Livingstone. Victoria Falls. Walking with Giraffes.

November 15, 2008, 11:42 am
Filed under: Uncategorized

So this week, we took a few days as a holiday. First time we have done this since… the Taj in June. Work work work, believe it or not.

We arrived in Livingstone, the closest Zambian city/town to the falls, on Sunday afternoon with hopes of seeing the magical Victoria Falls and some interesting animals.

On Monday morning, we went out to the Vic Falls park…. All pumped up on descriptions of these massive falls where we would get soaked to the bone from the mist rising from the crashing water, we walked the path that was supposed to have the best view of the 60% of the falls that is in Zambia…. Only to find that there was no water. Ok there was 2 trickles, and by that I mean image pouring a bucket of water over the edge of a huge cliff. That was it.

We went to the park office and asked if we had taken the wrong path – nope that wasn’t the problem… it was, as we knew, the dry season, but from the pictures posted in the visitor’s centre – of a still somewhat large falls in the dry season – we knew that this could not be the only problem. After more badgering of the park attendant, we found out that the Zambezi river (of which Vic Falls flows) is dammed upstream for the wonderfully inconsistent supply of hydro-electricity for the country. Boo-urns…

So we resigned to climbing a baobab tree for a look at the countryside then went to a crocodile farm, where we watched a man poke massive (10 foot long) crocodiles with a stick so that they would show us their mouths.

Then we went back to our backpackers inn to nap and, for Matt, to pout about the loss of potential waterfall photos. I looked through our lonely planet travel guide to figure out what could be done to improve our Vic Falls viewing experience. I found out that it was possible to walk on the dry riverbed that would feed the Zambian side of the falls to where it falls out of view of the path that we were on.

So, I woke up my sulking husband and dragged him back to the Vic Falls park. After a $35/person charge, we were off with a guide to look at the actually flowing part of the falls. And… not only did we look, but we got to swim about a foot away from the edge! A bit freaky, but really quite safe, as there is a small pool that fills and slowly falls off the edge beside the more rapid part. We got to put our heads over the edge and watch the falls from the point of view of a drop of water. Cool.

The next day, we had a walking safari booked. For 6:15 in the morning… super. It was worth the dawn wake-up luckily… As soon as we started off on a walk through the park, with 2 guides and a park ranger with a large automatic weapon, we found a small herd of zebras grazing (with a month old colt). We also saw a little family of warthogs as they ran away from our noisy walking.

Then as we walked on, our guide told us that he saw a giraffe but it was about 200 metres back. He told us we could just go and look and meet them back where we were. Dazed and confused as early mornings render us, we started to stumble away to find the mysterious animal…. After we took a few cautious steps, our guide called us back with a sly little chuckle and pointed about 20 metres beyond him. There, through the brush, were the distinct knobby knees of a giraffe! We stalked the giraffe for a while, getting within 5 metres of her! And later, we found her colt too! How much cuter do you get than a baby giraffe?

Next, we ran into some baboons. There were about 15 of them around us, sifting through the dirt for food. One of them tried to scare us out of their territory by rusting leaves. It was pretty funny. Especially when our guide did it too, which seemed to confuse the animal.

Then we saw some impalas… like deer except smaller and with longer horns. And then a bushbuck, also similar to a deer, but has odd white spots/stripes for camouflage.

Nearing the end of our 3 hour walk, we came to a bunch of fences made out of skinny logs. There were huge rhinos inside, they had just come to the park through an exchange with a South African park and they were in the fences for a few weeks until they became acclimatized to the park. I was standing by the fence and one started to come up quickly to see me. Admittedly it scared me, what a huge animal! (with a huge horn!)

There was also a rhino not in the fence. The only “white rhino” in Zambia (which is actually an mistake in English naming, because it was first called a “wide mouthed rhino” by a man with a Dutch accent, which was somehow misinterpreted as “white rhino” – in any case, the rhino is not any whiter than other rhinos, it does however have a wide mouth…) This “white rhino” was just lazing around outside the fenced-in non-white rhinos. Our guide took us within 3 metres of it. Pretty close for an animal with a reputation for being temperamental… Our guide told us that there had been a poaching incident with their previous other white rhino and this poor fellow, ran panicked from the gun shots, then tripped and broke his front right leg. He was recovering, but wouldn’t be charging at us any time soon.

And that was our holiday. It was enjoyable.