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Published: January 8th 2010
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From a flow point of view, now is the worst time of the year to be visiting Victoria Falls. It's the dry season, and hot, so the Zambia side of the falls is a mere trickle, though the Zimbabwe side has some decent volume. One advantage of coming now though is that you can actually see the falls, as they're not obscured by spray. Though neither the widest, highest, or having the most volume, they're the "largest" in the world if your definition of size is multiplying width by height. Since I don't feel as though I can be in southern Africa without seeing the falls, and with the greedy governments of both Zambia and Zimbabwe making it excessively costly to visit both sides, I plump for the Zimbabwe side.
Corrupt and incompetent leadership has been Zimbabwe's lot since independence, with Robert Mugabe neatly fitting the well-worn Africa template of idealistic freedom fighter turned venal dictator. Hyperinflation had caused Zimbabwe's government earlier this year to suspend the Zimbabwe dollar as the country's currency and replace it with the $. Like in Ecuador, I feel a little strange about doling out greenbacks in a country that isn't the US. However I'm
glad that I have $. Rand are also accepted in most places but usually at a rate of ten to the $, i.e. a third weaker than in the FX markets. The explanation I receive for this is that no-one has any rand coins so using the "correct" rate would create lots of change problems. That argument is so flawed that the real reason must be the obvious, i.e. price-gouging (though the supermarkets all seem to use the "correct" rate). With prices here not cheap anyway, that extra third is by no means negligible.
Victoria Falls town itself is a horrible little place. My hostel charges $40 for an ensuite room in which I have no towel and the shower sprays more water horizontally than vertically. The shared kitchen appears to be a breeding ground for cockroaches and flies - during my one and only usage of the facilities, while the electric hob is still warming up, a cockroach actually runs over the ring and up onto the rim of my pan.
The many hawkers in town specialise in shouting and whistling at you from distance, as if to attract their dog. I've met many Zimbabweans on my
Cute kitten
Shoestrings Backpackers trip this year, as a chunk of the population has dispersed to nearby countries, and they've been uniformly happy and friendly. As usual, anywhere near a tourist attraction will show you the flip side.
Perhaps it's a sign that I've been travelling for too long, but I'm not tremendously moved by Victoria Falls themselves. I enter the park between two tour groups, and however I try to restructure my route, I always seem to find one or the other of them. Even at this time of year, the forest near the main falls lookout is in a permanent rain shower from the spray, giving a tangible sense of the volume and ferocity of water coming over the edge of the gorge and into the Zambezi. I can only imagine what the wet season flow is like, but I can believe the falls truly earn their local name of "The smoke that thunders". But my mind keeps casting itself back a year to Iguazu, and Victoria Falls as I am seeing them lose out in the comparison.
Having said that, I'm captivated by the rainbow population of the gorge. Sparkling into life when the clouds of spray and angle
of the sun are just so in relation to the viewer's eyes, they add their spectrum to the black/white/green/blue of the rocks/water/forest/sky. Apparently, near the full moon, you can see a lunar rainbow at night.
As with all my long trips, on-the-fly planning tends to result in a backlog of things to see near the end. As such, southern Africa will be more of a "Greatest Hits" sprint than a leisurely mooch, meaning that Zimbabwe gets a mere three days. This does cause me some regret, not least because significant events are clearly afoot in the country, but it can go on the list of Places To Visit In The Future.
But right now, Botswana is calling.
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