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Sunday, October 15th, Lokahula Lodge, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
Once again, the cracking of branches, scrunching of leaves and the occasional "Greip" of a tree being pulled down just outside our veranda, gets us up. The sun is not up yet, but it's well past dawn. Our friendly resident Warthog has just arrived in front of me, and is doing a tour of the lawns checking for his breakfast. The warthog moves onto slimier environs, and the guinea fowl cluck through town. We look over a small valley which occasionally has Water Buffalo, impala, warthogs cavorting about in front of our house. We have been in Zim a week, and apart from the first day, before we had any local currency, we have not seen Diesel available at any of the gas stations. This could severely cramp our travelling plans! We are awakened at 1:00AM by a hair raising scream. I think it's in the house, and run up to the kids bedroom, but it turns out to be on our veranda, thankfully. Aiden and Kayla have the upper floor here which also has a wall of canvas screening, any screaming around, and they hear it quite easily. They are both, shall we say concerned with the screaming. The problem here is that you cannot see what is going on outside, as the thick curtain material has no window in it. We hear something scuffling outside , with no idea as to size or make/ model of animal. I go outside, there is some rustling in the bushes 10 metres away. I'm not that brave, and retreat back inside. Another restless night. We have been utylising the local facilities here - there is a hell of a lot of really cool stuff to do here - Vic Falls is in fact one of the "adrenaline capitals" of the world. Everything from sedate river cruises to absleiling, bungy jumping, elephant riding safari's and white water rafting.
One afternoon, we trek to the crocodile ranch, only 3 Km away from us, just outside of the Zambezi Game park. This is really organised, and the staff here give a really good tour, right down to the minuscule details of crocs. The kids get to play with a baby, and we watch the crocs, lions and leopard (all captive of course) being fed. The crocs get fed elephant meat - from the parks culling expeditions. Aiden buys a drum at the store - more space in the cruiser gone.
Scary stuff!, but we all survive and invest $US45.00 (!!!) later that evening for the unexpurgated video of the day. Several times during the week, I've tried to e-mail and hook up to upload my pix to the web site, only managed to e-mail once, and cannot get into the net from any café here. The pix will have to wait - sorry folks. This has been a wonderful break, especially after all the crap places in Botswana. The people are lovely, even the beggars are friendly and typically well educated - although what this says for the future of the country does not bear thinking about! As Ilge describes it "Zimbabweans are born with a smile on their faces". Once again, we see absolutely no sign of official policy, or even recognition of any AIDS issues; Zim has the highest (acknowledged) rate of infection in the world. More scary stuff. This evening we are off to the Zambezi game reserve for the night, then off to Hwankie national park. Distance travelled this entry: 75 Km. Distance moved on trip this entry: 0 Km |
Ilge, Aiden & Kayla do an 
Friday, October 13th. A full moon and we head off to 
Yesterday, Saturday 14th, Aiden & I do the Zambezi white water rafting. There were 15 class IV and V rapids, and we went on the
semi wimp raft - the guide doing a lot of the work for us, mainly because he didn't want Aiden to drown. "Bad Dog" is the only outfit
that would take him. Thanks Thebani! We enter just behind the Vic falls Hotel - passing Cape buffalo en route. We kit up with
helmet and GASP! Very tight lifejackets - thats ok, they probably save our lives! The path is down a desperately steep cliff and is
very steep and quite dangerous down to the bottom of the second gorge where we do some warm up exercises, then jump into the
river. Now we are ready to go into the first rapid. Once through we are all elated and go onto rapid # 21. We all survived, including a
wipe out at rapid #6 - "The Devils Toilet Bowl" where we completely turtled the boat and got swept downstream about 100 metres -
this with a current of about 7 - 8 knots. This was not a pleasant little swim on the Ottawa river. Lost Aiden for about 40 seconds -
that was quite long enough for my imagination to come up with more than one scenario. There were three rafts with 6 in each, by the
end of the day each boat has someone in it that gets quite a knock, one guy needs a few days to recuperate. I took my underwater
camera - in fact, this is the sole reason I brought it, and took some shots, even as I was being swept down the river. Even if there
were no rapids, the gorges are absolutely spectacular. They go on for 20 - 30 Km and are about 75 - 100 metres high all the way
down the river. There is something primordial about floating past rocks that have been cut, gouged and weathered millions of years
ago, and you are right in the middle of this history. We finish off with a braai at around 23:30, and everyone is wiped out.
