We start the day by driving the length of the park along the river. There are two roads, the high and the low, with the low affording better game viewing. But the river is rising fast, and the low road is flooded. When Clinton visited here a week and a half ago, there was dry land all around. We find the basic complement of antelope, birds, and cape buffalo. A new thing for us today was a rather large snake that was coiled up in the middle of the road. It was quite dead before we got there.
Having been rather bored with our drive along the river, we decide to visit Namibia for a few hours. Why Namibia? Hey, why not! After exit formalities in Botswana, we were on our way across the flooding Chobe river. The one lane bridge was clear, and we were soon in the Namibia customs house trying to explain that we were only planning on being there a few hours. They finally decided that we were telling the truth, stamped our passports, and let us on our way. Our destination was Katima Mulilo, the lone Namibian out post here in this freak on geography called the Caprivi Strip. A thin finger of Namibia stretching out between Angola and Botswana.
I wanted to go to Katima Mulilo, get some postcards and mail them, have a little lunch, then go back to Botswana. The first problem was finding post cards. We went to the large and bustling market in the center of town and wandered around. Adjacent to the market is a local arts cooperative I had read about. I asked about postcards, and they brought out two small paintings. I bought them anyway, and then decided to just buy plain post cards at the post office. Well, that plan was scrubbed to. After some looking we found the post office, and found that it was closed because it was Good Friday, a national holiday on Namibia. So we headed back for Botswana.
We had a late lunch in Kasane at the Mowana Safari Hotel, where Clinton stayed when he visited here. It was also where our crew stayed, and we were told it has pretty posh. We enjoyed a big buffet spread, but looked a little out of place in our rough clothes and unshaven faces. We headed back to the Buffalo Ridge camp in Ngoma by way of the park. We saw more elephant than we've seen so far on the trip, and more warthog too. Peter decided that his trip wouldn't be complete without getting out and visiting with them.
At Buffalo Ridge we were the only people in camp, a welcome change for the night before. We hosed down the truck, since it had gotten pretty muddy thus far. Set up the tent, and enjoyed the best sunset I have ever seen in my life. Long and wide, setting slowly over the Chobe River, before slipping quickly under the Namibian horizon. Perfect day number two of the year.
Good-bye Botswana. Today we start wrapping up our trip and heading to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. On our way out of Kasane we stopped at the Hot Bread Shop, the local bakery, and bought hot, fresh vatcakes. A vatcake is sort of like a big doughnut without a hole, but a lot more tasty and a lot more filling. I bought a bunch and almost made myself sick gorging on them. Very tasty things they were.
We made an uneventful border crossing, and quickly clicked off the paved mile to Victoria Falls. After a week of roughing it in a tent, we checked into the Elephant Hills Intercontinental. Air conditioning, two swimming pools, a casino, golf course. Africa for the weak hearted. We dropped our bags, I got a quick nap, and then we went to explore the town. Victoria Falls is a little like the Disneyworld Jungle Boat on crack. Lots of kitsch shops with trinkets and Africana, a few bars, and a little dirt. Despite the burgeoning tourism there is still a feeling of frontier left in the town. We grabbed a decent burger and a coke in an upstairs tavern, then spent ten minutes trying to pay the bill in Botswana Pula, instead of the Zimbabwe dollar, or the universally accepted American Dollar. The bar didn't have a conversion from Pula to Zim dollars, so we had to show them how to convert Pula to US to Zim dollars, and still got out with a smile on everyone's face.
We booked ourselves onto a sunset booze cruise, a popular activity here, then went to check on our arrangements for white water rafting tomorrow on the Zambezi. Unfortunately all the white water rafting trips had been canceled because the river was flooding and rafting was too dangerous. The outfitter offered us a day long canoe trip or a 20 minute chopper ride in return. We decided that there wasn't enough in Vic Falls to occupy an entire day, so we went with the canoe trip. And in a fit of passion, I booked myself on the jump. The jump? keep reading.
