Victoria Falls

This weekend I was finally able to visit the awe-inspiring Victoria Falls. It is currently nearing the peak of rainy season, and the falls are at their max with the rolling thunder of water, which could be heard from the Zambezi Sun hotel I was staying at.



from the hotel, you exit a gate and directly into Mosi-o-Tunya National Park, and the entrance to the Falls. Once at the Falls, there is an unreal bridge you cross to get to an island on the edge of the falls, that is constantly begin sprayed by insane amounts of water. Due to the peak of the water level, crossing the long bridge requires holding onto the rail since you can barely see with all the intense waves of water rushing over you, and the inches of water cascading down the bridge. You can rent a pncho or raincoat, but it is a waste as there is no way to keep dry (although it did help me protect my camera).



the island boasts amazing views - although facing the falls you can't see much due to all the water spraying up. But facing the other direction I could see the bridge that connects Zambia to Zimbabwe - the location for the Bungee jump and other extreme thrill activities.





But what made this excursion so surreal to me was when I went to cross back over the bridge. It was 4:30pm, and the sun was hitting so as to make the most perfect full rainbow directly over the bridge as I walked back - it was like in a dream since I could see the start of the bridge but not where it ended on the other side- it was like crossing into another world (cheesy, I know).

Zambezi Sun

I spent the weekend at a fancy, touristy resort located on the banks of the Zambezi river right at Victoria Falls. When I arrived back from my week in the small town of Sesheke, I took a walk to see the Falls. It is astounding - the water is at its peak since it is the end of rainy season, and the thunder of the water can be heard from the hotel rooms. Zebra, ostrich, impala and other animals roam the grounds of the hotel, and across the Zambezi river begins the Mosi-oi-Tunya National Park.








Upon arriving at the hotel, I was given three separate documents pleading for me not to feed the monkeys, baboons and other animals. This morning i was sitting at a table directly under the edge of the restaurant room, and thinking to myself how i hadn't really seen any monkeys yet and recalling some people saying the monkeys would steal food from people's tables. As i was sipping my cup of coffee, a monkey came out of nowhere and jumped on my table. I instinctively grabbed my camera as the monkey grabbed my mango, I hissed and yelled at the monkey, who jumped off the table, and came at me two more times trying to take more food, hissing at me as i made as if to hit it. it then ran away, begrudged to have made off with such little booty. I was left laughing, my coffee spilled all over. The next hour as I sat there I watched the various hotel staff chasing the monkeys trying to get them to leave, throwing small rocks at them. Nonetheless, I saw a number of them successfully make off with a good amount of breakfast items.

All I could think of is my Dad and how much he always hated on monkeys. He and my Mom spent a year back in 1979 traveling through Africa, and he would always say about monkeys: "They steal your wallet and your food, and then throw their scat at you!" he would say angrily. I wished he had been there with me then, just to see his reaction. It made me think of when he and I were staying in Thailand together and how cautious he was around the monkeys; meanwhile the other tourists were busy trying to feed them and the next thing they knew, the monkeys had taken their wallets and cameras...










On my last evening I decided to try and find the giraffes and zebras that wander the hotel grounds. I had spotted earlier a promising-looking trail, and as soon as I hit it- there they were! What I didn't know but makes sense is that the hotel employs someone at all times to stay close to the animals and ensure the hotel guests do not try and get to close to them or feed them. The young mad who was watching the animals was very nice, and I spent an hour with him and the animals, which included a young father giraffe and the herd of seven zebras, including a ten-day old foal (soo cute). The giraffe apparently follows the young man around because he likes to have his head scratched (just like horses) and I managed to be five feet away from him.

