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Published: August 20th 2011
The Angel's Pool, Livingstone Island
Swimming right on the lip of the FallsDear All
Greetings from Zambia – country number 66, and counting...! Right now in the capital Lusaka, the final destination for my Southern African trip 2011, though not quite finished travelling yet. As usual, the last few days of my trip have just been amazing, and it really just seems to keep getting better – I may even go so far as to say that Thursday was just my best day yet!
Last I wrote I was on the Zimbabwean side of the Victoria Falls, having been suitably impressed, and drenched, by the largest cataract in the world, at least in terms of length. The Vic Falls runs for nearly 2km, and dramatically drops into a vertiginous chasm, and runs off through a 100m deep gorge for several kilometers further.
On Wednesday I packed my bags for what came to be my easiest leg of the journey yet, and the most stunning border crossing I’ve ever made. From Zimbabwe to Zambia, you cross over the Victoria Falls Bridge, over the spectacular Batoka Gorge and bungee jump, and through the breeziest customs and immigration checkpoints I’ve ever been through. They’re very used to tourists just passing through on day
trips, excursions and the like, and the whole process minus the walk between the two posts must have taken about 5 minutes, with smiles from officials on both sides to boot – what a treat for Africa!
On the Zambian side I got a lift from a lovely South African family to Livingstone, the settlement on that side about 11km inland, and parked myself and my bags in the well-named “Fawlty Towers” guest lodge, sadly without Basil or Manuel... As soon as I had checked in, and sorted out a local SIM card, I negotiated a deal with a taxi driver and finally ended up paying the local price of $4 to take me back to the Falls on the Zambian side. As is always expected here, taxi drivers are the worst offenders for what I’ve heard being called the “white skin tax”, bumping up prices just for a mzungu. After calmly accusing two taxi drivers of being racist (by now I’ve just had enough of this kind of stuff...), I finally got the local price of $4.
So the rest of the day I spent admiring the majestic falls from the Zambian side – not quite so
good as the Zim to be honest, the latter side contains 1.5km of the walkway in front. The Zambian side only has a view of 400m or so, but what I did do was absolutely hair-raising, and stunning. A little upstream of the falls you can pay a local guy (not recommended by the officials...) to ford part of the Zambezi with you, and walk right up to the lip of the Falls! First you have to walk across a man-made mini dam wall, running about 20cm under the water surface (current surprisingly strong), for about 50m in length. The wall is only about 20cm wide, so it involves a carefully balanced walk with bare feet, with the falls thundering not far behind you. Then you walk right up to the pools and rocky promontories on the edge, and peer over! This is where you look 100m straight down, surrounded by thundering torrents of water cascading over the lip. I felt most uncomfortable to be honest, but pretty exhilarated. After about 20 mins walking around up there, I asked my guide the fatal question of how many people actually fall over the edge – on average 3 per year, usually
Victoria Falls - Zambian Side
You can see the Zimbabwean side on the left, where I had looked over the side the previous day due to a mis-placed footing!!! I decided it was time to go back, and felt very satisfied having done it once safely back on the river bank – check the photos, it was mad!
The next day, as mentioned probably my best so far, I did something pretty similar but with an actual organized tour to Livingstone Island, a larger rocky promontory again on the lip of the falls. This is the site of the infamous Devil’s Pool – google it – where you swim in something like a natural infinity pool, with a small, slimy natural rock wall on the edge standing between you and a “bungee without the ropes”, as the local guide put it (apparently an average of 1 tourist falls over the lip here each year...!) Unfortunately, and disappointingly, the pool is only safe to swim in for 2 months of the year (Sept/Oct) during the very dry season, so we had to swim in the next best thing – the Angel’s Pool. Not quite so scary, but still a pool right on the edge, where you can swim with the vertiginous drop and the cascading water just a metre or so away from you
Bungee Jump Point - Victoria Falls Bridge
Just looking at it was enough to set the nerves off – mad!! (you do sign a disclaimer before you do the tour, by the way...)
And on Thursday afternoon I took a microlight flight (just you and a pilot in a motorized hang-glider) over the Falls, Batoka Gorge and Zambezi river, for stunning, if a little shaky, views of the whole thing – amazing! You could also see wildlife from up there, and as well as the Falls, I spotted elephants, hippo, buffalo and a crocodile on the many islands in the middle of the river.
Yesterday I left the Victoria Falls, after 4 amazing, if rather vertigo-inducing, days spent there. It’s such a great place, with just so much to do – I recommend it any day, and just had a great time. A bit relieved in a way to be in a place now with no vertiginous drops in sight, but with great memories of the place. 7 hours later on a luxury bus (another treat!), arrived in Lusaka the capital.