One of the things I found really amazing about Vic Falls was the number of really cute euro-backpacker girls that seem to be attracted to it. We had a few on our canoe trip. It was a nice, relaxing, sunburn my feet to a crisp day. Got soaked a few times, did more floating with the current than paddling, and didn't see much but a few elephants. I guess on better days the river makes an effort to live up to its legend of a crocodile infested man eating hippo hell of a stream. After the canoeing we all piled in the back of a big old army transport, passed around the cold beers, and went bouncing through the bush looking for rhino. There are five rhino here in Zambia (where the canoe trip was launched and landed from), all of them imported from South Africa. They hope they will start breeding two. After poachers killed one of them, the Zambia government started handing out meager wages and AK-47s to the locals to patrol the woods of the rhino reserve. Just like Botswana has discovered, this is a very effective anti-poaching measure. Peter and I got a great kick out of everyone getting excited about antelope and zebra that we passed along the way. Been there, done that. We finally did find the rhinos, all four of them. At least we were told they were live rhinos. All we could see from our vantage point were four black humps in the middle of a patch of grass about 400 yards away. Well, that's better than not seeing anything at all.
Back to Zimbabwe, and a little sunning at the pool and postcard writing. Packing is also on our agenda. Tomorrow we head to the airport and start flying home to Washington. We both went to the casino and in about a half hour blew away all our excess funny money. It was fun doing it, though. Since the chips are in Zim dollars, about 30 US dollars of Rand and Pula became about $500 in Zimbabwe dollars. It was a kick making $100 bets at the blackjack tables, until they changed dealers to one who knew what he was doing.
Back into town for my last dinner as a mortal. I had the jump on my mind. We were going to go to a big place called “BOMA: The Place of Eating.” A big buffet affair with live cultural entertainment. We had heard that the food wasn't that great, so we went where we heard the food was good. At The Cattleman's, we ran into a few folks from the canoe trip earlier in the day. Had an all right steak, a few drinks, and went back to the hotel to sleep. If there is one night to have a strange Mefloquine induced dream, this would be it.
I don't think it ever crossed my mind that this day would be the 13th. I roll out of bed, and put on the only clothes that aren't packed. Peter and I load the truck, and head into the hotel restaurant for breakfast. It's 8:00. We have a plane at 1:00. Ill be jumping at 10:00. I decide to have a light breakfast, just some toast and eggs, for my last meal.
We drive to the border crossing. The bridge that spans Victoria Falls was built by J. Cecil Rhodes, a colossus of African history that has been in my mind for most of the trip. The bridge is shrouded in the mist of the falls, one of the highest in the world. The mist cloud rises high above the trees. David Livingstone saw it from five miles away before he became the first white man to set eyes on what the Shona called Mosi oa tunya. The smoke that thunders. Now, 250 years later, there's a beer called Mosi. It's an ok lager, when it's cold. This bridge was one of the first major hurdles for Rhodes’ biggest dream - a railway spanning the continent from the Cape to Cairo. The bridge is 80 some years old. The flooded torrent raging 111 meters below is ageless. Today, I jump off a bridge.
The jump point is exactly halfway along the bridge. It is a political no-man’s land, between two countries. Peter and I have a passports stamped out of Zimbabwe. I’ll jump, Peter will watch, then we'll have our passports stamped back in. I don't think I've ever been this focused. I am excited, but not pumped up in a jocular sort of manner. I am ready to force my body something that it doesn't want to do. How many times have you leaned over a bridge railing, looked down, and imagined what it would be like to fall.
It is the greatest feeling I have ever had in my life. The world's highest commercial bungi jump. Longer than a football field. I want to jump again, but we barely have time to pick up a video of the jump, calm down with a Coke, and catch a flight at the airport. Victoria Falls to Johannesburg to Frankfurt to Washington. I don't think the shit eating grin left my face until somewhere over the Atlantic.
And that was Africa.
An amazing place of diversity and beauty, tragedy and success. My mind frequently goes back there, back to the “dark continent.” I've even caught myself having thoughts of moving there. Some days it will be tomorrow, others just for retirement.
The trip has become many things to me, besides a wonderful adventure. The work was some of the most challenging I've done yet, and we pulled it off. The historical overtones of the first visit by an American president to Africa. A thousand different things run through my head now when I think of Africa. And there is so much I still want to discover there. I hope soon I will be there again, sipping a rum and coke, watching the sun set over Namibia.