would end up like the occasional hippo that gets carried over whilst attempting to cross the Zambezi. We did get a close up view of the hippos and even got to see a large male expressing all the typical aggression signs, the most disturbing of which was “dung-spraying”, we’ll spare you the details. We also saw several elephants and admired their swimming prowess as one made the 600 metre crossing using his trunk as a snorkel. Ncane had arranged for a visit to our campsite by a group of men that did some traditional songs and dancing for us.
We had the good fortune of arriving three days after the opening of rafting season. So the next day we found ourselves once again on the Zambezi, this time below the falls. The river was still a little too fast so we were restricted to 50% of the rapids. Even these ones were rough enough to flip one of our two rafts!
That evening Ncane took us on a trip through the nearby village. We walked through the market (the price of a tomato was $250,000), visited the beer hall, and saw what was probably an affluent community by Zimbabwean standards. Although, being in Victoria Falls we were largely insulated from the real Zimbabwe, even this community appeared to be very poor. People were constantly offering to trade us goods for the clothing off our backs. Ncane explained why the hospital looked so quiet; there is a lack of staff and medicine so the people don’t even bother with it.. If you get really sick in Zimbabwe you die, unless of course you are the likes of Mugabe who has his own hospital. We saw some of Mugabe’s campaign posters and a polling tent set up in the week preceding his sham election. In spite of the living conditions, the people were incredibly friendly and welcoming.
It was our last day in Victoria Falls and we had yet to see what had brought us here. We could hear the roar of the falls from our campsite which was about 1 km away. Our first glimpse was from a helicopter which gave us a great sense of the massive scale and the geography that has created the world’s largest waterfall. It was so much larger than we had ever imagined. The African’s name for the falls translates into “smoke that thunders”, as the mist from the falls can be seen from many kilometres away. We soon found ourselves in the middle of this mist as we visited the falls by foot next. After getting sufficiently drenched we crossed into no man’s land, the bridge that spans the Zambezi connecting Zimbabwe to Zambia and ogled at the falls some more before heading back to camp.
It is a shame that such a beautiful part of the world is tainted with such political turmoil.