Victoria Falls and Malawi

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From Pretoria it took us 25 hours on two buses straight through Zimbabwe, formerly known as Rhodesia, making a connection in Bulawayo (which means 'killing place'), to get to the town of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. Once there, we looked at three different accommodations and decided on Shoestring Backpackers. We set up camp and explored the small town. There were not a lot of tourists around, so with the over abundance of street merchants, we would get hassled consistently on the streets. The local currency is in US Dollars. Inflation in their previous currency had gotten so bad, it would take a whole bag of money just to buy a newspaper. Street merchants would all sell the old currency. You could get large notes such as a 25 Billion Dollar note, but of course they were worthless. About 2/3 of Victoria Falls is on the Zimbabwe side, but most people only see the falls from the Zambia side. There is a lot of bad press about Zimbabwe, as Mugabe, the current president/dictator, has done a good job of messing up a country that was once prospering and educated, but is now very poor and underdeveloped. Even crossing the border from South Africa, you could see an immediate difference. The paved road turned to dust with a graveyard of large trucks that had been stuck at the border for days. One of the truck drivers told me he thought he may have caught Malaria from the mosquitoes that were in his truck that he had been forced to spend the previous night in. Despite the bad press about this country, with the reputation that they do not like Americans, and having traveled completely through the country from South to North, I can tell you first hand that the people are very nice and very accommodating and I never felt like I was in danger for even one moment.

Victoria Falls, also known as Mosi-oa-Tunya or 'The Smoke that Thunders', is one of the most magnificent sights that I have ever seen in my life. It is one of the largest, if not the largest waterfall in the world by volume, and also one of the 7 natural wonders of the world for a reason. David Livingstone named it Victoria Falls after the Queen of England of the time. There was a statue of him on both sides of the falls. These falls are so massive, the only way you can see the whole thing at one time is by air. You can see the mist rising from it from miles away. I could hear it from where we were staying, and it was a good 15 minute walk away. I walked along side of it twice, stopping frequently to stare in awe, trying to take it all in. It is so powerful, that a lot of time, you cant even see anything because there is so much mist. My favorite spot was called dangerous point. From there you could look over a sheer cliff down into the Zambezi. The falls fell with such force, that it would appear to be raining straight up from the river. Once the upward rain would shoot up into the sky, it would fall back down with a force that felt like a downpour from a very strong thunderstorm. You can always expect to get drenched when visiting these falls. I have always wanted to see these falls, and I had an idea of what they were going to be like to see in person, but it was better than what I envisioned, much better.

After spending 3 nights on the Zimbabwe side, we crossed the bridge over to Zambia. The visa to get into Zambia is normally 50 US, but if you have a world cup ticket it was half price. We got that tip from someone staying at Shoestrings. We walked over with an American family of 4 and let them borrow a few of our World Cup tickets so we saved them 100 Dollars. The bridge going over the Zambezi to Zambia had the worlds 3rd highest bungee jump in the middle of it at 111 meters. The Zambia side was more developed than the Zimbabwe side. We grabbed a free shuttle to Jollyboy's Backpackers in Livingston. The next day we hit the Zambia side of the falls with a few new friends we made at Jollyboy's. We first went back out on the bridge and watched two of our friends bungee jump off of it, then we went to the falls. We had much more sunshine this time around. You can only see about 1/3 of the falls from the Zambian side, but it feels like you are much closer to them. There was also a bridge that went out to a very tall circular island where we were consistently getting poured on.

After spending three nights total in Zambia, we took off on a 6 hour bus ride to Lusaka, the capital, then waited about 3 hours for a bus to fill up to take us to the border of Malawi. One of our new friends, Margaret, was working in Lusaka, so we parted ways with her there. We continued on with two other friends, Mitsue and Elena, who attend Columbia University in the US and are working at the UN in Mchinji, Malawi. They invited us to stay with them since it was on the way to where we were going anyway. It ended up taking about 21 hours to get there total with all of the stops and taxi transfers to/from the border, so we reached their place at about 4 am. We all took a nap and then relocated to a small hotel in the town for two nights. The next day we went to a small village with Mitsue, as she had a meeting there. Jeff and I played soccer with the locals in the mean time.

