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In Vic Falls I was dropped off at the Rest Camp where I’d meet up with Anna (a friend from Form 1) and stay for the rest of the days (Thursday-Sunday). It was right in the center, the best place to be when you’re on a budget and don’t have a car!
We started off with a walk around the little town, and passed by the Kingdom Hotel, a very dark hotel, very very expensive though, with pillars meant to resemble Great Zimbabwe outside and huge “urban hunters” inside, very “typically tourist” and not at all typically Zimbabwean. Just like the groups of acapella bands that come during dinner time, seeing king of the jungle as if it is a traditional song!
Vic Falls Hotel, another expensive one, was more attractive (except for the price, about 250 per night). Very colonial style, people picking up the luggage, open space, and the view of the restaurant looking over the back of the falls and the bridge, quite a beautiful sight. Worth paying for! But obviously our budgets didn’t quite allow for that, so we just walked through there and sat for some pictures. We walked down to the most beautiful viewpoints from which they also do the jumps, gorge swing, flying fox, death ride. The height is incredible, I’d really need a big push to do it, paying 120$ to do it counts more as a hold-back than a push, resulting in us just watching others in fear from the sidelines.
I would have loved going rafting, but apparently it was a bad timing for it, and losing 120$ to it was once again pushing the limits. The US dollar days have pushed up all the prices to extreme heights, but the tourists continue to pay for the beauty of Zimbabwe. Bungee jumping too was that expensive, and it seemed a lot scarier than the beauty part I had always pictured in my mind!
On Friday we had an early wakeup because we’d be joining people from a Trust. Anna will be doing her PhD on elephant cognition and she’ll be doing it with them in Vic Falls. So we got a tour around the new labs they built in the middle of the jungle, we saw the elephants coming back from their rides and saw the tamed cheetah Sylvester that was saved a few years ago but is too tame to go back to the wild. At that time the man giving us a tour received a call that they tracked the waterbuck they had been looking for for a couple days. It was caught in a snare and the snare was still around its neck, so they wanted to capture it and remove the snare. We tagged along as they went to the game park, loaded the taser guns and got the horses ready. Right at the time when they were ready to start the chase someone spotted two poachers running away. Unfortunately the poachers chased the waterbuck away, so the chase for the waterbuck had to stopped till the next morning since the animal needs to cool down when being drugged. Fortunately one of the two poachers was caught and arrested (even though the fine is minimal). So even though that wasn’t as cool as expected, it was nice to see that the Anti-Poaching Unit does have success stories and truly do care for the animals.
Over the afternoon we went for a sunset boat trip with Hanne and family. It was great, we saw hippo’s, elephants and a crocodile, and also a baby giraffe that had died with a snare on its leg, so poaching really is a big issue. We passed through the back of the falls, far enough to see the smoke that thunders up on top of the falls, but not far enough to thunder down the falls! At 6 we watched as the beautiful African sun set making the sky an orangy red and then we got back to the hostel. For dinner we went to a restaurant which was absolutely delicious! I had grilled bream with cream sauce, reminded me of the Mozambique days..
The last full day we had, we made sure we did all there was left to do: see the falls by day time, go shopping in the market and the local shopping center and see the falls by night. But also unexpectedly having great and cheap sadza, and the best chocolate cake I’ve had in years!
The falls were beautiful, you come in and it’s like WOW, didn’t remember them that great! It was perfect time of year, not too much spray but still enough water for the beauty of it. We enjoyed it, walking slowly like real Zimbabweans (after all, we paid Zim price), taking pictures on every stop and just staring out in the distance to appreciate the beauty. It truly is one of the 7 wonders of the natural world! Not as wide as the Iguazu Falls, not as much volume as the Niagara Falls, not as tall as the Angels Falls, but it IS the only falls on the wonders list and IS overall the greatest/biggest waterfall!
In the market Anna traded some things and the competition between the women selling was amazingly great! In the shopping center they were much calmer and we talked to some of the sellers, there was a shop with sculptures of Colleen Madamombe and Dominic Benhura, which cost a fortune, but then again, there are people who own a fortune! It was very interesting talking to the man of the shop, beautiful sculptures there! Unfortunately none of Mike Munyaradzi, which I would have wanted to see.
For lunch we bought sadza and drink, 3$ for us both! Amazing, and it was GOOD. I also immediately became the talk of the town (and the town is small), with my Shona, lucky that comes in handy sometimes! Since we spent so little on lunch we treated ourselves with an overly delicious chocolate cake, in one of the tourist places this time.
Because it was full moon they had a lunar rainbow tour at the falls. We decided to join because it was quite cheap (10$ for locals). Unfortunately getting in was a little harder than expected, they suddenly did not want to accept my letter claiming I was a student on attachment. He needed a Ministry letter, which is totally understandable, but I wasn’t prepared to pay tourist price (40$). After 5 minutes discussing the man at the counter established there was no way I’d be getting in and the other guy who let me in during the day would have to pay the difference of my previous entry fee. Which sucked for us, but we felt even worse for the other man, then suddenly the man changed his mind, after I spoke two words of Shona during my pleas. It didn’t take him half a second to agree I was Zimbabwean due to the Shona. Thanks Selbourne Routledge!!
Luckily we got in, because it was beautiful!! I started with a, well, it’s not that great attitude, but with the light in the right place, seeing a rainbow forming and the black rock contrasting the white ‘smoke’ from the falls was magical, completely different to day time. Definitely worth it! My camera once again let me down with poor quality, so you’ll have to visit it during a full moon week to enjoy the same. Beautiful!
Sunday was time to go home, so with a 13 hour bus and two Chicken Inn stops the holiday ended and the working week started again. But it was a GREAT holiday!! One to not forget!!
More pics of verything on facebook!
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