Taughannock Falls

I have better pictures of the namesake falls in this park, but I picked this one because there's a teeny tiny human visible in the lower right-hand corner, which gives some useful scale to the photograph.

The falls is actually 33 feet taller than Niagara Falls, and is reportedly the tallest single-drop falls east of the Rockies, but for some reason waterfalls just never look that impressive in photographs. (Except maybe Victoria Falls. You really couldn't take a bad picture of that one.)

Waterbuck

Unlike the impalas, which are everywhere in large herds and occasional individuals, we haven't seen many waterbucks since the first game drive in Victoria Falls.

They're distinguished from other antelope by the large white ring on their rumps, which was described as "like they just sat down on a freshly painted toilet seat."

If that's not enough to discourage predators, it's also alleged that they don't taste very good. But they're beautiful anyway.

Chobe National Park

After lunch, we split into three groups for our first game drive in Chobe National Park. This is Lucky, the wonderful guide and driver I would have for the next three days.

This park is much more open than the game reserve in Victoria Falls. There, thick bush crowded right against the roads, and we marveled at how the drivers could figure out where they were going; all of the roads looked exactly the same to me.

In Chobe, there seemed to be a lot more grassland, with the frequent stark silhouettes of dead trees. I asked Lucky about them; there were so many I thought maybe it was some strange African species that had just gone leafless for the winter, but he confirmed that they were dead all right, and explained why: elephants. They love to rub against trees, and eventually they rub away all the bark and the tree dies.

The greenery around the bottoms of the dead trees is the highly versatile woolly caper bush. Knobs of it punctuate the grasslands, sometimes growing so tall they look like fuzzy spineless trees.

Mostly it's a climber. It twines around some of the dead trees like reborn foliage, and bursts like treetops from termite mounds.

School visit

On our way to Botswana this morning, we made a final stop in Victoria Falls to visit a local school. It was the Saturday of Easter weekend, so the children and teachers came in especially to meet us.

The teachers gave us an overview of the school's operations, then the children sang and danced.

The children were, not surprisingly, delightful. They peered shyly at us from around the corner of the school building as we arrived, but sang and danced without any self-consciousness. Then, asked to introduce themselves and say what they wanted to study, they turned into bashful twelve-year olds again.

There are so many more children than the school facilities can accommodate that they have to start classes at seven in the morning and do a second shift of classes in the afternoon.

Faces of Victoria Falls

A mother and child, out for a late afternoon stroll.

Victoria Falls signs

(I like the juxtaposition of "circumcision rituals" and "vibrant war dancing.")

I've got sunshine on a cloudy day

We're spending the day in the town of Victoria Falls.

Several of us wanted to walk out to the bridge, which spans the second gorge of the falls and acts as the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Since the bridge is technically no-man's land, we had to drive out there, past the border control, then get out and walk.

I could tell we were getting close when the windows on the van were suddenly wet. We drove on another couple hundred feet, and the "rain" stopped as suddenly as it began.

This where the brave and the foolish can bungee jump into the gorge, or take a zip line across the river. Our bit of daring was going out there without officially leaving Zimbabwe, so that we had to file through the immigration office on our return, in the front door and straight out the back, pretending that we were being officially readmitted to the country.

Sundowner cruise

 


The day wasn't over yet.

Next was a sundowner cruise on the Zambezi. Sailing on a warm afternoon, with the mists of Victoria Falls visible in the distance, sampling one of the very good local beers -- life doesn't get much better.

Plus we got to ask Russell another thousand questions about flora, fauna, geology, history, culture, and where the bathrooms are. Which, as always, he answered with remarkable patience and enthusiasm.

Faces

I love these faces carved into the hand railings in front of the entrance to the Victoria Falls National Park, the way the faces, so detailed and individual, peer out from the roughness of the bark.

The falls

We spent the afternoon at the Victoria Falls National Park.

The falls may not be the tallest in the world, or the widest, but they must be the most spectacular. It's all one vertical drop as the mighty Zambezi River has a sudden altitude shift, but islands in the river break up the curtain of water so as you walk along the paths on the Zimbabwe side, it looks like you're seeing a series of different waterfalls, each one more dramatic than the last. There are rapids pouring into the falls, and gorges carved by the river's exit, all of it festooned with rainbows from the mist.

The rainbows are everywhere, not just over the falls. The mist on the path gets thicker and thicker until it's a drizzle, then a downpour, and everybody wears the provided rain slickers. The sun is shining while the "rain" pours down, so there are rainbows across the paths, and in the occasional grassy breaks in the foliage, and you could actually see them touch the ground, the legendary end of the rainbow. No pots of gold, alas.

And this, by the way, is the "guardrail," just some branches and vines twined around some stick posts in a makeshift fence. Avoiding the edges is pretty much up to you.

Victoria Falls

I take back everything I said about airports being all alike. Large international airports may all be alike, but smaller airports all have their own rules and rhythms. And Johannesburg may be in Africa, but it's becoming obvious that that's just a technicality. Johannesburg really exists on that rarefied plane of wealthy international cities -- New York, London, Shanghai, Tokyo -- that have more in common with each other than with the smaller towns and cities that may happen to share a country or a continent with them.

In Victoria Falls, we crowded into a small immigration hall with long lines snaking out the door. I already had a Zimbabwe visa so I got to stand in the shortest line, but it turned out that I was apparently the only person in the line who had one. And Zimbabwe visas are very long and elaborate, and filled out entirely by hand, so I waited and waited while each person in front of me had each piece of paperwork reviewed, each visa filled out, each fee paid, before finally getting my official stamp, and being admitted to Zimbabwe.

Which consisted of being allowed to duck behind the counter and retrieve my suitcase from a huge pile on the floor, go through one more security/x-ray checkpoint, and walk out into Victoria Falls to wait for the rest of the group.

The air was hot and dusty. These musicians were singing and dancing in the small parking lot outside the terminal. Curio sellers waved carved hippos and giraffes.

And Russell announced that we would be heading straight to the lodge and he would pick up the rest of our passports later.

Now we were in Africa.

Luggage prophylactics

First thing in the morning, it was back to the airport to fly to Victoria Falls. While we were checking in for the flight, I noticed that most of the other passengers had their luggage wrapped in thick layers of plastic, like Saran Wrap for travelers. These wrapping stations are situated throughout the airport, and for 50 rand (about 7 dollars) you too can have your luggage protected, even if you don't actually have any luggage.

This picture is unfortunately not very clear, but this gentleman didn't have a suitcase. He just handed over a neatly folded pile of clothes and a few minutes later it was magically turned into luggage, ready for checkin.