After our two night stay, we negotiated hiring a car from a local for the weekend. The four of us then drove to the capital city of Lilongwe. We spent one night with Mitsue's African mum. There we also met up with Victor, a Harvard grad student who was also working with our two friends. Jeff decided to stay in Lilongwe for the weekend with Mitsue, so Victor, Elena, and I took the car and headed off for Cape Maclear which is on the very southern tip of Lake Malawi. It took us about 4 hours to get there going through some beautiful country. We went over a pass, and got out to take some pictures, and I lost the keys to the car somehow. We had 10 locals help look for them and eventually found them about 10 minutes later. Cape Maclear feels like you are in the Caribbean. The lake itself is about the size of Vermont, so you cant see the other side. The water is calm, there are random islands in the lake, sandy beaches, palm trees, warm weather, very relaxing. We could only spend one night because Elena had to get back to work in Mchinji. None of us wanted to leave. We drove back to Lilongwe, Mitsue jumped in the car to go back to Mchinji, and Jeff, Victor, and I stayed at our new African Mum's house for an additional night.

The next day Victor took off South to Zomba to take care of some work, so Jeff and I jumped on a minibus to go back to Cape Maclear (its really that good). We found a bus that said they would take us all the way to Monkey Bay, which we were planning on staying for 2 nights, then transfer to Cape Maclear. It was slow moving, but everything went fine until we were about 50K away. The bus decided that that was all the farther they would take us, so they dumped us off in a small town in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night to fend for ourselves. I figured this would happen to us eventually. What happens is you get close to your destination for really cheap, then they try to over charge you for the rest of it. We weren't going to play that game. We spent some time trying to negotiate a lift in the back of a couple of pickup trucks, when someone with a slight English accent asked me where I was from. It turned out this guy was originally from Malawi, but grew up in Manchester, England. His mum was from Malawi, and was with him, and his dad was from England. I told him what had just happened to us, so they both invited us to stay in their guest house for the night and would help us get transportation the next morning to Cape Maclear as it was too late to find anything reliable. We took them up on their generous offer and got a minibus to take us to their place. It was a really nice house right on the lake.

The next morning we jumped on the back of two trucks, waited about an hour, then finally got a minitaxi to take us to Cape Maclear after going the wrong direction for a little while. A few of the guys in the minitaxi were running errands. The first time I went to Cape Maclear, I had checked out all of the backpackers to find the best place to camp. This time we went straight to a place called Fat Monkeys. Its only 3 USD/night to camp and we got a spot right on the beach next to the water with an amazing view of the lake.

We are planning to stay here until Friday, then take off to Blantyre in the south where we are going to meet up with Mitsue and Elena. From there we plan on climbing up Mt. Malanje, the 3rd highest mountain in Africa. Apparently this mountain was the inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien's book The Hobbit, so I guess we are going to be climbing The Lonely Mountain. After that we are going to head back up to Lilongwe. Jeff and I purchased tickets for a 27 hour bus ride to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. There we are going to wait for my friend Stephanie from Denver to arrive, who plans on traveling with us for a month, and then take a ferry up to Zanzibar. If you are interested in seeing more pics/video of Victoria Falls, feel free to check out this link. http://picasaweb.google.com/jhintz99/VictoriaFalls#

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Photos

Cousin Jeff finally got a trim
He was tired of being called Jesus all the time, but still gets it.

Small village soccer
They scored a goal on me when I took this picture...

Elena, Mitsue, Jeff
Clubbing in Lilongwe

On top of the pass
where are my keys?

Comments

[Paco]

J - are you the whitest man in Africa?