We were up and had a leisurely buffet breakfast in our beautiful setting. Today the luxury was we weren’t going to be picked up until 9 AM. And, on this trip that is a late sleeping time.
This morning‘s activities was a guided tour of the Zimbabwe side of Victoria Falls. This falls is enormous being twice the height of Niagara Falls. it is similar to Niagara Falls in part of the falls is on the Zimbabwe side and a part of it is on Zambia side. Our walking tour would just stay in the Zimbabwe side which overlooks about 80% of the falls. We had a very knowledgeable guide who took us on a couple hour walk parallel to the falls. We would walk in a rainforest and then turn to an overlook before back to the forest to the next overlook. We learned some about the geology as well as the historic perspective.
This falls was first noted by a European white Explorer, David Livingston. Our guide was clear that he was not the first one to discover the falls since there had been people living there for thousands of years. Livingston was a doctor and a missionary, but was known to be a good, kindly missionary who was anti-slavery. When he went back to Europe, he brought a good kind of focus to Victoria Falls, that resulted in many people wanting to come to see it. The falls are on many lists as one of these seven natural wonders of the world.
So, we walked in and out of various overlooks. As we walked along, it started getting more and more misty. Some of the people brought full rain gear. We had OK rain jackets, but as we get further and further into the misty, cold foggy areas it became less fun. We cut out of the tour before getting to see and iconic bridge between the two countries. We felt like we had plenty of photos and it was indeed beautiful.
Some of our people on the tour were later in the day going to cross that bridge into Zambia and see it from the other perspective. We thought we’d pass on that having really felt like we had a good experience with Victoria Falls.
Because what we really needed was an afternoon “off, “we had a nice lunch at the hotel and then spent the afternoon napping and working on photos and blog entries. Both of us realized we have been pushing, pushing and getting up so early every day that even another adventure off someplace just didn’t sound good.
We wanted to save energy for what was to come. A little before seven we had our guide, Mthabisi, come pick us up at our lodge for an evening safari. He confirmed that yet again we were the only two people who had signed up for this tour. We smiled and vowed to be very good and attentive tour participants .
On the agenda was driving about 20 minutes outside of town into the forest. There we would spend the next couple hours looking for animals that might be seen with our floodlights shining, looking for either the animals or the reflections of their eyes. Alas, no animal decided to show itself this evening. We did hear quite a conversation back-and-forth between a number of hyenas and our guide talked with us about the hyena lifecycle in their communication.
He told us sometimes they have seen baboons, elephants, hyenas, various types of antelope. But we have come to really understand that one cannot bring animals out with a snap of the finger, like people have come to expect in zoos. Dick notes they don’t always show up on demand at a zoo either.
We eventually stopped and spent some time gazing at the stars. It was a beautiful night with a totally full moon. Our guide talked us through what can be seen in the southern hemisphere, especially the southern cross. We were both surprised to learn that some of the stars that we were used to seeing in the north also sometimes show up in the south, such as Orion and many of the stars in the zodiac constellations. It was fun, just gazing at the stars and sipping wine while we were listening to this highly knowledgeable guide.
As we drove back to our lodge, satisfied with the time we had together, although we know our guide was disappointed, not to have been able to produce animals for us. But ,he answered a lot of our questions about the local commitment to conservation and also about the local culture.
His father had also been a guide who shared with his son especially some of the sad things about the poaching of the rhinos. In Zimbabwe, it had been such a bad problems and so many Park Rangers trying to protect rhinos were killed, the law has now changed and Park Rangers have guns and are authorized to shoot to kill if somebody is trying to poach rhinos. They’re doing everything within their power to protect these wonderful animals.
We were delivered back to our lodge, having skipped dinner, but felt like we had eaten plenty of food and wanted to head to bed for our last full day in southern Africa tomorrow
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