A week ago Friday I set out on another adventure, this time to Victoria Falls via Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. We left Friday morning and spent Friday night in Francistown watching a terrible Stephen Seagal movie. Saturday we woke up and caught a bus to the border with Zimbabwe, which boasts the highest per capita number of Dolly Parton fans of anywhere in the world, as well as the coveted no. 4 spot on the most recent Failed States Index. After a little bit of a delay at the border crossing we were able to catch another combi to Bulawayo and made it there by mid-afternoon. Bulawayo is Zimbabwe's second city and the largest city in the western side of the country. Despite its size, being in Bulawayo is like being on the set of a zombie or post-apocalyptic movie: the streets have very few cars, the stores that are open have very few goods. Bulawayo is poor but it is a different kind of poor than I have seen anywhere else. The city is much larger than Gabs but has hardly any traffic, and most of the vehicles that you do so are public transport or taxis. Most of the stores we saw were closed, but the few that were open were almost bare inside.
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| Bulawayo city center at rush hour |
After a few hours of wandering the streets we made it to the train station and bordered our overnight train to Victoria Falls. The train itself is from the 1950s and most of the windows and mirrors still bear the 'RR' of Rhodesia Railways. The train ride was fantastic. The full moon was out Saturday night so we had a very good view of the countryside. As we approached Vic Falls Sunday morning we were able to see the enormous spray produced by the falls from miles away.
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| Choo choo |
We were in the town of Vic Falls by midmorning and first went down to the gorge below the falls to get a sense of things.
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| The gorge below the falls. |
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We then walked down close to the falls themselves and waked out onto the bridge that runs right by them and serves as the crossing point between Zimbabwe and Zambia. We had to put on our ponchos at this point--standing near the falls is a lot like standing in a torrential downpour that never ends.
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| The bridge with falls to the right. |
One of the consequences of standing in the midst of so much mist is that taking pictures is pretty much impossible for most of the time.
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| Oh, and there were elephants around. |
We spent the rest of Sunday afternoon at our hostel resting and showering. We went back to the bridge that night in pursuit of the moonbow, which we did manage to see. The moonbow can only regularly be seen at two places in the world: Victoria Falls and Cumberland Falls, Kentucky. Of course, I have now seen the one on the other side of the world and not yet the one practically in my backyard. Regardless, it was very impressive.
Monday we woke up bright and early and were the first people into the Vic Falls NP, just in time for dawn.
Unfortunately the weather conditions weren't the best early on so it was actually quite difficult to see the falls, despite them only being 40m away.
However, we stuck around for a few more hours and things cleared up significantly.
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| A side view of the falls. The falls are on the left, where I was standing earlier is on the right. |
Because the falls are so close to the cliff walls, it is almost impossible to get a real perspective on their size. So here's an aerial view I found online:
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| The Zimbabwe side, where I was, is on the left. |
After a morning at the Falls we went to the big curio market in town and bartered with money, clothes, and random items for hand made stone carvings. We took the train back through Bulawayo and then caught a bus back to Gaborone. The bus broke down towards the end, but we still made it to Gabs only a few hours late.