Spending just 2 days here, before heading up to the Kafue National Park tomorrow for 2 days of game-viewing and safari hopefully tomorrow. The Kafue is one of Africa’s largest parks, and very little
Fording the Zambezi
Could not have done it without my guide holding my hand to keep me balanced visited, despite excellent chances of lion- and leopard-spotting, so I’m looking forward to a safari rather off-the-beaten track.
(note: if you’re not too bothered now about African (Zimbabwean) politics and my own sentiments on them, please do skip the next two paragraphs...)
But before I go, I just have to get something off my chest which has been building up for a while – ROBERT MUGABE IS THE BIGGEST BUNGLING BUFFOON EVER, AND SHOULD BE SHOT FOR HIS CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY!!
Wow, what a relief. I’ve been dying to say this for 2 weeks while travelling through Zimbabwe, but as criticizing the government is a capital offence there, I thought better of it – no qualms about exclaiming this universal truth in Zambia though. Although I had just an amazing time in Zim, the various stories and accounts I heard against the man just made the blood boil. This included his completely dire handling of the government and economy, resulting in inflation over a 10-year period of a sextillion percent (I have some Zim dollar banknotes of 50trillion dollars on me, enough to buy an egg apparently). This was because the government was so in debt, they
thought it a good idea to just print more banknotes, obviously reducing the value of the currency – how bloody stupid can you get??!! I talked with various white Zimbabweans who had known someone whose farm had been seized, often violently, by the government. All of these farms are now in the hands of “locals”, who have either let them run to ruin, or handed them over to people who’ve practically no experience of farming, and thus which led the country to near famine only 5 or so years ago. Mugabe himself apparently has 20-something farms, which completely defeats his purpose of “giving land back to the people”. Water and electricity supplies are constantly cut off for long periods at a time – in 2008 the situation was so bad, with no services for up to 20 hours a day, that the people had no choice but to use boreholes and rivers for their source of water, leading to a cholera and dysentery epidemic in 2009 which killed 4000 people. There is a ridiculous law called the “Indigenous Law Act”, which forbids any white person to have a majority share in a company, even though they may start it up
and run it themselves. Their company has to have an African guy with at least 51% of the sharehold, so the white guys can’t own anything. As far as I’m concerned, inasmuch as black people in the UK are British, so white people in Zimbabwe are African – their parents and grandparents were born there. And something that just sickened me to hear, Mugabe apparently wanted to, a few years back, disinter the remains of Cecil John Rhodes and have them thrown into the Zambezi. The only thing that stopped him from doing this was the money that his grave generated from tourism. What Mugabe doesn’t realize is that the colonialists existed at a time when colonialism was the norm, and in truth what they did for the country, and in my opinion a lot of Africa, was develop it with a solid infrastructure, railroads, mines, farms etc. For those like Mugabe who like to blame the West, both then and now, for the underdevelopment of Africa, how’s about taking a look at themselves and rather manage it well now – you have the resources, but you still mismanage and allow exploitation and corruption to take place without doing a
thing about it. Zambia to be honest seems like a breath of fresh air – people and propaganda on the streets constantly seem to raise awareness against corruption and exploitation, particularly with the general elections here taking place next month – a much more valued pursuit of time and energy, rather than the angry “retaliatory” policies of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. I share the sentiments of most Zimbabweans that I have met, both white and black, that once Mugabe pops his clogs, there is huge potential for the country and it may yet take-off. Unfortunately though, Mugabe is one of those typical African tyrant dictators, who upon completing their initial 2-term presidential period, set about changing the constitution in order to run for a third, fourth, fifth term etc, and use voter intimidation and violence to ensure that this takes place. With the coalition government, and the strong and seemingly very righteous Morgan Tsvangirai having recently been elected as Prime Minister, and national hero to my mind, there is hope for Zimbabwe yet.
Anyway, apologies for the rant – perhaps you’ve skipped reading this. Not a problem, but I do feel better at last having got this off my chest...!
Feet on the Edge
Guess which is mine...! Will sign off for now. Hope to be writing about some great safari experiences in my next one.
Take care.
Alex
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Dave
non-member comment
Victoria Falls
Hi. Great page. Thank you for sharing. I will be returning to Zimbabwe for the first time in 15 years in November, and 22 years since I was last at the falls, so I enjoy to read about other peoples experiences and opinions. I agree the Angel's pool sounds like a better idea, especially after you said the occasional tourist disappears over the edge of the devils's pool. Enjoy your travels. Dave, Brisbane, Australia, ex-Zimbabwe