Chobe National Park: Land Safari

We climbed aboard a typical safari truck with three sets of bench seats in back and headed to the land safari that went along the same stretch of the river that we had floated that morning. Chobe National Park does not have a fence around its boundaries, and so the animals cross out of the park and into the nearby village and road quite often – there was plenty of elephant dung on the road to prove it. On the land safari we first came to a mud hole with maybe three herds of elephants using it in turns. Again, watching the babies roll in it was amazing, and also seeing the teenage males play fight and test their strength. What was most amazing was how close they got to us! We were literally 5 feet away from them at times. According to our guide, Chobe does not have a problem with aggressive elephants, and they tended to be very comfortable with the vehicles (all of the animals were) because there was very little poaching and no culling of elephants. Parks in which they’ve had to round up and cull elephants due to overpopulation (which is now a problem at this park) has lead to extremely aggressive behavior among the elephants and it is impossible to get close.











We also saw a black-backed jackal, wart hogs, a sable antelope, a cool dung beetle rolling a massive ball of dung in the sand and a number of impala. We then left and began our circuit of the park. I was extremely excited to see a number of giraffe, who would just slowly amble past right in front of us. The rest of our drive was full of elephants, which were still really fun to see. Everyone was disappointed we didn’t see the pack of lions that cover this area – they were seen on the opposite side about 35km from us that today. Despite no lions, I was thrilled with the whole experience.













It really can’t get better than a river and land safari in one day. And I didn’t even have to wear khakis and a fly fishing-type vest with tons of pockets! We were driven in the safari truck back to the border, where we went through emigration, then to the river where we crossed again in the motorboat, then through immigration back into Zambia, then onto our tour bus for the hour trip back to Livingstone.





Having had such a perfect day, I decided to take myself out of the hotel for a nice dinner. I decided to go to a place called “Oceans Basket”, as I had been told it had good seafood. I put on a dress, got in a taxi, and when we pulled up the place was dark save some candles. I had to ask the taxi driver where the entrance was. It didn’t dawn on me until the taxi had left and I was walking into the restaurant that the electricity was out not only in the restaurant but in the shopping mall it was located. No matter, so I sat down at a table outside for a romantic dinner-for-one by candlelight (the mosquitoes were very insistent on joining me). I figured, “it’s not Africa if there aren’t power outages.” So I had some wine and a nice fish and calamari combo. The electricity returned half way through my meal, and I learned that, in fact, this restaurant was a chain originally from South Africa and owned by Greeks.

River Safari, Part 2: Elephants!

As we continued on up the river we came to a bend where we could see far off down the shore line the fuzzy brown blobs that represented a herd of elephants on the shore. Our driver put us in full throttle and we raced across the river to get to them – dodging hippos in the river as we went. Our guide would tell us that he really didn’t expect the elephants to be down at the river at this time, because it is rainy season there are plenty of watering holes they could be at. We spent the next our cruising slowly along the shore line between what became about five separate herds of elephants, all together numbering more than two hundred (!), who came down to swim. I never thought I’d get a chance to see them swim – it was amazing to watch. They would smack their trucks on the water and throw themselves backwards into the water the way I’ve seen dolphins and whales do. They would play tug of war. The young males would try and mount the females (how nice it must be to mount a female when suddenly your weight has dropped by a couple of tons…). They would go completely underwater and swim. Then they would come out, cover themselves in mud and dirt, and do it all over again.









There were a number of newborns, 2-6 weeks old, which were noticeable because they were still hairy and soo adorable! They would push their way into the mid holes along the shore and lie down in it and flop around the way a dog might in something nasty. Watching all of the elephants interact with each other and wearily steer clear of the other herds was fascinating, I wish we could have stayed a couple more hours just observing them. It was truly incredible. On the way back to the lodge for lunch, we saw a hippo climb out of the water onto the shore with a tiny newborn baby about 2 feet long – amazing to see. They joined some other hippos under a bush in the shade.









After our amazing river safari we settled down for a nice lunch. Well, the food was nice: the conversation quickly turned political. Being with 7 elderly tourists in their 70’s and 80’s, they had rather conservative views, and the two Americans who were probably in their 60’s were from Phoenix and extremely Republican. When the South Africans asked us all about how we felt on Obama, the Phoenix man quickly went off on how he was the worst president we’ve ever had etc ect. The British old man complained about all the “damn Jamaicans, Indians and terrorists” who had “taken over” London. And the rest of our talk centered on the World Cup and the unreal amount of money being spent on stadiums instead of improving the lives of S. Africans. Oh, and when The British man asked me about my job and I said I was here working on HIV prevention he said “Well you all certainly haven’t done a very good job have you?” it was all a mess, lol. But we managed to eat our lunch and were all eager to leave it behind.

