The Water That Thunders

This is not really a site-seeing trip as I'm happy to look at whatever passes in front of me every day, if you get my drift. However, only a loony - I heard that, you at the back ! -  would not make a small detour to see Vic Falls. It's just 10km from Livingstone and I went there yesterday. There are various ways you can visit it. You can white water- raft it, apart from the vertical bit, of course. You can rent a helicopter and buzz around it that way. You can do something similar in a micro-light. You can view it from Zimbabwe or Zambia, or from both sides. You can tie elastic to your legs and hurl yourself of Beit Bridge and view it upside down. All kinds of wacky possibilities. I cycled there and just saw it from the Zambian side. They say the Zim side is better but I didn't fancy the hassle of going through the border twice and the expense of 2 more visas. This is what I scribbled in my diary over a few bottles of Mosi last night...

"I decided last night to make an early bid for the Falls, so I'm up at 5.30 and away for 6.00. The hotel is silent. There are just 3 guys round a brazier at the gate. I tell them to tell reception I need another night.

It's very cold out on the road especially when I reach the countryside. It's 10 km to the Falls and I'm well chilled on arrival especially, my hands. Maybe I need a warmer hat, gloves and sox for Namibia.

The edge of the Zambesi, dotted with tiny islands, appears well before the Falls. I stop for a couple of photos and a warm-up. I'm not sure what to see or how to see it. For once I have no Lonely Planet guide and I haven't done much research. There's a car-park to the right but I carry on and Beit Bridge with its customs and passport control loom up. I do a U-turn and go back to the empty car-park I passed. At the end of it is a shed marked "Entrance to the falls". The car-park is empty; it's only 7 a.m. I hand over 100,000 Kwatcha (about 13 pounds) for my ticket. It's about a tenth of this for Zambians. I head for another shed marked "information centre". It's full of blokes sitting around chatting. Some kind of work-force. I make my way round the walls. The presentation reminds me of Belle Vue Museum, Halifax, circa 1958. I learn that beds of molten lava were layed down over aeons. These developed a grid of cracks at right-angles to one another: a checker-board pattern. This probably explains the strange shape of the falls. It's not a traditional horse-shoe shape like Niagara. The line of the falls is straight, about 1 km long, and the river below then zigzags. It's as if someone has whacked a giant chisel into the earth so that the water drops into a slot. The slot has only a narrow outlet about a third of the way along it.

I enter the Falls park through a gate by the ticket office. By this time there are 4 of us : a white lady and 2 oriental chaps. The park is full of trees but I soon get my first view of the falls. I'm at the height of the overflowing water and maybe only 50 yds from it on the opposite side of the "slot". Between me and the cascading water is a chasm about 100m deep. It's not possible to see the bottom for the spray which is shooting skyward. Looking towards Zim there's a brilliant, almost circular rainbow. The path twists and dives up and down a bit with viewing points, then there's a bridge across a rocky cleft as far as the end of the park. Way down below is the escaping river but the gap is too narrow and deep for it to be visible. The views are spectacular and I take loads of photos.

Returning to the entry gate I spot a scruffy sign saying "boiling pot" and with an arrow. I've read something about that: the spot where the river rushes through a gap and goes into a whirlpool. I follow the path down through a kind of tropical jungle for maybe 15 minutes. I come out of the trees and there at the foot of a tumble of black rocks is the river. There is no one else around; I'm in a kind of lost world. About 100m upriver there is a pinch in the cliffs. I make my way carefully over the smooth volcanic rocks to this pinch-point. Here the sides of the river are vertical cliffs and only birds go further. The water is glassy smooth and flying through before boiling and twisting in the wider pool below, then it's off round another bend and under Beit Bridge. At one time I could just about have thrown a stone across here, it's that narrow.

So, there I was, at a world heritage site, one of the seven wonders of the natural world, and all on my own. It was such a gripping place that I wanted to enthuse to someone about it. I was hoping another tripper would turn up. No one. I looked to see if there was a phone signal down here. Surprisingly it was a good one.  I decided to ring (son) Dan wondering if he'd be up and moving. It was now 9a.m., 8 o'clock UK time. He answered immediatley and we had a chat. The line was dead clear above the roar of the water and I did my best to describe where I was...

Around 10 am I cycled slowly back to Livingstone under a warm sun. The rest of the day was spent in the museum looking at Livingstone (the explorer) memorabilia, looking for an ATM without a long queue, talking to Wolfgang, the German, swimming for half a minute in the freezing hotel pool, having my beard trimmed, adjusting my brakes, tidying up my room, inquiring about the best route to the Caprivi Strip, ringing home, eating etc. "

So, that was my trip to the Falls. I had to break off blogging a bit suddenly as someone kept ringing my phone and speaking a strange language. I think it was a wrong number.

I plan to leave Livingstone tomorrow and head for Sesheke on the Namibian border. That's probably 3 days cycling. From there I should be able to reach Walvis Bay by Aug 15th when my flight leaves.

A few random facts about Zambia afore I go....

* It's over 3 times bigger than the UK with a population of about 15,000,000

* The President is Mr Sata voted in last year. He's the 5th President. His photo is on display in most shops, hotels and offices.

* The vice-President is Guy Scott, a white bloke whose parents hailed from Glasgow. When he was introduced to George Bush, who happened to be passing through Zambia, he says, "Bush thought they were kidding".

* English is the only official language although there are several other recognized languages, without any one of them being dominant (unlike Tanzania and Malawi where English has shared official language status).

* The name Zambia is based on the river name, Zambesi, which means something like "god river".

* Zambia became an independent state in 1964. Before that it was Northern Rhodesia and  a British Colony.

* Life expectancy is low at approx 40 years.

OK, that's enough of that . Read more on Wikipedia where all that came from anyway.

Thanks for reading, Blog you later.