Victoria Falls - The Smoke That Thunders
Trip dates: March 24, 2017 - March 26, 2017
We flew from Joburg to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe to go check out one of the world's top waterfalls. Niagara, Vic Falls, and Iguazu are viewed as the top 3 overall waterfalls in the world in terms of height, volume and width, and we'll be visiting 2 of them on this trip. All of the top waterfalls border at least two countries; Vic Falls is between Zimbabwe and Zambia but we only went to the Zimbabwe side this trip.
Zimbabwe is an interesting place, especially in terms of the economy and money. The government had a failed currency recently, so USD is king here. The government was also trying to roll out bond notes priced with USD, but many people tried to hold on to their on USD instead, as the bond notes could become worthless in the future. We had several people trying to sell us millions of dollars of the old currency for a few USD, but we passed. Apparently, inflation was so bad before, you needed a grocery bag full of cash to buy your daily food essentials.
One thing we didn't plan well for was having smaller USD bills to use as tips for guides, housekeeping staff, etc. We just didn't think about it when preparing for this trip months ago. However, we learned there are many different guidelines and schools of thought on how much to tip on safari. In any case, in almost all of the camps we went to, USD tips were preferred. We had brought enough extra cash in our "just in case" funds, but mostly in bigger bills. Luckily, we were able to go to a bank to get some small bills and just kept trying to break bills whenever possible so we had enough for tips as needed. While at the bank, we observed people walking out with giant wads of USD, so it seemed that people really were hoarding their USD as much as possible.
Currency aside, Victoria Falls was kind of a sad town. It's primarily composed of a strip with shops and restaurants scattered around, with loads of people just walking all over the place, trying to sell stuff to tourists or get them to come to restaurants, book excursions, etc.
We stayed at the Kingdom Hotel, which is located quite close to the falls and is a pretty big hotel. Props that they include bug repellent in the room (gentler than the Deet we have, which is nice, and still seemed effective). However, the internet was pretty bad and also was capped at 1 GB per code. Boo, not good for backing up photos or blogging. There was supposedly a casino next to our hotel, but we explored the area and everything looked pretty closed. Oh well, that's one way they could get tourist money.
Our first afternoon in Vic Falls, we had a Zambezi River sunset cruise. The Zambezi River is quite large but the part we went on runs along the Zimbabwe/Zambia border and feeds into the falls. Pretty much you just chill on the boat with some snacks and unlimited drinks, enjoy the atmosphere, and look for animals. We got to try some local beer but otherwise, left the drinking to the others on the boat. I had prioritized getting a hat earlier in the day to protect myself from the hot African sun and it came in use already on the boat!
We were pretty lucky in terms of animal sightings on the boat. We saw groups of hippos a few times, plus elephants and a crocodile! Lishan spotted elephants before our boat guide the first time, reinforcing her reputation as Eagle-eyed Elmo. We also got to see hippos yawning, which looks quite impressive in person.
Unfortunately, the sunset was pretty cloudy, but the overall scenery was still quite beautiful.
Once we got back in the evening, we were pretty hungry. However, the food at our hotel was quite expensive for their dinner buffet and other food options seemed pretty lacking nearby (we didn't really want to wander far at night because of the general unknown area and the baboons hanging around that are troublesome), so we went across the street to KFC for dinner! It wasn't the best KFC, but it was at least reasonably priced.
The next morning, we headed off for our tour of the falls from the Zimbabwe side. It's expensive! $30 USD for foreigners to get in, yeesh. Plus, you only spend a few hours walking the trails and different viewpoints.
The slogan for Vic Falls is "the smoke that thunders" and they are not joking. The mist from the water crashing down can be seen from the air (we saw it from our plane on approach) and the ground and is very loud in person. The other thing that gets you is how tall and wide the falls look in person.
