Victoria Falls Post

I've forgotten what number I'm on, so I think I'll start naming the posts.

I'm in Livingstone, which is Zambia's town on Victoria Falls. Zimbabwe's town is named Victoria Falls too. I'm also happy to say that this is the fastest and cheapest internet I've found yet in Africa. I'm currently loading my pictures, and they're loading fast.

I thought I'd be on an overnight bus from Lusaka, but I misjudged, and of course I never thought to ask, how long the bus ride would be. Instead of getting in early morning I came in Livingstone at 2:30am. So I didn't really sleep much a few nights ago, but I found a great hostel to stay at called Fawlty Towers. You can't go wrong with that name. The hostel has a pool, hot water(a luxury in Africa), free pancakes!, a very nice and friendly staff. It's still nowhere near Mayoka village, but I don't think anything ever will be.

The main thing I wanted to do, besides see the falls, was bunjee jump, so I looked into that first thing in the morning. What I discovered is that it's ridiculously overpriced, 110 US, and that advertising it as 111 meters is a bit misleading. The max height from canyon top to bottom of the zambezi in the area is 111 meters. The free fall on the bunjee is just over 70 meters, which is still something. Anyways, there's another activity you can do called a gorge swing. Just down the gorge from falls you can do this swing which is a bunjee jump, but than attached to an apparatus which than swings you across the gorge. The free fall is 65 meters, and the swing is pretty cool too. So I went for this instead of the bunjee, because for 100 dollars you get picked up, all the beers you can drink, lunch, and you can do the gorge swing as much as you want. A much, much better deal than the famous bunjee jump, which really milks the tourists for their money.

For most of the day I was the only person at the site, and I had a great doing the swing a good six times. It wears you out because you have to than walk out of the canyon below, which has a pretty steep climb out. There are also some ziplines across the canyon and some rapelling you can do, so I spent the whole day just jumping, swinging, or falling down canyon faces. It was an enormous amount of fun to say the least. The staff there were very friendly, and one guy, who was a rafting guide for a dozen or so years, had worked in California, and had been to Oregon a few times. It's nice to know that a Zambian has made it to Oregon, or just in general that an African has been a tourist in the US. You feel constant tourist guilt while in thirld world countries, so this made me feel less bad for a few minutes. I also asked him if anybody had ever rafted the Zambezi from the source to where it empties into the Indian Ocean in Mozambique. He said he was pretty sure nobody had, had never thought of doing it, but was going to get working on setting this up as a trip. I hope one day its possible to do this trip, which would be just amazing.

This morning I got up early and saw the falls. The peak water flow is from March to May, right now, and you can tell. The mist from the falls is viewable from Livingtone, some 8k away, and there's so much water right now that the mist prevents you from getting a full view of the falls. The mist is called Mosi o Tunya, which in the local language means Steam of Thunder. So, despite that the water is at its highest, this is not the best time to view the falls, which apparently is around August. Still, they're impressive falls, and very much worth going to if you're anywhere near them. Y'all can see the pictures in the album I'm posting. A lot of people think Victoria Falls is the biggest, widest, something biggest in the world. Well, it's not number one in any category regarding waterfalls. At 106 meters its twice as high as Niagra Falls, but nowhere near the tallest falls in the world. That goes to Angel Falls in Venezuela, which I've been to, and is 1000 meters high. I actually heard there's another falls in the area even higher, but it dries up in the dry season, so it doesn't get any credit. The falls with the highest amount of volume is Iguazu falls on the Argentina/Brazil border at 55 million litres per minute of water. Victoria Falls is around 6 million. I have heard a rumor that there's a falls on the Congo River, in Congo, that has even more water, but I need to do more research on that. And while it's very wide, over a kilometer, Victoria Falls is not the widest either. I found out today there's a waterfall in Laos over 10 kilometers wide. Ariel, Leora, I hope you both go there and take a picture for me. So Victoria Falls is very pretty, I'm sure more impressive when you can it all clearly too without all the mist, but it's not number for anything.

There are a few trails throughout the area, and one hike down into the gorge on the other side of the falls. Down in this gorge there was a local guy who, for a fee of course, will tell you about the geology, plants, nature, etc. of the area. The money goes towards paying for his education, supposedly, and I decided to give him a few bucks to find out some info on the area. While he does know quite a bit, I was more than a bit wary after my first question. On the way down into the gorge I saw a family of big rodent looking animals. I took a picture, and I showed him the picture and asked him what the name of the animal was. He paused for a second and than told me they were Koalas. I said I had seen them five minutes ago on this hike and there was no way they were Koalas. He laughed, and said he thought I was Australian (???), and thought I was showing him a picture of Koalas from Australia. I forget the name of the animal, which he than recognized, but it doesn't matter. I'm renaming them Zambian Koalas. I've posted the picture of them in the new album so y'all can see a family of Zambian Koalas too.

After seeing the falls from up close I went over the bridge spanning the gorge, just south of the falls, that links Zambia and Zimbabwe. The best view of the falls is from there, and I wanted to step over into Zimbabwe for a minute. Again, there is too much mist to get a clear view of the falls, but its cool to be so high over the Zambezi river, and I got to step into Zimbabwe for a minute. On the way out someone approached me about changing currency. I dismissed him, but than realized that I really wanted to see Zimbabwe currency with their insane inflation that's over 150,00% this year. He was holding a stack of 10,000,000 Zimbabwe Schilling notes. I asked him how much I could get for 2,000 Zambian Kwacha, which is about 50 US cents. After a little negotiating I got 100,000,000 Zimbabwe Schillings for 50 US cents. He said he had altogether 5 billion schillings in his stack of money. The quantities are just so unbelievably absurd, and its just sad that Mugabe is putting the country into a complete economic freefall. Livingstone at night is full of Zimbabwean women prostituting themselves just to be able to get some currency that doesn't lose its entire value overnight. Very, very sad what's happening to that country.

Well, that's all for this post. I'm going to go get some free pancakes and just relax for the rest of the day. Tomorrow I get on 24+ hours worth of bus rides going to the far north of the country to Mpulungu, which is Zambia's port city on Lake Tanganyika. I'm really excited to get there, which is the only thing that will help me get through the hellish day of buses, although my ipod helps too. Buses in Africa are infinitly worse than South America. I think one hour on a bus in Africa is equal to four hours on a South American bus. Mozambique has been the worse so far, so at least I'm not doing this ride there.

Oh, before I forget...I wanted to make a comment about Nsima, and this is primarily for Benjie and Tovi, who I know especially dislike the stuff. Nsima is a mash of either maize or cassava, and its the main food in pretty much all of sub saharan Africa. It's called something slightly different everywhere you go, but its the same food everywhere. It's really disgusting. It has no flavor, which makes it all the more surprising on how bad it is. I avoid it as much as possible, but in Zambia there's very little rice, so you have to bite the bullet and eat nsima more than you would like. On my first night in Zambia I had been travelling all the way from Nkhata Bay in Malawi and I was really hungry. Sure enough the only option in the town we were in was nsima. Normally when you're starving, and I remember being quite hungry, anything will taste good. Well nsima puts that theory to waste, as it was still pretty awful food. I've been meaning to write that in one of the blog posts and kept forgetting. Alright, this the real end of this post.

ate mais, Ben

picture link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2099358&l=38228&id=2606069