Chobe National Park: River Safari

Chobe National Park, in northwest Botswana, has one of the largest game concentrations in Africa continent and is the country's first national park. A major feature of Chobe National Park is its elephant population. Chobe’s elephants comprise part of what is probably the largest surviving continuous elephant population. They are Kalahari elephants, the largest in size of all known elephant populations. Yet they are characterized by rather brittle ivory and short tusks, perhaps due to calcium deficiency in the soils. This elephant population has built up steadily from a few thousand since the early 1900s and has escaped the massive illegal off-take that has decimated other populations in the 1970s and 1980s (I assume due to their stumpy brittle tusks?). Botswana's elephant population is currently estimated at around 120,000.



We arrived at the stunning “Chobe Safari Lodge” on the banks of the Chobe river. I was stunned by how big and fancy this lodge was – that there could be such 5-star places in the heart of Africa.



I had to remind myself of the safari lodge descriptions I’d read for places in Kenya and Tanzania- full five-star accommodations etc etc…and suddenly it was there in front of me (note the gorgeous painted bowls that are the sinks in the rest rooms.



The giant lodge boasted a bar, large restaurant area, and stunning pool all on a deck that looked over the Chobe river(I took pamphlets of the lodge for my parents – definitely where I would want to come back and stay a few days).



The river scene is hard to describe if you haven’t seen the pictures from National Geographic or Animal Planet etc: the river (which is at its high point right now and is a deadly, turbulent swirl) has three main channels, as well as a sort of marsh area that goes on as far as the eyes can see.



On the opposite side of where the lodge looks out is Namibia on the other side of the river/flood plain. As we descended onto the deck where people can go straight from the pool into safari boats, I could look out onto the river and see other safari boats already out with their morning tours.

The morning safari was incredible. Small birds would land on the bow of our boat just in front of where I sat to eat the ants on it. The tour seemed to perfectly progress from the smaller, less exciting animals to the bigger ones. We saw beautiful European Bee Eaters in the trees, along with the cormorants who held their wings out as if on display (in actuality they have to hold their wings out for about 15 minutes for the water to dry off before they dive under water again – they are one of the few water birds who don’t produce oil to prevent their feathers from getting wet and heavy). We also saw numerous Fish Eagles.










We then saw a number of herds of impala on the shore grazing and drinking water (you can tell they are impala and not other similar-looking deer/antelope because of the “M” the black markings on their behind make. The guide told us they call these impalas “McDonalds”, which made me laugh hysterically because I assumed it was in reference to the black streaks on their butts looking as if they had gotten a nasty case of the runs after eating at McDonalds…lol. Apparently it was simply because of the shape the streaks made – “M”.









Next we started seeing crocodiles, monitor lizards and even a hippo surfacing! Of course we scrambled for totally crappy photos of the one or two hippos as they popped their eyes and nose above water to eye us – little did we know we’d be bored of seeing hippos by the end of the safari!










We came to our first pod of hippos, relaxing in the shallows of the river. They are so huge, but it is impossible to tell when they are lying in the water or just peeking out – then suddenly one would stand up and I’d be shocked at their size. We moved on to two more large pods, the latter of which boasted nearly fifty hippos! There were lots of these massive Marabou Storks which stand about 4-5 feet tall, that would hang around. Everywhere we saw a pod of hippos, there was an eagle perched in the nearest tree. Our guide explained that this occurred because the group of hippos excreted a large amount of feces, which in turn attracted a large number of fish who would feed on it, and therefore attracted the eagles and other birds who would dine on the fish. What a great cycle! Poop really makes the animal world go ‘round.