The last hurrah

Some of us were able to sleep in on Sunday while others woke at 4:45 am as if we had a game drive. We are all taking malaria prevention pills - a side effect is vivid dreams. Sometimes it’s just as well to start the day. 

We met for breakfast at 7:45. There was a lavish spread of cold foods including delicious pastries and various hot foods to order. Sue and Julie had a scrambled egg quesadilla with spinach and feta cheese. It did not have Hatch green chili so Nick passed and stuck with granola. 

At 8 am we were picked up by our guide Big Boy for a tour of Victoria Falls. There was another couple in the van who would be joining us on tour. We had been spoiled by having a guide all to ourselves for the 9 days of the safari, so having these rather entitled individuals monopolize the guide was a bit jarring. We drove to a parking lot for the Falls and Big Boy went to purchase our tickets. We entered and stood around a map and Big Boy explained our tour. It is the dry season but there is still plenty of water going over the falls. The falls were formed millions of years ago by an earthquake. David Livingstone was the first white person to “discover” the Falls in 1855. The local Batonga people had named them 'Mosi-oa-Tunya, 'the smoke that thunders'. Livingstone named them for Queen Victoria. 

We would start our 2-mile walking tour at the most Western edge of the Falls near Devil’s Cataract, so named because the local witch doctors used that area to dispose of the (animal) blood mixed with water that they used to get rid of bad luck. Big Boy pointed out the other points we would visit on a map and near the end there was an area where he said people could swim, dangerously close to the Falls. This intrigued our fellow tourists greatly, and Big Boy showed us a video on his phone in which Big Boy was indeed swimming in an area near the falls. He was asked whether there was a rope tied to his ankles and Big Boy said no. Now our companions were totally jazzed. We have to do that!! Big Boy spent an inordinate amount of time during the rest of our tour on the phone trying to arrange a swim for them. When that appeared not to be possible, he switched to finding them a white water rafting trip. The male (allegedly from Texas but with zero accent) insisted on Big Boy taking photo after photo of the couple including some panoramic setup with which we were not familiar. Enough about our annoying fellow tourists, but it did somewhat tarnish the experience. 

Big Boy pointed out some purple pen wood flowers that are very fragrant, a crocodile bark tree, whose sap is said to be anesthetic, and can slow the effect of a venomous snake bite, a murula tree, whose fruit is made into amurula liqueur (he told us that when the fruit drops to the ground, baboons and elephants eat it and get tipsy), and a bush that is used for medicinal purposes. Big Boy said his grandmother used to boil the roots to make tonics for all sorts of illnesses. 

The Falls themselves were magnificent. Near most of the viewing points, a light mist was

rising. A lady told Julie that she had visited in May, and the mist was so thick she couldn’t even see the Falls. Big Boy showed us sections where little if any water is running now but in the high water season these sections (including the island where the swimming is done) are completely covered in rushing water. We walked slowly to about 13 viewing points and admired this amazing scene. Often we were enveloped in a light mist. At one point we passed through the so-called rain forest, where in addition to the mist, water is dripping from the trees. Apparently this is the only place on earth where it rains 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our hair was soaked but dried fairly quickly in the 90-degree heat. 

We truly loved seeing all the beautiful sections of the Falls. Sue’s favorite was the main falls. At one point we saw 3 warthogs sleeping in the shade and going toward the van some bushbuck, an antelope we had not seen before. We walked along a path to see Victoria Falls bridge which links the countries of Zimbabwe and Zambia. The bridge was constructed in England in 1903 and the pieces brought here. A red sign halfway across is the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia. Given the age of the bridge only one vehicle is allowed to cross at a time, especially the big trucks loaded with copper. Bungee jumpers can jump from the Zambia side. After viewing the bridge we walked back, hit a viewpoint we had missed on the way over (too crowded when we first went by) and then took a path to the van. Near the parking lot was a restaurant called Original Rain Forest Cafe. This brought back memories of visiting the not original ones with the kids. 

We returned to the hotel and decided to try some shopping. The ATMs were out of money so we couldn’t do too much damage unless credit cards were accepted. Steps from the hotel was the Elephants Walk craft market which had a variety of shops and a cafe. We made some purchases including a hippo soap dish (doesn’t everyone need one?) and 2 cute purses with an elephant (Sue) and giraffe (Julie). We had a beverage and went back to the hotel for lunch. 

We took a siesta (Sue checked out the pool) and met our driver Teets at 4 pm for our Sundowner cruise. The cruise was not what we expected. It did not get even close to the falls. It was a small riverboat, supposedly in the style of Livingstone’s boat. Reminded Julie of the African Queen a bit.  We were the last to board and all the seats at the front were taken. There was a pilot and a steward and drinks and appetizers were served. The best of the appetizers was potato chips. There was a Swiss woman with her 2 sons, and they befriended an older couple from Belfast and yakked and blocked our view constantly. Julie made a point of moving forward to photograph the sunset, and they did allow her to pass, but the rest of the time they were fairly clueless about letting other passengers have a turn at the front. 

Apparently the point of the cruise is to view wildlife, and we saw crocodile, including one with its mouth open, hippos, monkeys, and a large herd of impala. There was one large male impala with his harem. For birds we saw a white crowned lapwing bird, an African jacana and a pied kingfisher. We saw lots of termite mounds and learned that there is a colony led by a queen. The queen gets so fat she can’t move but she lays 20,000 eggs per day producing the workers and soldiers who build the mound. We saw lots of other boats on the river, including one that looked like a tiki bar.  

The sun appeared as a large red-orange ball in the sky as it set. The colors were muted orange and pink after it went down. We docked shortly after sunset and were driven back to the hotel. We had a 7:30 dinner reservation in the hotel restaurant. First they

seated us at a table where Sue’s view was a pillar and it was adjacent to the main entrance the staff would be using to go in and out all night. We asked for a new table and were seated at the table we had for breakfast. Much better. The food was superb. Sue had chicken with lemon sauce, Nick had polenta with ratatouille and Julie had spicy lamb curry. We had a nightcap with Lucky, our favorite bartender, and went to our rooms for one last sleep in Africa. 

We will be picked up at 11 am for our 1 pm flight to Johannesburg. We have a 4-hour layover (looking forward to the shopping) and we fly to London and then to

Chicago. It will be interesting to see how breaking up the trip goes. On the way here, we flew 15 hours from Newark to Capetown. This is our last blog post from Africa. Thank you for sharing our adventure.