The mammoth wasn’t happy, today would see us heading into another country as part of our day at Victoria Falls, sadly as the region was at the end of the dry season the falls wouldn’t be falling as much as he had hoped.
Woolly says – Having sulked for half an hour I concluded that it wasn’t Jo’s fault, for once, and that breakfast looked to good to miss so decided to make the most of whatever the day brought. Our driver was late but it was only a short distance to the Zambian border and were officially stamped out of the country before heading over the bridge between two countries.
The Victoria Falls Bridge was the inspiration of Cecil Rhodes, who was reported to have said: “build the Bridge across the Zambezi where the trains, as they pass, will catch the spray of the Falls”. This was part of Rhodes’ unfulfilled Cape to Cairo railway scheme, yet sadly, he never even got to visit the falls, and died before construction of the bridge began. Originally referred to as the Zambezi Bridge, the parabolic arch design of the Victoria Falls Bridge is credited to George Hobson. It was constructed in England by the Cleveland Bridge and Engineering Company, and shipped to the Mozambique port of Beira, and then railed up to Victoria Falls. In a feat of Victorian engineering, the Bridge took just 14 months to build. It was opened by Charles Darwin’s son, Professor George Darwin, President of the British Association (now the Royal Society) on 12th September 1905. We couldn’t really see much of what lay below as the rails were too high but within a few minutes we were shuffling into the Zimbabwean immigration area.
Jo handed over our passports and dollars as instructed by the tour company, the border official was obviously in a very bad mood as he throw both the passports and money back at her. Not quite knowing what to do we spent a couple of minutes catching our breath and giving the human time to sniff a few times to stop her crying. We then approached another window and tried again, this time a nice man shook his head and explained most politely that we hadn’t given enough dollars, Jo gulped and explained that this was the number of dollars that the tour people had told her to bring, he smiled at us and asked if we had a card and produced a card reader. Out came the good old visa card and within five minutes we had new sticky visas in our documents and were free to go.
Our guide met us just outside the offices and led us properly into Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia to the north, and Mozambique to the east. The capital and largest city is Harare, and the second largest is Bulawayo.
The poor country had had a terrible time, beginning in the 9th century, during its late Iron Age, the Bantu people built the city/state of Great Zimbabwe; but it was abandoned by the mid-15th century. From there, the Kingdom of Zimbabwe was established, followed by the Rozvi and Mutapa empires. The British South Africa Company of Cecil Rhodes demarcated the Rhodesia region in 1890 when they conquered Mashonaland and later in 1893 Matabeleland after the First Matabele War. Company rule ended in 1923 with the establishment of Southern Rhodesia as a self-governing British colony. In 1965, the white minority government unilaterally declared independence as Rhodesia. The state endured international isolation and a 15 year guerrilla war with black nationalist forces; this culminated in a peace agreement that established de jure sovereignty as Zimbabwe in April 1980. Robert Mugabe became Prime Minister of Zimbabwe in 1980, when his ZANU–PF party won the general election following the end of white minority rule and has remained the country’s dominant party since. He was the President of Zimbabwe from 1987, after converting the country’s initial parliamentary system into a presidential one, until his resignation in 2017. Under Mugabe’s authoritarian regime, the state security apparatus dominated the country and was responsible for widespread human rights violations. From 1997 to 2008 the economy experienced consistent decline (and in the latter years, hyperinflation), though it has since seen rapid growth after the use of currencies other than the Zimbabwean dollar was permitted. In 2017, in the wake of over a year of protests against his government as well as Zimbabwe’s rapidly declining economy, a coup resulted in Mugabe’s resignation.
We were only spending a few hours there, but the people seemed happy and friendly as we entered the Victoria Falls National Park. Victoria Falls or Mosi-oa-Tunya is one of the world’s largest waterfalls, with a width of 1,708 m (5,604 ft). Mr Livingstone had identified the falls in 1855, naming them Victoria Falls after Queen Victoria. Since the mid-20th century, the site has been a major tourist destination.
We followed our guide along a cobbled track as she explained that she would be taking us to twelve different viewing points. Arriving at number one I was happily amazed to see water spilling over the rocks and crashing down into the ravine below.
It was mighty impressive even if only a tenth of what it would look like during the rainy season when the whole of the currently empty areas would also be pouring with water.
Each of the viewpoints took us along the falls and nearer to the bridge, each view showed us something more and as for a lack of water I was getting sprayed in a most pleasant way in the heat of the morning.
There are two islands on the crest of the falls, Boaruka Island (or Cataract Island) near the western bank, and Livingstone Island near the middle. At less than full flood, additional islets divide the curtain of water into separate parallel streams. The main streams are named, in order from Zimbabwe (west) to Zambia (east): the Devil’s Cataract (called Leaping Water by some), the Main Falls, the Rainbow Falls (the highest) and the Eastern Cataract.
Even without the full force of the water I was loving the rock faces as we moved along the pathways.
Arriving at the view of the bridge it also made for an impressive view showing some wonderful engineering in its construction.
As we wandered back to the visitor’s centre, we took in the sun bleached ground mixed amongst the forest greens even spotting some dear grazing not far from the path.
Our guide led us down a dirt track and into a very plush restaurant telling us that she was leaving us here and to message her once we had eaten and she would come back to pay the bill for our food but not our drinks. Well, I didn’t need telling twice and prepared my order before Jo told me that we were not ordering all sixteen items that I wanted, and I needed to choose just one! As we waited for our food and beer to arrive, we stood admiring the view across to the bridge and down to the gorge far below, some insane people were using ropes to bungy or abseil down.
Fed and watered and the bill paid by the company with us adding the extra for our drinks we were escorted into a taxi and told that we would be taken around the local township, neither of us had expected this and so jumped into the van delighted to have a further look at this new country.
Chinotimba township, home to roughly 60,000 people is home to the Nambya and Tonga people who are indigenous to the area. Our tour of the town took us past all sorts of interesting places.
Small homes growing all sorts of veggies, and several beer halls passed by
Local shops and markets seemed to be in abundance as well.
It made for a fascinating tour and our lovely driver told us how the town had grown as tourism had increased and how hard life had been under Mugabe.
We finally stopped at the Sinathankawu Curio Market and the driver left us to wander around.
It was amazing to see the hand carved animals and bowls and bright colours of the clothes but difficult as every time we paused, we became surrounded by locals selling their wares which got a bit too much.
Finally finding ourselves in a slightly quieter area I spotted some of the local money which Jo and I were dying to look at as their notes go in billions. One of the traders allowed us to have a look more closely and to take a picture before we headed back to the car and towards the border.
Leaving proved to be much easier than arriving and within five minutes we were back in Zambia and on the short journey back to the digs. I’d enjoyed our day and even being sprayed b water hadn’t been so bad as at least there had been some water after all. Tomorrow promised another short day in another country.