Teetering on the Edge

Yes, we did have three elephants jump in the Zambezi river on our first night and swim to our island. They stayed all night eating the vegetation by the boat landing. Our valet, Charles told us they tried to get in the kitchen hut because the door was left open and there was a basket of fresh fruit by the door. Luckily the chef woke up and closed the kitchen door so we had plenty of fresh fruit for breakfast.

I missed getting any photos of our island guests because they swam away at six am and hour before Charles brought our coffee tray to us which we enjoyed in bed while gazing our over the river with sounds of birds and monkeys greeting the sunrise. Actually, the moneys seem to be screaming at the sun, “We’re not ready to wake up.” I really could get used to having Charles around if we stayed another few days.

We needed to get an early start yesterday so that we could get to Victoria Falls before the crowds. We had no idea when we booked our trip that it happened to be a national holiday in Zambia so the Falls were going to have more visitors than usual. Russ and I joined our new British friends, Vickie and her husband Nathan, her sister Katie and their mother Jo at breakfast then we all went together by boat up the river to get to the Falls.

Our driver and guide Godfrey brought full length MacIntosh raincoats which were definitely needed since the river was high and that meant the spray was dramatic in parts. We walked the paths that gave us good views of all seven waterfalls, but we could not see the full 1,000 feet to the bottom because the spray was so prolific. We had to keep our cameras under our coats lots of the time but we still got many good pictures.

The people without rain gear were more than soaked and the dumbest person we saw was a Chinese man walking across the foot bridge in the middle of the falls with his I-pad out of it’s case, no rain cover, using it to take pictures as water poured off the screen. I wonder if it still worked by the time he reached the end?

The falls are a the countries biggest tourist attraction so there were the requisite stalls of “crafts” with guys saying, “no pressure, come in and look.” Their idea of no pressure and mine is a little different. I purposely had only brought a few five and ten dollar bills so when I bargained I could show them that I did not have any more money. NO matter how much bargaining I did I still over paid, but I was not unhappy and neither were they.

After seeing the Falls from the front Russ and I were dropped off at the very Colonial fancy Royal Livingstone Hotel where go got a boat to go to a private lunch and tour of Livingstone Island. David Livingstone the missionary who was the first white man to see the falls named them for his Queen – Victoria, and in response she named the tiny island in the Zambezi river overlooking the falls for him.

It was definitely worth the cost to go to Livingstone Island. There were only 12 of us divided into two groups, each with two “lifesavers” as our guides. They first had us take our shoes off and gave us the standard issue Green Mac rain coats, then they lead us in a single line, holding hands through the rocky parts of the river to a larger rock formation to look right over the edge of the falls while they took our pictures. The sound was almost deafening as the water fell just below our feet. i will not lie and say it was not a little bit scary. We recovered from the fright with a lovely lunch under a marquis, that is British for tent before heading back to our little island paradise.

After enjoying our honeymoon retreat with tea from Charles and the best hot outdoor shower in the world we went to our bush TV fire circle to have drinks before dinner with our British and Australian island friends. It was then that I discovered that Vickie and Nathan’s last name was Lang! So there we all were, started as friends but really were obviously long lost family. We stayed long after dinner enjoying the fire and staying up later than we had all week, sad that this absolutely perfect holiday was going to end. Even though we had seen the most magnificent animals and wonders of the world it was all the people that we met on this trip that made it a trip of a lifetime.