Victoria Falls

When the British explorer David Livingstone became the first European to discover Victoria Falls he wrote that nothing so beautiful has ever been seen anywhere in England and that even angels that fly overhead must gaze down at the falls in awe. I could try to describe the falls as eloquently as Mr. Livingstone, but nothing I could come up with would do it justice like his description does. Fortunately I have a camera and the internet available to me and the pictures I took today can help out where words fall short.

At 9:00 this morning I rode the truck from the campground to the falls with the others in the tour group as the final activity of the overland Gap trip. Cruising along the Zambezi River last night was a great introduction to the falls.The river is over a mile wide and the entire width of it crashes over a massive cliff that is twice the height of Niagara Falls and many times wider. Opposite the cliff is another cliff just as high and the combination of the two cliffs forms a towering, narrow, mile-long gorge that would be natural wonder on it's own even without water spilling over the top of it. One side of the gorge sits in Zambia and the other, on the the opposite side of the river, is in Robert Mugabe's crumbling shell of what used to be Zimbabwe.One of my favorite parts of traveling is visiting places with incredible photo opportunities and snapping away. Victoria Falls might be the best natural wonder for photos that I've ever visited. After entering at the Zambian edge of the gorge I walked along the rocky pathway leading along the edge towards the river. I watched the Zambezi crash hundreds of feet down to the rocky gorge below and got a much needed shower at the same time from all the water spraying up from the falls. At several points along the way I stopped to enjoy the view and snap a few pictures, but the real view came at the end of the pathway. A cliff dropped suddenly to the river below and the gorge opened up to reveal the Zimbabwe side of the falls. I followed the falls with my eyes to the emerald green river below and saw a perfect rainbow formed by mist from the falling Zambezi.Buying any kind of souvenier while traveling is very uncommon for me. During the last nine weeks traveling through Asia and Africa I've purchased a total of one souvenier - my kitchy Arabic turban that a shopkeeper somehow sold me on in Dubai. While visiting a nearby market today after leaving Victoria Falls I saw one more thing that I just couldn't resist. One of the local men at the market was selling several carvings of African animals made of ebony and mahogany. I've probably seen thousands of such carvings since arriving in Nairobi three weeks ago, but I found one today that somehow stuck out to me. To make a long story short, I rode the truck back to the Zambezi Waterfront as the proud owner of a large wooden rhino carved out of two-tone ebony and buffed with so much shoe polish that I could nearly see my reflection on it. Three weeks ago I definitely had no intention of buying anything from a street-side souvenier market in Africa, but like Jerry Maguire, the rhino had me at hello.

I had booked a helicopter ride over the falls for this afternoon but the flight ended up being rescheduled for tomorrow morning. That leaves me with a very busy day tomorrow, but it also meant that I could split a cab back to the falls with a few others from the tour group to catch the view at sunset. David Livingstone was right about the falls being incredible during the daytime, but with the sunset as a backdrop the place is absolutely spectacular. The sun sets just behind the Zimbabwe side of the gorge, which means perfect light and perfect views from Zambia. I snapped all the same pictures over again but got completely different photos because of the bright orange rays that streamed through the mist and the gorge. Like I said before, I've got a packed day planned for tomorrow already, but if I have even a few minutes left before the Zambian side of the falls closes, I have to head back for one more Victoria Falls sunset.