We had worn hiking boots since we heard the path was slippery (and for our afternoon activities), but on the wettest part of the path on Vic Falls, we got absolutely drenched. We had ponchos but it seemed like we weren't even wearing them, we got so wet! It was just like someone was using a watering pail for the garden and dumped it on us. So we had some fun times pouring water from our boots and wringing out our socks every so often after that. Let's just say it didn't help make our boots any less stinky :)
There were 15 different view points along the way that we stopped at. For reference, we enjoyed view points #4, #7, and #8 the most. Pretty much all the view points after #9 were wet due the mist coming off the waterfall. However, they did provide some cool shots of the mist contrasting with the blue sky around it, especially when you were standing in it getting wet.
Following the falls, there was a preset activity to go visit a local village. In general, we tend to not enjoy these sorts of excursions as they generally are very thinly veiled efforts to get tourist donations. This was no exception, but at least we learned a little more about village life in Zimbabwe, from how the village is run, some of their internal challenges, and the ongoing struggles to balance modern lifestyles with traditional values.
After our tour of the falls and the village, we needed to get lunch and decided to try the lunch at the pool bar at our hotel. Food was generally not flavorful and still pretty pricey - definitely below the median for quality.
In the afternoon, we did a lion walk activity. After we did our elephant sanctuary in Thailand, it really changed our view on these kinds of activities. However, we already had it booked and decided we'd check it out for ourselves. The company bills itself as working to reintroduce lions to the wild, so who knows?
We went through an introduction to what the company's goals were and how they were trying to accomplish a mission of breeding lions that were ultimately released into the wild. The video was spiffy and nice and sounded all well and good, but we had lots of questions as there didn't seem to be clear timelines or answers on.
The company has been operating since 2005 yet hasn't released a single lion back to the wild. I get that it's complicated and that changes to the program might take some time to implement, but it didn't seem like a whole lot of progress has been made on this core mission in 11+ years. Meanwhile, the lions are constantly still being bred to be used in this program as well as to populate other private game reserves in a semi-wild capacity. Questions asked about more details in the process and the timeline of when the lions are released and why they are still being bred are answered with round-about hand-wavy responses. Sketchy.
Well, following some questions, we moved on to a brief safety discussion and then headed out to see some lions. You go in groups that max out at 13 with two lions assigned to each group. However, each person and couple have chances to sit with the lion, then take turns walking next to the lion. Just the sound of that reminded us of things we avoided in the elephant camp, but we still hoped for the best.
We wandered out into the bush along with a bunch of guides who were trying to find and corral the lions over to us. At first, seeing the two lions show up was really cool - you're seeing lions on foot with very little to protect you! But then, it got a little sad. The lions had these wounds on their shoulders that had disinfectant sprayed on it, yet flies were continuing to land on the wounds. The guides said they were 'play' wounds, but after coming back from seeing prides of lions in the wild, none of them had wounds like this. It was also obvious the lions didn't want to walk. It was mid-afternoon and pretty hot in the sun, and it was obvious that the two sisters assigned to our group really just wanted to sit and hide in some shade. They were fine when sitting on the ground and being petted, but had to be coerced and prodded into doing the walking portion for everyone to get their photo ops.
All in all, we felt a bit disturbed by the end of the activity. It was really cool being so close with the lions, but we also just felt really bad for them the whole time. We both just kept trying to shoo flies away that were landing and biting their wounds and the tips of their ears. I think the activity would have been just as rewarding if the lions were allowed to sit where they wanted. But since the excursion is billed as "walking with the lions" and they want to sell you videos of your walk with the lions, the lions weren't allowed to just lay around and were forced to walk with us.
We wouldn't recommend doing this activity to others who are going to this area, though we do hope that the program makes progress in the near future to actually release some cubs to the wild.
We had a packed 2 days in Zimbabwe and headed out early the next day for Botswana! Zimbabwe helped put us in the Africa frame of mind as we set out for our safari adventures at 3 different camps in Botswana.
We ended up really loving our time in Botswana, but I don't know that we are really interested to go back to Zimbabwe. The food wasn't great, the town didn't really have a big draw for us, and having seen the falls once, I don't think we need to go back, and the economy wasn't doing so great. We would probably check out the neighboring countries, such as Zambia, Mozambique and Namibia, before coming back to Zim. Besides, Lishan wants to go swim in the Devil's Pool over Vic Falls on the Zambia side.
