Advertisement
Published: February 13th 2013
Edit Blog Post
I slept on and off through the night as we bumped along north from Bulawayo to Victoria Falls. The night trains are a great way to travel around Zimbabwe if you have the time, because they are really cheap and they save you from wasting your daytime on a bus. It can be frustrating when you spend all day in a bus looking out the window at a beautiful day going by, then arriving just after the sun has gone down. Another positive was that my train arrived bang on time at 9 a.m. Punctuality and transport don't usually belong in the same sentence in Africa.
Even though, I had already seen Victoria Falls from the Zambia side, I had heard it was well worth seeing them from the Zimbabwe side as well. I had also been in touch with Christina who I had met in Kenya and we arranged to meet in Victoria Falls. I checked into Shoestrings Hostel, which is the main backpackers' in Victoria Falls. I was happy enough to spend the day chilling out by the pool and wait for Christina to arrive from Lusaka that afternoon. Another one of the Peace Corp Volunteers who I
had met in Coffee Bay, Megan, was also staying there and I had some drinks with her and her friends and Christina, when she arrived. They were getting the night train to Bulawayo that night and after going down to the station with them, we picked up a bottle of Inzimbi - a sugar cane liquer costing $5 that we got stuck into over the next couple of nights.
The next day, we walked down to the Victoria Falls. The actual Falls are very close to the town itself, as opposed to Livingstone in Zambia, which is about 8km away. Victoria Falls the town is purely a tourist town and I can't imagine there would be many, if anybody, living there if it wasn't for the tourist trade. This leads to quite a number of hawkers trying to hassle you into buying stuff you definitely don't want or need, but nothing too bad.
The Zimbabwe side of the falls goes on for a lot longer than the Zambian side. There are far more viewing points on this side and I would estimate that about 80% of it is seen from this side. As it was now in the
dry season, the waterfalls' flow was at one of its weakest throughout the year. This didn't make it any less impressive or enjoyable in my opinion. It actually meant you could great views of the falls unobstructed by the spray that is there at other time of the year. It was also very quiet at this time of year and at times, it felt like we had the place to ourselves. The park on this side seems to have more wildlife as we came across some warthogs and impala, who were obviously quite used to human company, as they didn't jolt away as quick as they would normally.
That night we had some food at a Tapas restaurant, which I suppose sums up how tourist oriented the town was. That night was fairly lively at Shoestrings, as there was quite a few of the overland trucks that were stopping over. We had a late enough night and spent the next day, chilling out by the pool and getting ourselves ready for an overnight bus to Harare, which left at about 10.30 p.m.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.036s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0187s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb