Africa Wrap-Up

When we last saw our intrepid hero he was in Gaborone, Botswana waiting for the rain to clear. Obviously that was some time ago. The storm did finally pass in time for one nice afternoon in Gaborone. We visited a village nearby which has an interesting museum covering the history of the village in incredible detail. We mostly went because it was essentially free, but the attendant stood next to the donation box and gave me dirty looks, so I had to leave my smallest bill, which was supposed to buy me breakfast the following day. We met up with Sean and his classmates that night for drinks and dancing, which actually started at 10 p.m. as advertised. At 9:59 the patio cleared out and by 10:01 the floor was packed. Unfortunately the idea of a night club opening when it says it will open was lost on our American colleagues who arrived at an appropriate 11:30. Frankly it never would have occurred to me, but we were already there for dinner.

The drive back to Joberg was mostly uneventful except for one thing. Why do guinea hens cross the road? Apparently in order to steal license plates. One stumbled out in front of my car at 120 km/h and not being terribly familiar with the local fauna, I could only hope it would fly off. It didn't and I ended up hitting it square. The noise woke Sharada up, thinking we had lost a muffler. As it turned out, we had lost the license plate from the front of the car, which we noticed just 200 km later just before a Traffic Control Officer waved us to the shoulder to ask about it. She let us off with a warning instead of an R600 fine. I promise not to do it again.

We mostly just hung around the hostel in Joberg, but we got some good intelligence about the financial situation in Zimbabwe, which resulted in our bringing just barely enough US Dollars instead of almost none. We were also given a pair of glasses and a letter to deliver to various people in Victoria Falls, which hopefully worked off some one my karmic debt for the return of my camera equipment.

Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe is a clean and welcoming tourist town that offers a wide range of accomodation, none of which is more than 5% full at the moment. Sharada and I slept in a 15-bed dorm all alone. Someone told us that there is some law in place to prevent any hotel booking more than 10% occupancy(in order to spread the small number of visitors evenly) but I'm not sure if that's true. We stopped at The Castle resort, hotel and casino because it seemed to have only restaurant on the side of town with power one night(there's a rotation system of scheduled black outs). It would have been more at home in Vegas except for the warthogs fighting on the lawn. The main floor of the casino was lit up with flashing lights beckoning to gamblers, but was completely silent and empty except for 4 black jack dealers all sitting at the same table chatting quietly to each other. We opted to eat in the dark at the hostel instead because it was less eerie.

The falls are mind-blowingly amazing, especially for a desert rat like me. According the info at the park during peak flow(which I think we were fairly close to) 550,000 cubic meters of water pass over the falls EVERY SECOND. This is 145 million gallons, or roughly the amount of water that Albuquerque uses in a day, which means it takes a whole 6 minutes for a year's worth. The falls are formed when the Zambezi river spills into a gorge. Above the falls it forms a large wetland area, so when it hits the gorge it is over a mile wide. More or less as though the Mississipi river suddenly fell into the Grand Canyon. The Zambezi Gorge is not as deep as the Grand Canyon, but it's almost impossible to tell as the cloud of mist generated not only prevent the bottom of the falls from being seen but also extends a further 500 ft above the rim of the gorge and can be seen from 20 miles away. This is a lot of numbers, but it's difficult to describe the falls without them. They are simply so huge and powerful that the human mind can't really grasp them. The spray completely envelopes you in a way that makes it impossible to see more than a tiny portion at any one time unless you charter an aircraft. The falls form part of the border with Zambia, and the Zimbabwe side(across from the falls) supports a small rain forest in a relatively arid region just from the costant spray which completely soaked us.

We also went to Zambia for the afternoon, where you can get closer and see the top. The two are joined by a bridge which was designed in 1902 by a Brit who had never been to Africa, assembled in England and shipped in chunks to Zimbabwe. It seems to be holding up pretty well. I paid $105 dollars for the privelege of jumping off while connected to a large elastic band. This is the world's second highest bungi jump at 111 m(under a dollar a meter). This was terrifying and so exciting that my adrenal glands didn't shut down for almost two hours, making me panic about nothing for the rest of the afternoon. Also, it's hard to beat the view of the falls with a 300 degree upside-down rainbow that can probably only be achieved this way.

On the way back to the hostel from dinner some locals stopped us in the street which was a bit arresting as it was quite dark. As it turned out, they were merely trying to prevent us from wandering into the path of a group of five wild elephants that were crossing the road about 50 feet ahead of us. "We are scared of them. They are quite dangerous," the woman said. The elephants were on their way in a minute or so, as were we. Apparently the elephants usually take an evening constitutional in the area. In fact the cross street they had come from is named "Elephant Walk."

For whatever reason I scheduled a full two day in Joberg after Vic falls, which sadly was not enough time to leave. We got a bit cheated on our outing the first day(although this was conveniently no one's fault). Which put me in a sour mood, and made me that much less excited about the city. I just went on a long walk the second day and watched movies in the hostel. I was in a fairly nice part of town, and it wasn't unpleasant, but the place has got to be one of the least pedestrian-friendly cities on earth. Even many well developed areas lined with shops and coffee houses don't have sidewalks. This creates the paradoxical situation of extremely posh neighborhoods where one still does not feel safe on the streets. I don't think I'll be moving there any time soon. Also we were gridlocked on the freeway on the way to the airport for 90 minutes until our driver pulled a u-turn across the grassy ditch that separated the traffic. The van could barely make it up the opposite side in the loose soil but we somehow managed to merge into the passing lane. Otherwise I would almost certainly have missed my flight. The flight was not too bad, as far as 28 hour flights go. And I ran into my 7th grade humanities teacher in the Atlanta airport who was on his way back from Macchu Picchu and the Amazon. Small world. Really really small, provided you travel in a straight line at high speeds.