Simon returns from a dance looking drunk, but is probably just tired. I’m going to Victoria Falls on a week’s break, and I’m all packed and raring to go, especially after spending so long at work. As Simon is too ‘tired’ to drive me to the airport, Chipo obliges, and I arrive about an hour before takeoff. Now this really has to be the smallest commercial air terminal in the world. My bag was weighed on a manual scale, you could walk from the entrance to the departure gate in about 10 seconds flat, and when it came to boarding, a woman wandered into the room, pointed at a distant plane and said “your aircraft is over there – have a good flight.”
The flight is very smooth, and we even arrive a few minutes early in Vic Falls.
Elina (Basil’s sister) is waiting for me at the airport with her niece (22) and her son (5), and drives me to the Kingdom Hotel, where I’ll be staying, and at which her husband is the deputy General Manager. Although apparently not as nice as the five-star Elephant Hills (which burned down a few days earlier), the Kingdom is a magnificent place. The rooms are arranged along a corridor/walkway that encircles a landscaped interior including a pool, poolside bar and some lakes.
Elina drops off myself and her niece at the Vic Falls national park (it’s otherwise only a short walk from the Kingdom), and after paying the park entry fee (hers is $50, mine is $1200!) we begin to walk towards the river. I can already feel the spray occasionally spitting at me as we get closer. A few minutes sees us at the river’s edge, upstream of the falls, where you can apparently go canoeing. Perhaps no-one’s told these people that the world’s highest waterfall is a mere 200 metres away. I think I may need to see how stupid this activity is first hand.
Walking downstream we come to the start of the falls. Every 50m or so there is a viewing area from which to see the cascading water, and in some of them the meerest hint of wind blowing in your direction gets you very wet indeed. And this is the dry season.
The last stop is known as danger point, a rocky mound sticking out into the gorge and offering panoramic views of the falls for people not afraid of heights.
In some places the whole height of the falling water can be seen clearly, while in others the mist obscures all but the slightest outline of the landscape, the sheer power of the falls throwing up many tonnes of spray every second.
On the way back to the entrance/exit we pass the bridge, and see some people bungi jumping. The Victoria Falls Bridge was commissioned by Cecil John Rhodes in 1900, although he never visited the falls and died before construction began, he expressed his wish that the “railway should cross the Zambezi just below the Victoria Falls. I should like to have the spray of the falls over the carriages.” Noone knows whether he was fond of bungi jumping.
In the evening we return to the Kingdom after having dinner at Elina’s. I try my luck in the Casino (minimum bet is equivilent to about £0.005, so it’s not going to break the bank), but only the slot machines are open and pushing a button a couple of hundred times gets a bit boring after a while.